Gemini Stratocaster

My son has been playing guitar for over 5 years now. I bought him quite a few guitars over the years, going from a starter Squier Stratocaster 3/4 length (2 of them actually, one is autographed by Collective Soul members and hanging on our wall now), to a PRS Tremonti SE, to a Musicman Petrucci 2007 Limited Edition.

I was looking at getting him a Stratocaster to experiment with single coil pickups, and a more bluesy tone, but I wanted it to be special. And I couldn’t find anything that fit my requirements which were

- Noiseless pickups (I hate the strat “hum”)
- Tremolo (anything but a Floyd Rose)
- Maple Flame top (most Fender strats have solid colors except for the sunburst but no flame top).

So that left me thinking… I started looking at ordering parts to build one, as I have no skills (or tools) to work with wood. How hard can it be? lol

I found parts from Warmoth, started pricing everything and was pretty close to ordering, when I figured I’d rather have a guitar with no pick guard (rear-routed). Then I started reading on installing the pickups and it became clear to me that while mounting the hardware on a pickguard was a no brainer for me, mounting it to the wood was another story.

So I called a local luthier to find out if he would assemble the whole thing once I ordered all the parts. He gave me some good advice and offered to build the whole thing from scratch for me, for about the same price.

Being that I wanted a flame top with a forearm cut on the body for comfort, he was not equiped to do this, so I started hunting for a body only.

Someone on a forum suggested I contact Tommy from USA Custom Guitars, and I did.

The entire experience in dealing with Tommy has been fantastic. I have sent him numerous emails with what I considered dumb questions, and he answered every single one of them with good information (no one-liners to get rid of a pesky client type of answers).

I’m at the point where I have ordered the pickups, the body, the luthier is ordering all the hardware and is going to make the neck from the wood planks we selected.

Here’s a rough idea of what I’m looking at as the final product.

Parts list:
Body: USA Custom Guitars Dinky S alder with maple flame top
Neck: Custom built birdseye maple neck with birdseye maple fretboard, with a custom gemini symbol inlay on ebony. Nut is natural bone.
Headstock: Reversed, shaped like the Suhr headstock.

All the hardware is black.

Bridge: Gotoh Wilkinson 6 screws vintage style with steel block
Tuners: Schaller locking
Knobs: Volume & Tone, plus a switch to enable telecaster type settings (bridge and neck)

Finish: Ruby red with blackburst and natural wood binding

Body after staining and a few coats of nitro:

Here we go for the final results!