My second electric - the Kellycaster

For a while I had been thinking about getting a second electric. I was listening to a lot of open tunings - Black Crowes, Ry Cooder, the Stones - and didn't like constantly retuning. I had joined a Telecaster forum on the internet - TDPRI - and red a lot of complimentary reviews about SX guitars. A guy named Kurt in New Hampshire was importing them and selling them on his Rondomusic.com site. The SX style went for $129 with occasional deals for $109. Kurt had constantly changing deals which encouraged frequent visits to his site and April of 2009 I think it was there was the SX STL-50 in Candy Apple Red sitting there for $89, $104 including shipping to my door.

Well, sure I wanted another guitar but all the posts on TDPRI of guitar building and modding had really intrigued me. There was no way I was going to leave this one stock so I bought new pickups, electronics, saddles, tuners and a pickguard and went to town. I decided to switch the neck pickup to a humbucker so I could get that Micawber sound. Oh, and of course the headstock had to be cut down to match a Tele.

(pay no attention to the dates on the pics - not being able to figure out how to reset them is a testament to my ignorance of most things technological)

The actual work was fairly uneventful, more like an installation than anything. I learned how to wire and solder and tweak different capacitors for different tones. The final product:

Although I enjoyed the modding experience this is not a guitar I would have bought in store. It looked good and sounded good but didn't really fit me. The neck is wide and kind of flat - good for shredding - but not good for my smaller hands and short fingers. Seems like I still needed a second guitar!!!