rockabilly69

This exactly what I would do too!

Rory's Strat has a great story, it lay in a ditch for awhile giving it a jump start on the aging process, and along with is heavy corrosive sweat, that guitar didn't stand a chance of staying clean. I think it's funny that it has blue denim stain in the finish

I think they went to long tenon in 2015, I know my 2015 H150 has a long tenon

I have played three of the Artisan aged guitars, two H530s, and one H150. The aging on the H150 looked good, but it was over the top on the H530s. I posted a while back about a new H530 that I played that I really liked. Well it was my friend's guitar, who likes relics, but he returned it to Guitar Center because he felt the aging was too over the top! They went especially heavy on the tuners and deep finish cracks around the neck joint.

I loved that book! And yes, the connection is so much deeper when you work on them yourself. And when you get good at it, you wind up with a great playing guitar!!!

It just saves so much time when you don't have to bring the guitar to a tech/luthier to do this. Many new guitars come with a "safe" nut height that allows for a buzz free action, but they are typically a bit high, and when you fret a note at the first three frets you seem them going sharp on your tuner!

Most of the instruments I played leading up to the transition had badly cut nuts, but other than that, they seemed pretty well made. Lately I've been practicing cutting nuts, and for the life of me, I can't see how a company can't get this down to a high quality repeatable procedure. It's a fairly straight forward job.

That screams rock and roll to me!

I'm with you Fred, the Phat Cats would be more in line with the classic Firebird bright snappy tone. I would love to hear High Flying Bird's 357! It was the clarity of Johnny Winter's playing of his famous white one that made me love Firebirds. And when I first saw one on the cover of his "Captured Live" album cover, I thought it was the coolest looking guitar ever! And funny, I think Gibbons ruined the tone of Firebirds with their newer overwound ceramic magnet pickups in the 70's. I put vintage correct Kleins in my 'bird, along with many other mods, proper wiring, ABR bridge, lightweight tai

Great story and one of the better looking H357s that I've seen! Other than the rosewood neck strips, it's all maple, so I wonder what that one weighs?

I wish you could still buy them for $1000! At that price they were either the satin finished lower line studio models, or the version with Steinberger tuners that they were clearing out. I didn't like the lower priced "studio" models with humbuckers and set necks, or the satin finished ones, but the regular "2010" model with Steinberger tuners I loved, they were a steal, and the perfect platform for a person likes me who likes to mod guitars. I bought two of them, and kept the best one. They were both great guitars though! The one I still have is only 7lbs! But, I don't think people liked the

Although I love the original Firebird pickups, since the 70's they have been too overwound, and brittle sounding. I don't think I'd like a full sized humbucker in my Firebird, but I would surely go for a P90. I've recently been toying with the idea of throwing some mini-humbucker sized DeArmond pickups in mine.

Congrats on learning new skills and knocking out some cool cabs and pedalboards!

once again, looks great!

looks pretty good to me!