Cleaning up a Strat after being in long term humid storage
This very cool American Standard Stratocaster came in for a clean and a restring—normally a very straightforward job. However, it had been in storage for several years in a fairly humid environment and a lot of the metalwork, including the electrics, had become somewhat corroded. It actually looks OK from that distance. Here are a few close-ups. In addition to the dirt and grime, you can see that many of the screws have rusted quite badly. A quick test also revealed that the pots were scratchy, the switch was not working correctly and the output jack was making a lot of crackling noises. A look down the neck shows corrosion on the frets, so these will need a bit of a clean and polish too. Oh and... is that… blood? The only way to deal with this is to dismantle it, but before I do that I’m going to take some measurements since it was actually playing pretty nice and I don’t want to change that if I can help it. Measuring the saddle positions: And the pickup heights: First...