The New Number Two

Since I recently got a better job, I got myself a new second guitar. A backup, if you will. This is an SX STL50 Vintage White. There might be a guitar that this one looks a lot like. Certainly, there are other guitar I looked at. I thought about picking up something with a whammy bar. But as a friend pointed out, every time I play with him and hold a whammy-having instrument, I whang on the bar, I lift the instrument by the bar, then I play like it has no bar. So I decided to go hardtail again.

The white body and the orange-tinted neck contrast greatly with the black body and very-white neck of my #1, but there's more. The new one's string-through with jumbo frets. The old one's a top loader with thin frets. These are about as different as two guitars can be while being pretty much the same instrument. Notice that the SX has a rounded neck end, contrasting the squared end on the Fender Tele. That's Strat-like, and it points to a mod that I'll have to make when I think about a new pickguard.


I'm a sucker for reversing the control plate, because I always think I'll learn how to do Roy Buchanan volume and tone swells. The switch on my #1 is reversed ( forward position is bridge, back position is neck ) because the wires are too short for me to keep it reversed. For this one, they're not even long enough for me to do that. One of my goals for this instrument is for me to learn how to do guitar electronics. Getting this thing reverse-wireable is part of that.

I didn't like the little-knurl of the knobs it came with, so I swapped 'em with the knobs that #1 had before I got black hardware for it.

Anyway, I like it. I will mod it it beyond recognition before things are over, but it is now part of my family of instruments, with my #1, my Supro (black and white) and my Les Paul PeeWee lap steel.