Then you may want to consider building yourself a RobRobinette Bassman Micro LTP EF80 MV.
Just finished mine up today and it was well worth the effort.
If you live within a reasonable driving distance of Newark, DE, and know of a young person who could put this to good use, please come and get it.
I do not have a box large enough and I will not ship it under any circumstances.
Not to piss in your cornflakes, but, just because it sounds good doesn't necessarily mean it was well built.
I have seen far too many cobbled together mechanisms that performed their functions more than satisfactorily to allow such a statement to go unchallenged.
I am used to higher ratio Hipshots so they will take some time to get used to. In playing it last night I think the nut slots are a bit tight which keeps the string taught when the tuner is turned to slacken the string.
Picked this up so I would have an actual Fender Built Strat. Set up consisted of setting the string height, decking the trem, and tuning to Eb. Intonation was perfect out of the box as was relief. The tuners are less than stellar but everything else is quite decent, including the pickups.
I have guitars with steel inserts and guitars with wood screws. The inserts are really handy when one has a thinnish neck with a heel truss adjustment nut and one is particular when it comes to neck relief. They are also handy when one does a significant amount of swapping of necks although I...