The 'Saint' Hybrid

About five weeks ago, I was approached by a long standing customer to help him with a project guitar that he was hoping to build. He had a neck, but wasn't quite sure what he wanted to do with it. His wife had bought it for him for his birthday, along with some other parts as a bit of a surprise - because he's been talking about doing a build project.

We had a mahogany neck, that really belonged to an LP Junior, two good planks of hard rock Maple, and some other bits and bobs. so I set about drawing up a Junior type guitar for John, but before long we could tell that this wasn't really where he wanted to go. I had an old neck lying about the workshop that I had brought in to use on a tremolo testing jig that I built a decade ago to test a new trem design I'd had engineered ( a story for another time maybe). So we opted to use that instead and put the Junior neck into stock.

John had his mind on a bolt on, probably something strat like - but he wanted something slightly different too. So we started drawing out bodies and came up with a body that is kinda half Strat, half Telecaster.

Now hybrids like this aren't anything new per se - but they tend to be either very much more one than the other. Telecaster body with an altered scratch plate, or a strat with a tele bridge. We decided to very much design the body around the scratchplate for a Strat because he already had a loaded plate we could use - but with the telecaster top bout and the less rounded edges.

Anyway - the result you see above.

But it's got me thinking - I really like this design. It's got a slightly 80's vibe to it, more Charvel than Fender. If I were to build this a stock guitar, (though maybe with my own headstock design), would players be interested in it as a fairly cheap (sub £1000) intro to handmade guitars with the option of bespoke colours on demand, alternative body woods, bridge and pickup choices?

Let me know what you think.....