My Heavily Modified 540-R, "UF5150"

[lerxst6]

This guitar began life as a 1991 540-R with the sharkfin inlays and H-S-H pickups. When I bought it on the auction site last year it was fairly ragged out, but I really wanted a Radius body. Lots of dings and scratches in the paint. Hardware and neck in reasonably good condition. I’m not a fan of the sharkfins, so I always considered replacing the neck. Once I decided what to do I sought out a chrome Edge (thanks evolvedmb) and picked up matching chrome Gotoh tuners.

This guitar represents the merging of some of my vices … guitar (my 2 favorite players are EVH and Satriani – Radius close enough to a JS in my mind) and my favorite sports teams, the University of Florida Gators (also my alma mater).

I couldn’t have pulled off the paint job, but luckily I know someone who has the skill and knowledge (doesn’t hurt that he too likes Van Halen and the Gators). He stripped it down, filled the pickup cavities, pickup selector slot and tone knob, and did all of the magic with the paint and the decals for the headstock.

So here it is, the “UF5150” guitar …

• Musikraft Custom Banana headstock (compound radius, medium jumbo frets, medium C shape): It’s a little thicker than an Ibanez neck, but that’s been my preference the last 7 or 8 years.
• Seymour Duncan "Custom 8" pickup (Custom Custom with Alnico 8 magnet): I made a conscious decision to try a Duncan for this guitar, since those were Eddie’s pickups. It came down to 3 different ones I wanted to try, but I didn’t want to spend the $160 for a SD Custom Shop. So I bought a few used on the SD forum, and really like this Custom 8.
• Push-Pull knob to switch between series and parallel
• Cheap orange knob that turned out to match the paint perfectly
• I have access to a lasermarking machine, so I couldn’t resist giving this a serial #

[sprocket226]

I like it... A cool spin on the 5150.
I live in Ashtabula, Ohio (Urban Meyer's hometown)

[toshiro]

Pretty sweet!

How do you like that Musikraft neck? I have a Charvel-style neck being made by them at the moment.

[lerxst6]

I like the neck a lot. Haven't logged a lot of playing time on it yet, but my initial thoughts are all positive. I got the Charvel heel width, and we opened the neck pocket up a bit for it. The standard pocket was sorta in between the Fender and the Charvel width, and we thought it was better to go snug then have to shim the Fender.

I've been playing a Fender Standard Tele mostly the last several years, so I've grown to like that neck thickness over the Ibanez, even though I've had a 540-S for 20 years. That's one of the reasons I went with the medium C.

A friend of mine just got a tele body and neck from Musikraft, and his seemed spot-on too. I've heard a lot positive about them prior to my order too. There's another project I'll do next year that will likely get a similar neck.

sprocket - If I ever go to one of the coach speaking booster clubs again I may bring it and get Meyer to sign the tremolo plate. This would have to rank pretty high in the "nut job" stuff he's signed. I saw him the summer after UF hired him speak at a booster club, and someone had him sign a Gator satellite dish. He was making jokes about it "Where's the nut job with the satellite dish?" during his talk. He seems to be a really good guy - my wife ran into him with my (then) 2.5 year old son, and he was really nice to them and talked to my kid. Later, my son said he'd "met Tim Tebow's coach" - pretty funny.

[toshiro]

Originally Posted by lerxst6

I like the neck a lot. Haven't logged a lot of playing time on it yet, but my initial thoughts are all positive. I got the Charvel heel width, and we opened the neck pocket up a bit for it. The standard pocket was sorta in between the Fender and the Charvel width, and we thought it was better to go snug then have to shim the Fender.

I've been playing a Fender Standard Tele mostly the last several years, so I've grown to like that neck thickness over the Ibanez, even though I've had a 540-S for 20 years. That's one of the reasons I went with the medium C.

A friend of mine just got a tele body and neck from Musikraft, and his seemed spot-on too. I've heard a lot positive about them prior to my order too. There's another project I'll do next year that will likely get a similar neck.

That's cool, thanks for the info. I built a floyd strat a couple months ago, and the neck I used was from an unknown **** shop. It's a decent neck, but a little too chunky for me, I wanted something closer to my Charvel So-Cal's neck, a thin C. Looking forward to the Musikraft for sure(probably be a month before I see it though lol).

[BeboRock91]

Cool project! I like it! also a friend of mine has made an EVH spinoff, a white tele with black EVH stripes

[moebius]

Go gators.

[evolvedmb]

looks great Dean, and sorry I haven't gotten back to you
on the PM's. I haven't been on this site for many days.
Now we need some video footage of it in action!

[SonicProvocateur]

Cool axe and a great job on the 5150 scheme! Those SD Custom 8's are sweet humbuckers too...but Alabama is gonna take you in the SEC Championship