I've got lots of guitars where it's naturally that way anyways

@@atakdragonfly1675 I don't see how people get those gouges in their fretboards. The first time I played with long fingernails and had a nail dig into the rosewood, I clipped my nails *immediately*. And now I keep them shorter than I ever have at any point in my life lol. I play my guitars daily so I just keep my nails trimmed back so there's no white growth at the ends. Lol. They're *short.* I could *never* catch the fretboard and dig out a chunk with them this short.

@@J.C... That one doesn't look like it came from nails, he probably accidentally bashed it up against something or it fell over into something.

Good man. We all feel the same. Ted is a positive force.

Two high fives from TX.

@@kylevandeusen Nice...where aboots? Lol...

@@tommywilliamsjr.697 Fort Worth area (or, for anyone not familiar, "Dallas".)

@@kylevandeusen Just outside of Austin.

We learn by our mistakes! 😊

I thought the same thing

No! All that opposing tension would cause the Strat body to split and rip in halves straight up the centre of the body causing extremely serious injury to the player, band and audience. 😁😁

Hehehe. Sometimes I do things to provoke a reaction.

I went back and crimped them after I tested it. I left them loose until I was sure.

Yeah what Hanan said, I was thinking the same thing.

I just commented that before in read the comments. Another vote for the 2x 2 configuration.

I put two pairs of glasses on, but then I am really old.

Zen, and the Art of Guitar Repair!

No, it is not an issue.

@Matt Hayden Nice. Thank you, Matt. Appreciate it.

Yeah, I thought the same :-)

I'd take inconsistent break angle over fragility any day of the week, especially on an expensive instrument

​@@ileutur6863 I've got a really high mileage Les Paul Custom been gigged loads, loads of finish wear from good honest playing, over many years. No breaks ever. there's nothing to be afraid of. I have a USA Strat too, so I'm not biased! The differences are all good. My LP is my number one guitar though. The feel and tone are what I want to experience most often. The Strat only gets occasional outings

Ken, The thermal shock of the hot soldering-iron tip hitting a damp sponge is actually bad for the lifetime of the tip (damages the steel plating found on high-quality tips). I prefer the special brass wool sponges that Weller and others sell specially for this purpose, although I suppose you can even use a stainless steel kitchen scrub sponge, which are easy to find. It is worth noting that most soldering iron tips are made of copper or brass, and the steel plating is necessary to keep the solder and flux from quickly eating away at the copper tip. Modern lead- free solder is much harder on soldering iron tips because the flux (no longer merely rosin, but instead contains organic acids) eat away at the metal more quickly, and also it requires a higher temperature setting for soldering with lead-free solder. The fumes from lead free solder are also much worse for you than rosin fumes from ordinary tin/ lead solder, and require good ventilation or at least a fan ( If you breathe in those fumes or they drift towards your eyes, you definitely won't like it). I personally detest lead free solder and avoid using it. The fluxes in the solder core remain corrosive after soldering has been completed and must be thoroughly cleaned away, as they can actually eat into the connection and damage circuit boards and so on.

Interesting been doing it this way for forty years and the only tips I've replaced are the ones that bent.

@@kennogawa6638 , I've been soldering stuff for over 50 years, including 15 years as a full time audio repair tech, but this is something that I only learned about maybe 10 years ago. Granted, it may be more of an issue if you're using lead-free solder and the higher tip-temperatures necessary for that stuff.... but considering the cost of good quality soldering tips and the difficulty in finding replacements for some older soldering equipment that you might still be using, it's a good idea to preserve their life as much as possible. I have noticed that some of the "replacement" tips sold nowadays have much shorter useable life than the ones that we bought a decade or two ago; probably made in China with cheaper metals, and not thickly plated with steel. Bare copper or brass tips would corrode away pretty quickly, which is why you should never file soldering iron tips. In addition to the brass wool tip cleaners I mentioned earlier, at work we also have these little cylindrical tip cleaning blocks (made by Multi-Core I think) that are apparently a mix of flux and powdered solder or a similar alloy; they work great.

I retired ten years ago so maybe they changed things since then. The main thing is to make a good physical connection since the solder in electronics is for good electron flow not physical strength.

I thought his intermittent in this case was caused by a cold solder joint.