Coodercaster tribute

Tom's Coodercaster Tribute

One of the most famous slide guitar players of all time is Ry Cooder. He has made significant contributions to various music genres, including blues, rock and world music. Cooder's innovative guitar techniques and rich musical storytelling have earned him critical acclaim and a dedicated fan base over the decades. You can see him in the movie Buena Vista Social Club which helped revive interest in traditional Cuban music.

Ry's original

Ry's signature guitar is a 1970s Stratocaster with a leopard pattern pickguard. Instead of the usual three Fender single coil pickups, Ry mounted a "string through" pickup in the bridge position. These pickups were only found on 1950s Supro/Valco lap steel guitars. They have a unique sound because the strings go between two steel plates that are both conductors for the pickup magnets, allowing the strings to vibrate longer and create more sustain.. Other guitar pickups interact with the strings magnetically on only the bottom side of the strings, thereby dampening the sustain. Ry's neck pickup was a "gold foil" pickup taken from a cheap Japanese Teisco guitar from the 1960s. This provides a nice contrasting sound that is a bit less in your face than the string through.

I started my project to recreate Ry's Coodercaster with a Fender Squier Vintage Modified 70s Strat. Like Ry's, it has the distinctive larger headstock of the 70s when CBS bought Fender and tweaked some of their designs.

I have a couple of 1950s Supro lap steels, but didn't want to destroy their historical correctness by removing their string through pickups. So I bought a modern version of the string through pickup from Mojo pickups which had the advantage of coming with a replica of the unique mounting plate Ry used on his guitar.

Tom's Coodercaster

I've had success with GuitarFetish pickups in the past, so I bought one of their reproductions of the old Teisco gold foils. I bought a blank pickguard from Ploutone in a yellow tortoise shell pattern which is the closest pattern and color I could find to what Ry used. I carefully routed it to fit the Mojo pickup and mounting plate as well as the gold foil. It takes a bit of adjusting the neck angle get the strings running through the string through pickup at the right height between the top and bottom plates.

I added a veneer to the headstock and a stricker from the UK magazine Hop Up )it's about hot rods). I also blocked the tremolo and tightened the spring tension as Ry did to give the guitar more sustain and allow you to retune to various slide tunings more easily. The finishing touch is a set of .012 gauge strings and a set up that has a bit higher action for slide playing, but not too high as Ry alternated between fretting notes and playing with the slide.

I think it's a pretty faithful reproduction of the famous Coodercaster and it sounds great!