Is this cheap Strat worth turning into a project guitar?
I found this old generic Steeler Strat at my parents' house after it had been sitting unused for 10+ years. It originally seems to have been a very cheap guitar, probably around $80-$150 new. The electronics are basically unusable, but I recently had a local guitar tech inspect it and he said the neck, frets, nut, body, bridge and tremolo are all in decent condition, with no major structural problems, however he didn't check the truss rod since it wasn't a standard size, although he said is "straight enough" and doesn't need adjusting. I'm considering turning it into a dedicated strat-style recording guitar rather than trying to make it valuable or resell it.
My current plan is:
- Professional setup, fret work, cleaning, neck treatment and new strings
- Replace the entire electronics with a pre-wired SSS Alnico V pickguard- Shield the cavities
- Keep the original bridge and tuners for now
- Possibly repaint the body Candy Apple Red later
The setup is about s/120 ($35 USD) locally, and the pre-wired pickguard is around $53 (from amazon). The paint would be another ~$120 just to paint the body (they made that clear), so I'm probably going to postpone that.
I already own other guitars, including a Squier Tele CV 50s and a modified Epiphone Les Paul, so this isn't my only instrument. The main reason I'm considering this is that I don't currently have a proper strat sound in my collection, and this guitar is essentially a "free" platform to experiment with. I'm not expecting it to become a "better guitar" than a Classic Vibe or anything like that. I'm mainly interested in whether the underlying platform is good enough that, after a proper setup and new electronics, it could become a genuinely enjoyable and useful recording instrument since I use exclusively Amplitube 5.
Would it be worth spending ~$90 into this guitar, or it would be better to just save enough for a Squier Classic Vibe instead?