HSS brown sunburst Squire strat is all its cracked up to be ...

Saturday, 12:45 a.m. -- Just a few minutes to write here before bed ... my wife is heading for a girls' trip to Cape Hatteras for the week, so my son and I will be batchin' in for a week.

I have been short of extra funds to do much buying on eBay ... besides, I'm a little "guitar poor" right now, a guy can only have so many Fender strat copies, you know? Or so I thought ... stay with me here.

I was looking on eBay for another fix-it project. There's no shortage of screwed up guitars; I prefer those in good physical condition (decent body and neck) and the electronics can be crap. That I can work on. Anyway, I've tired of my Behringer strat, and have returned to playing my Arctic White Squier as my go-to guitar ... between that and my Oscar Schmidt OE-30CH semi-hollow body in Cherry Red finish. Oh, so sweet!

As I may have written some time back, I finally got the licks down for the arpaggiated chords as played on the Beach Boys "Sloop John B" --- thanks to watching Al Jardine trying to play an acoustic version of the song on an unfamiliar guitar. The OC-30 offers a richer sound than the single coils on the strat, but that's probably to be expected. Carl Wilson played it on a 12-string Gibson ES-335. I've never owned a 12-string, and I've been hesitant to buy a cheap one simply because I don't know for sure I can play the damn thing worth a hoot.

Anyway, while browsing eBay last weekend, I ran across a Squier Strat with the brown sunburst ... it reminded me of my Jazzmaster, which back in the day had a special and exclusive to the JM tri-color sunburst. This Squier's problem was a split in the body. A crack had developed from the neck over to a seam where the wood was joined together. The crack split the finish along its lenght, which is about 7 or 8 inches.

The crack doesn't affect the guitar one iota. The action is great, it stays in tune and it works and sounds like one that isn't cracked. I bought it from a new guitar dealer who sells damaged guitars on ebay at a significant discount (he removes the logo and serial numbers from the guitars).

And the guitar was brand new in the box -- just had a crack in the body along that seam for about 5 inches. I decided that I would make the seller an offer and then once I got it, I would remove the neck and force the crack open and inject some good quality wood glue into the gap, then clamp it tight.

I'm not sure why the body cracked, but I think on Chinese import guitars, cracks along those glued-together seams aren't exactly rare. The wood dries out and simply shrinks, and this happens.

I sent an offer -- lowballed them -- and sure as hell they accepted my offer. It plays very well --  better than my Squire strat which is an SSS strat.

So I'm left to decide the question -- do I try to glue the body or just play it as-is?? I'm very tempted to leave well enough alone and enjoy the guitar.

Well, I need to get to bed. More about the guitar and how much I love playing it to come!