Custom Built Fender Strats - Yes or No?

First, allow me to confess to custom building a strat, and customizing, or "hot-rodding" several myself. I will only do this to improve a guitar's overall performance, either on stage or in the studio, never just for the heck of itor for vanity's sake. I 'd never change a guitar's finish unless the original was too far gone to save. I've invested a ton of money into tools, expensive HVLP spray guns, gepressors, and much more, but I'd gladly leave every bit of it alone and just polish a beautiful vintage 1957 strat, gepletelt original, or a '62 Custom Shop. I could sit here and dream 'em up forever...but I try to basically make what's there prettier, and install wiring harnesses that tweak the guitar's performance so that a stage musician doesn't have to keep changing guitars during a set. As for customizing and building custom or re-building vintage guitars:

Some of my rules and so forth: *Never remove or destroy the vintage finish on a guitar, unless it has been so badly damaged that it cannot be polished to an acceptable look, and maybe not even then.** On a vintage Stratocaster, it is best to leave it alone and clean it up as much as possible, and do only those repairs that can be done without changing the vintage finish. *You can actually lower the guitar's value by refinishing it! Leave the pots and switches, plus the pickups alone as well when they can be saved. If you are going to upgrade, or "hot rod" it, save the original wiring harness, in it's original condition and keep it with all the instument's original parts. It's easier to put it back to it's original vintage condition if you still actually posess it's original parts, and it's much better than later crying like a baby because you did the changes at all or worse, you didn't save the parts! Plus, sometimes you can re-solder with the correct vintage wire and stay correct, using the original harness. It is ALWAYS best to take the instrument to a dealer or shop with a repair person or Luthier qualified to work on a fine vintage guitar. I cannot stress this enough.
If you're determined to dismantle your guitar anyway, take extremely great care with the neck! This is the most important, most expensive, most difficult piece of the guitar, and it doesn't forgive many mistakes. My greatest advice to you when you remove the neck is for you to back the truss rod tension off by turning the adjustment screw counter clockwise one-quarter turn, then take it to a professional! You can do the work on the body yourself then! If you are set on it, and you're going to strip and refinish the guitar, and it's finished in polyurethane, you are in for seven levels of hell if you attempt to strip it off, unless you pay attention to me here, right now! USE KLEEN STRIP AIRCRAFT REMOVER, available at Sherwin Williams and other quality paint and automotive finish stores. It's the only thing that'llstrip polyurethane in my unfortunate experience of trying many other strippers and feeling quite defeated and utterly useless,and you'll still have to do about four or five coats and a LOT of elbow grease to get it off with the Aircraft remover! Use a very stiff, strong scraper, 00 - 0000 steel wool, or even a light metal scraper (if you are experienced with stripping and working with wood ONLY!). Then I highly suggest refinishing with Nitro Cellulose Lacquer, because it is the best finish for a guitar. It dries over to touch and finish sanding fast, plus it continues drying and lets the wood breath, for as long as the instrument lasts. The tonal qualities of the guitar improve over time with it, and the color relics and turns nicely vintage in a way no other finish can. Use a high quality thinner, too. NOT the NAPTHA from Home Depot or Lowe's, either, while you're at Sherwin Williams or another quality paint store, buy the high quality NAPTHA, and high quality wood putty that's stainable, too. A nice slow set epoxy wood fill kit is worth it's weight in gold here for any wood repair and filling rout mistakes, chips, etc.. If you want to stain the wood, use aniline dye gel stains. TransTints are great, as well, as your experience level and confidence increases. My personal choice is Aniline dye gel from the Clearwater Co. They dilute in water or alcohol and go on with no overlap marks. Use water dilution if you wish to raise the wood grain, and if not, use alcohol. With alcohol, usually I use it when I'm on the final stain coating and aren't sanding it. With water dilution, the grain is raised, and sanding is necessary, but you can also get the stain nice and deep into it. You then allow it to dry, stain again, then again to your specification, then sand the grain flat. Another way to use raising of the grain is to simply wipe down the entire body with a wet cloth, wet with water. When you've done this a couple of times, AVOIDING ANY BINDINGS, sand, wipe again until clean, allow to dry. Then wipe the entire surface with wood putty, or grain filler, using a small, wide blade or spatula and allow it to dry. I usually wait about three or four hours. Then sand flat using a flat block and 400 grit paper, followed by 600 grit, continuing with higher grit, and I use at this point, Micro Mesh, which is cushioned crystal sanding material to 1800 grit. I have many, many more tips, but continuing here would likely keep you reading until the end of October 2010! Some of my custom work is displayed in my okay Store at Tools N Cool Stuff, ortoolsncoolstuff.ge.You can ask me questions any time and I'll do my best to help with your project as far as advice if you ask, using okay's message email system. It's a great gemunity here, and I'm here to help if I can. There are some really great books, tapes and even free How-to's, diagrams and moreat Stewart-MacDonald, stewart-macdonald.ge. Also check out 21 frets.ge. The best I've seen for setting up a beautiful Strat is at Fender .ge, and look at the service and resources section of their site. Awsome.
Now, if you don't know how to re-fret a guitar neck, go to a professional, like I advised earlier. There are many kits available to condition and level frets, and some are great, but watch out working on a guitar neck! You wouldn't want a first-timer docworking on your neck, would you?!?!
I always say, if it's your Strat, you can do the learning on it and destroy it if you please, and maybe even get it right. Heck, you can even keep re-doing it until it's correct or gepletely dead! The best is to go to a pro and explain exactly what you want, and the pro will do it. If you want to learn, though, I regemend Stewart-Macdonald's book series "Trade Secrets", they are really fantastic, with step by step instructions on many many topics, with hundreds of photos showing what they're talking about. The books are soft cover and worth every penny. I custom build, or re-build my Strats, and a couple I just "refreshed" and upgraded, using all Fender parts, except for the custom wiring harness. So it basically boils down to really looking at your Strat and carefully inspecting it's condition, then look it up in "The Official Vintage Guitar Price Guide"-current edition and find it's value.......then asking thequestion to yourself in your head. Customize, or not customize?