FINISHED - Oh, Well - why not

Andyjr1515

So...starting to get there.  Body varnishing is 'good enough for Jazz' and starting to get to the stage where I can consider assembling things.

First of all, back to the truss rod cover - now you can see it in perspective, balances the look or just naff?

I'm pleased with the body, closer shot below.  Just got to find the bridge holes under that veneer!    (

This is the doner guitar wot I've stolen the P-Rails and tuners from...

Great, great guitar to play but ugly as sin.  The competition one is MUCH prettier (even if it does play like a lemon!)

As always, thanks for looking 

sinbaadi

It's fine, and you need the third swift to complete the set!

Machine heads and strings and it won't stand out like it does there.  Do you have no nut in yet?  Photo is a bit low res to see.  What colour are you going for?

Andyjr1515

Hi @sinbaadi

Thanks for your vote!

I've got a black graphtech strat nut that I will be fitting now I've got the headstock varnished.  Like always, I'm tight on time but actually, there isn't that much to do...famous last words  

)

Andyjr1515

Fitted the nut and first coat of matt varnish on the back of the neck and headstock.  Then the bridge.

First had to find the bridge stud holes.  Before I veneered, I ran my finger round some paper over the various chambers and so on so I could find the ones I needed again.  I lined up the impressions then stuck a sharp prodder where the stud holes supposedly would be.  Hey presto - the veneer punctured and I'd found the holes:

Opened them out with a sharp knife:

Then remembered the earth wire! (phew)

Bashed in the studs using the upside down adjuster as a drift:

Then the gods were smiling again.  The roller bridge I had bought was spec'd at 0.5mm wider than the kit-supplied one and, of course, the holes were drilled for that.  My hope was that it would squeeze on without having to move the stud holes...

It did!  The luck element was that it is easily adjustable but tight against the sides - a bit like a tonepros without needing the grub-screws.

Tomorrow evening, the plan is the electrics and neck angle...bet it doesn't work out like that  

ThePrettyDamned

Looks great man.

TTony

ThePrettyDamned said:

Looks great man.

Absolutely.  It's almost scary - the transformation of a cheapo kit into a great looking guitar.

Andyjr1515

TTony said:

ThePrettyDamned said:

Looks great man.

Absolutely.  It's almost scary - the transformation of a cheapo kit into a great looking guitar.

Thanks, @ThePrettyDamned, thanks @TTony - your feedback is very much appreciated.  

I've done a few more bits and piece ready to install the pickups and start the wiring.  The neck is ready to fit - it will need to be angled as I suspected but, to be honest, I prefer the playing position of angled necks.

Time will tell if the angle of the bridge will outweigh the movement potential of the saddles to reach correct intonation!  If I don't get too many evening and weekend jobs thrown at me, should be playable by mid next week.  Can't wait 

Andyjr1515

Final stages, although I've got to wait for a part before I can do the final assembly (more later, suffice to say that I c****d something up!)

The tuners are fitted.  I stole  the Axesrus lockable ones off my self-build.  They are only £25.00 a set and I use them on pretty much everything now - even my acoustic!  They've never let me down yet (which the 4x the price Fender ones have in the past...).  I've sorted the nut but won't fit it on permanently until I've set the neck angle (my straight-edge is longer than the nut to bridge distance).

Also wired up the P-rails.  A bit tight due to the slot-channel but I found a configuration that fits:

I used the old semi-acoustic trick (in fact my ES-335 rewiring rig, hence the labelled holes) of a shoe box top with holes in to be able to position all the switches upside down while I sorted out the spaghetti.  It is set up as:

• Master volume
• Master tone
• 3way switch
• jack
• pushpull on the volume and tone giving: series humbucker; parallel humbucker; P90's only; rails only

Should be enough - the way I play it all sounds like a dying banshee whatever settings I have )

A workbench test showed up a flaw with the bridge pickup not switching to P90's only.  I looked at the crowded connections with a torch and realised that one of the push pull connectors had a tiny solder track to the casing.  Scraped it off and bingo - all works as it should.  

The part I'm waiting for is another chrome control plate.  Opening out the hole for the 3-way switch, I managed to scratch the chrome.  I then realised I'd opened out the wrong hole anyway  >-

Next job is setting the neck angle...

Megii

That wiring job is a masterpiece in terms of keeping everything neat and tidy - very clean and well thought out work Andy. After being unconvinced for a while, I am now being persuaded by your shaping on the body, and the scratchplate shape - can see your vision coming to fruition, and it's very good, nice work!

Andyjr1515

Megii said:

 After being unconvinced for a while, I am now being persuaded by your shaping on the body, and the scratchplate shape - can see your vision coming to fruition, and it's very good, nice work!

Thanks @Megii  .  To be honest, I was unconvinced for a while, too  )

To be honest, the colour makes all the difference...

Andyjr1515

As I am told they say at a posh tailors, 'first fitting' completed.  I'm overseas the next couple of days so I thought I'd better get that in quick just in case I need to buy some more bits.  Basically strung it up with a set of old strings to see what needed de-snagging while I'm waiting for the new control panel

The OK bits are:

• Neck relief OK
• Neck angle OK
• Vibrato spring strength OK
• (surprisingly) the bridge angle and intonation is OK

The expected tweak things are:

• Neck sideways angle is a bit off - not bad but not quite right.  Pity in a way because it is such a great tight fit...I'll need to sand it to loosen it a bit to be able to pull it across to the correct angle.
• It needs string trees (which I have from the 'donor' guitar)

The not OK things are:

• The 'spare' push pulls I now remember why they are spare - they have slightly dickey connections which is why I took them out of the previous guitar in the first place...must remember to chuck them next time!  So another order to Axesrus and some more soldering to do.  Nevertheless good enough to see how it is going to sound
• More important is that the reason that the neck angle is a bit off is actually not that at all - it is the bridge stud positions that are actually off - by about 5mm.  As such, the pole pieces of the pickups are not at all under the strings...

Now I know what you're all thinking  

You're all thinking, 'the crazy bloke has cut the pickup slots in the wrong place!'   Well I thought that at first, but they are actually in the correct place relative to the old pickguard and in the correct place relative to the body chamber.  Nevertheless, it's going to be easier to remake the scratchplate than move the bridge AND the vibrato .

Nothing lost, really - I had concluded anyway that I need some pickup rings the raise the pups enough so can cut them accordingly.

I'll get the bits on order now and hopefully they will be with me in time to finish it off next week.

Incidentally - even with offset pickups and dodgy pots, it sounds GREAT.  The vibrato works surprisingly well too  

Andy

Andyjr1515

Actually, easier solution still.  I remembered that I have some chrome pickup rings from the very same 'donor' guitar.  

Not only tidies it up but I can expand the pickup slot to one side enough and the screw holes in the pickguard still don't show...a lot easier that cutting the flaming thing out again from scratch!  The rings finish it off too, visually.

 I've also found some unused and good quality push/push pots so I will be able to start back on this on Friday evening.  Maybe the end is in sight after all   

imalone

Starting to look really good. I'll put my hand up as another of the "wasn't sure where those cut-outs were going" brigade, but it definitely works.

Andyjr1515

imalone said:

Starting to look really good. I'll put my hand up as another of the "wasn't sure where those cut-outs were going" brigade, but it definitely works.

Well that makes three of us so far, then )

ThePrettyDamned

That doesn't look like a cheap guitar anymore! So nice, really quite impressive.

A breath of fresh air among premium luthiers who still churn out vintage strat replicas.

Andyjr1515

ThePrettyDamned said:

That doesn't look like a cheap guitar anymore! So nice, really quite impressive.

A breath of fresh air among premium luthiers who still churn out vintage strat replicas.

Thanks @ThePrettyDamned  

It's pretty much finished.  I'll probably slightly alter the neck profile at some stage but everything's assembled, wired up and ready to go.  It sounds pretty good for starters.  I'll fiddle about over the weekend to get the optimum settings for the various sounds.

Hopefully there'll be a bit of sunshine tomorrow - I'll try to get some decent shots of it    

Andyjr1515

So - basically finished.  Just maybe a black switch knob and, in terms of personal preference, possibly slight reshape of the neck profile.  But, it's all set up, plays really nicely, vibrato actually works, sounds great.  I'll try to record some sound clips but in the meantime, some straightforward outdoor shots and then some indoor, black background shots.

First the important one   

The overall look:

Overall shot teetering on the edge of gravitational disaster:

An almost drivers view.  I like the way the inks have worked on the un-veneered sides:

The over-used black background :

Full side shot:

This one's a bit arty farty:

As usual, thanks for looking  

Andyjr1515

And here are some soundclips (if I've used Soundcloud properly)

There should be 4 files:

Clean Neck then Middle then Bridge, all in series humbucker mode

Clean Middle - first with the P90 setting, then with series humbucker mode

Overdriven Bridge then Neck

Clean with light tremolo

TTony

Looks like a real quality finish on that.  I'm definitely going to try something similar (veneer, ink-stain) sometime.

ThePrettyDamned

Oh man, that's a lovely looking thing!