Guitar kit build

Christian 71

Yup sorry john those blue ones look very odd. Great job Jon it's looking great!

Think the neck would look better if it matched the back of the guitar, but just my personal opinion.

GloopyJon

You mean if I'd painted the neck with the purple too, or if I'd done some kind of burst on it?

I like it blue - it's a nice colour and you can still see the wood grain through it, which would disappear if I'd sprayed the purple over it.

Christian 71

If you like it keep it mate

I think a solid colour is fairly standard so I'd have gone with the purple, it's your guitar do what you want

GloopyJon

I sanded the body and neck with 400, 800 and 1200 on Wednesday and used the Meguiar's ultra-cut compound on it.  Tonight I've polished it all with the Meguiar's ultra-finishing polish.  I noticed a couple of small scratches that have somehow appeared on the back of the body, which was a bit annoying, but I think I'll leave them for now and maybe just spray a little bit of the clear gloss over it after the guitar has finished, and hope that melts the colours a bit to hide the scratches again.

I also rubbed the neck down with lemon oil, and so now it's all ready for assembly tomorrow afternoon.  My sons are coming over and we're going to do it together.  With a bit of luck, I'll actually be able to play my new guitar tomorrow!

GloopyJon

Here's a brief preliminary report on the final (sort of!) build.  It was actually relatively simple to assemble everything - we just had to be careful about which pots went into which holes, and it was actually very easy to connect the pickups because they had little plugs so no soldering was needed.  I haven't done everything perfectly yet, for instance I need to line up the pickup switch better as it's twisted itself around in the hole.  Also, the volume and tone knobs don't seem to fit very tightly - in fact, the chicken head knobs that I bought fit on better, but don't look that good!

The pack was missing one of the screws for the pick guard, which is a bit irritating.  The instructions were a bit imprecise in some places but we managed to work everything out.  I'm not very good at restringing, and I've managed to wind the bottom three strings the wrong way round (so that the tuner goes the wrong way to increase the pitch) - that's not a big deal!

I found that bits of the nitro flaked off when I screwed in some components, such as one of the strap buttons.  It's very easy to make scratches or damage the paintwork when you're working on the guitar - I don't know if that's because of the lacquer I bought, or just my clumsiness.

At the moment, it's been assembled and it does work, which is great.  The action is very high, so I need to try adjusting the truss rod first.  If that doesn't work, then I may have to take the neck off and insert something in the joint to angle it back a bit.  I also have a bit of a problem with the paintwork on the neck.  Unfortunately, the bit of wood that I used as a handle when painting the neck was fixed on a bit too far, and there is a patch of unpainted wood visible at the joint.  That was a bit of a cock-up on my part!   I will probably take the whole thing apart again and try to correct what I can.

Anyway...for the time being, it is an entire guitar and it does work!  Here's a first photo of the finished item - I have more that I will share later but for now I will just present to you the first ever Gloopyjon Special!
                                                                                 

The colours are a bit dark in the photo because the light wasn't terribly good.  I am very happy with the overall look, even if the finish is far from perfect if you look at it closely.

Goooner

Well done Jon, looks good mate

AndrewH13

Nice, must have taught you a lot

GloopyJon

Yes, it did - and it still has more to teach me!

Christian 71

Nice feeling when you get there and it looks really good.

Well done mate.

GloopyJon

Yesterday I adjusted the truss rod (first time I've ever done that on a guitar!) and that has improved the action considerably.  If I take the neck off again (which I should do in order to correct a small cock-up in the paintwork), I'll probably try to insert a shim or a little pad of paper to change the angle of the neck so that it goes back a bit more, which I think would be better.

I still need to file down the nut a bit, since the strings are too high off the end of the fretboard.  I don't have a nut file, but apparently you can use a nail file quite effectively.  Then I can intonate the strings again (first time around they were pretty close out of the box) and with a bit of luck it will be reasonably playable.

The other thing I need to do is to fix the pots and switches a bit better so that they don't twist round in their holes.  The pickup selector switch, for example, is currently turned around by around 60 degrees from its proper alignment.

After that, it'll be time to think about future projects to play around with it.  The obvious first one might be to find a pair of secondhand pickups to swap in - for the price of this guitar, I think it's not worth paying what new pickups cost (am I the only one who finds them outrageously expensive?).

I'll post some more photos when I get around to it!