Thinking DIY

I've made a new wiring plate for testing the electronics, as the cardboard box didn't work well, and started desoldering/soldering the new electronics. The plan was to: * have a stereo jack wired up * jack ring signal being piezo output * jack tip signal being mix of piezo+electronic * volume for each pickup separately, with modern wiring, and dependent volume controls for the two magnetic pickups * toggle works as usual, bridge/bridge+neck/neck, and the piezo can be blended in any time with the piezo volume control First attempt went surprisingly well, after doing the complete wiring+soldering I only had one minor issue and one major: * the two volume push-pulls I have wired work inverse, rolling them down increases the volume and viceversa. Easy to fix, probably switching the stuff soldered to the outer lugs will solve it * the rolling up the master tone pot adds a background noise, which I don't want, not sure of the reason, some forums state that it might be ...

So, with almost all the parts being here already, I am getting close to the finish line (for this lap), and can foresee the next round already. I've done some polishing recently on the guitar, both the body and the neck, it turned out quite well, not the overly glossy look, not a mirror finish, but I like it. The guitar top somehow gained a lighter color, so it's an orange-ish color, and that's good, not too bright, not too dark. I have mounted the new black tulip keys, they look fantastic on the guitar neck. I saw another kit build on youtube with black keys being replaced with gold, and I am happy I didn't go with golden hardware. I love the contrast between orange-ish mahogany and black hardware. As for the piezo pickup bridge, I went on and painted it with a black permanent marker, as I didn't want it to pop out of the picture with its silver look. Even though if taking a close look at the bridge you can see that it's not defaulting to black from the f...