DIY e-guitar - Part 7 - Polishing and more testing
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 factory (given that in some places, like the screws, couldn't get painted due to the marker being too thick), it looks OK. I drilled a hole at a 45 degrees angle for the piezo pickup wire from underneath the bridge into the bridge pickup cavity, and the wire ends up in the body near the other bridge pickup wire.
I've also mounted the wrap-around tailpiece with the new black studs, and put on 4 strings (the two E strings from the original package are broken/lost, the second string set was clipped already so I couldn't rewire them and I didn't want to use my new set of strings, given that I'll be switching pickups and mounting the electronics soon, which means another restringing).
This time the guitar sounds a bit louder unplugged, not sure what the reason for that is, but I like it. As for pickup wiring, the guitar is still without electronics inside, so I simply wired in a 2m long Cat5 UTP cable for the 3 pickups plus grounds, leaving the outer end open for experimenting with the electronics.
As for the pots, I have tried, and none of the push-pull pots fit into the guitar cavity (they are too tall to be able to be placed in the right spots maneuvering through the f-hole and the jack hole). That is by default, but after enlarging the holes and dremeling the bottom perimeter of the holes I managed to make two of them fit, the two volume knobs (as the guitar is a curved top, the cavity is deeper beneath the volume knobs and smaller beneath the tone knobs, close to the edge of the guitar). So I had to make a change of plans (I wanted 3 push-pulls, one for each pickup), and I'm going with 2 push-pulls, one standard volume and a master tone pot.
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 factory (given that in some places, like the screws, couldn't get painted due to the marker being too thick), it looks OK. I drilled a hole at a 45 degrees angle for the piezo pickup wire from underneath the bridge into the bridge pickup cavity, and the wire ends up in the body near the other bridge pickup wire.
I've also mounted the wrap-around tailpiece with the new black studs, and put on 4 strings (the two E strings from the original package are broken/lost, the second string set was clipped already so I couldn't rewire them and I didn't want to use my new set of strings, given that I'll be switching pickups and mounting the electronics soon, which means another restringing).
This time the guitar sounds a bit louder unplugged, not sure what the reason for that is, but I like it. As for pickup wiring, the guitar is still without electronics inside, so I simply wired in a 2m long Cat5 UTP cable for the 3 pickups plus grounds, leaving the outer end open for experimenting with the electronics.
As for the pots, I have tried, and none of the push-pull pots fit into the guitar cavity (they are too tall to be able to be placed in the right spots maneuvering through the f-hole and the jack hole). That is by default, but after enlarging the holes and dremeling the bottom perimeter of the holes I managed to make two of them fit, the two volume knobs (as the guitar is a curved top, the cavity is deeper beneath the volume knobs and smaller beneath the tone knobs, close to the edge of the guitar). So I had to make a change of plans (I wanted 3 push-pulls, one for each pickup), and I'm going with 2 push-pulls, one standard volume and a master tone pot.
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