MIMF

Th-that's all, folks! I hope you'll enjoy this thread.

I shielded the pickup cavity and the control cavity carefully with conductive copper tape. With the shielding connected to the grounds there is, to my delight, very little hum. 122_Shielding_pickup_cavity.jpg 123_Soldering_pickguard_to_jack_&_ground.jpg 125_Installing_pickguard.jpg 126_Installin...

With all the parts polished I could begin reassembling the guitar, starting with installing the tuners.

After the final coat of clear lacquer I sanded the project one last time - with 800, 1200, 1500, 2000 & 2500 grit papers. 109_Final_sanding.jpg 110_Final_sanding.jpg Time to shine! I polished the smooth sanded lacquer with Farécla G3 and G10 compounds, a buffing sponge and an air-driven random o...

The next steps were spraying layer after layer of clearcoat and wet sanding with soap water and 400, 800 & 1200 grit papers between coats. I sprayed no less than 7 coats of clear lacquer and sanded in between. 102_Masking_fretboard.jpg 091_Spraying_clearcoat.jpg 095_Intermediate_wet_sanding.jpg ...

:) I laid the project aside for a while to find a solution to the paint problem - and eventually I found one. I repainted the body and the face of the headstock with white primer and topped it with my new mixture: 1 tbsp of pearlescent powder, 1 tbsp of reflective glass powder (commonly used in traf...

074_Soldering_the_electronics.jpg 075_Checking_out_sound_and_playability.jpg 077_Sanding_body_contour.jpg The paint job is always the most tedious part of every build, but it pays off in the end. Sometimes I end up sanding off the paint and starting all over again, as I did this time too. I had spr...

At this stage the neck was pretty much finished, just the frets needed to be levelled, crowned and dressed. So I installed the neck with tuners to the body, installed the trem and strung the guitar to check what I'd have to to do before the paint job. The first job was to check the fretboard for fre...

I shape the neck with a belt sander first. Yes, there will be dust, but I have found that this works for me, as I get the shape close to what I want quite quickly. Using a belt sander calls for caution, though. It's very easy to ruin a good neck by sanding too deep. 050_Shaping_headstock_with_belt_s...

Cutting out the neck from the blank with a band saw. I try to cut as close to the outlines as possible, yet leaving enough extra wood for shaping.

039_Routing_pickup_cavity.jpg 040_Routing_output_jack_cavity.jpg The neck takes a turn. I usually start with preparing a neat flatsawn maple blank for a Fender type neck and routing a truss rod channel in the middle of it. If I have several blanks I rout a truss rod channel in each one of them to s...

035_Drilling_holes_for_fretboard_side_markers.jpg 036_Fixing_fretboard_side_markers.jpg Back to the body for a change. Before routing any cavities I removed all excess wood with a forstner bit to reduce the heating and wear of the router bit. Drilling first also adds less dust and debris into the w...

017_Cutting_body_out_of_alder_blank.jpg 018_Sanding_body_with_belt_sander.jpg 019_Routing_body_edges_flush_with_table_router.jpg On to the neck then. I had a nice rosewood blank for the fretboard. I started by measuring and marking out the fret positions with a digital measuring tape. 021_Measuring...