Please put your pickup/wiring discussions in the Electronics section; and put discussions about repair issues, including fixing errors in new instruments, in the Repairs section.
Thanks for all the kind words, everyone. I'm quite happy with how it's turned out.
To answer Patrick, this isn't my second instrument. I've build 2 electric guitars and 2 bass guitars as well. I'm looking to start a flat-top acoustic bass with my next set of archtop guitars.
Chris, here's how I applied the finish:
I used aniline dye for the colour. The instrument was first dyed with an amber base on all areas. Following this I applied the black to the outer areas of the burst. Following this I applied a red/orange dye to the area where I wanted the burst transition. After that dried, I had all three dyes ready to go at once and started to blend the area across the fade, mostly using the red-amber, but sometimes having to add in black or amber to the edges of the fade. It was really about applying and looking and checking to make sure the fade was even and that the shape of the inner area was symmetrical. The spruce top was much harder to dye than the maple back, sides and neck. The maple was really easy to work with. The spruce, on the other hand, did not absorb the dye evenly and needed a very concentrated black dye to get it to look convincingly black. This concentrated dye presented the issue that it did not blend well with the other colours as it would easily overpower on blending, for obvious reasons. The other issue I ran into with the spruce top is that the glue joint absorbed more stain than the surrounding wood. While not a problem with the black, in the amber this shows a noticeable darker line at the glue joint. The joint was quite good and I couldn't visually see any problem with the joint that might cause this. It could simply be that the mere presence of the joint in the softwood presented the opportunity for the dye to penetrate deeper and present a darker colour. I'm not certain about this.
After that it was a pretty standard nitrocellulose finishing process - 5 base coats, sand flat with 220, 3 coats, sand flat with 400, 2 top coats, wet sand flat with 800 and then coarse, medium, fine and super fine polishing compounds.
Beautiful instrument indeed. I particularly like the look of the top sunburst - I think the slightly blotchy look (not really the best way to describe it, but my mental thesaurus has given up tonight) really adds to the charm.
Superb - do you have any WIP images?
That's a classy jazz-box!
