New Gear Day #2 - Fretworn’s AST-1FB

[Richy17]

Looks superb mate 👌🏻

[Fretworn]

If I can stand to go outside, I might finish it this weekend.

[FrankenWashie]

If I can stand to go outside, I might finish it this weekend.

Yeah, I’ve only been outside to jump in the pool the last couple of days. Zero interest in being in the lab.

[Simon Barden]

I missed last week's snow here because I was away on the Devon coast where it was significantly warmer and never dropped below 4°C, but we've more snow forecast for Tuesday night. Hope that helps.

[Fretworn]

I couldn’t waste the public holiday. I got the ST wiring upgrade kit with this one and I need to do some subtle reshaping of the cavity so everything would fit.

[Fretworn]

Then I finished wiring her up. I bought a Gotoh bridge for her, and the ground wire steadfastly refused to solder to the claw. So I had to come up with a work around that seems to be working. I wound the wire tightly through one of the screw holes of the claw and soldered it to itself so it won’t come loose.

[Fretworn]

Then I put her together. She’s working fine but all the fine-tuning, intonation etc still needs to be done. I have ordered a white tip for the switch. I need to tweak the neck a bit too as the high E string is a little too close to the edge, but I will have to sand a little bit of the neck cavity to do this. The neck is a little wider than the standard Pitbull kits I’ve made before, but that won’t be a problem.

[G-Axe]

Looks amazing! Can't believe nobody has commented for several days. The pop of mahogany under the teak gives it good depth, and ties it in to the pickguard. How's the semi-hollow body sound/feel? Is it a bit more resonant than your average strat?

[Andy40]

Mate that's tidy work Fretty, love the thinline and my fave is the grain in that fretboard.

[Fretworn]

Looks amazing! Can't believe nobody has commented for several days. The pop of mahogany under the teak gives it good depth, and ties it in to the pickguard. How's the semi-hollow body sound/feel? Is it a bit more resonant than your average strat?

I’m really enjoying playing it. It’s quite bright acoustically. I haven’t really had a chance to plug it in and give it a good “schwang” yet.