GR-1SF Black Cherry Falcon

Hi All,

Got this Gretsch Falcon body a few months back and finally getting around to playing with it.
Only little blemish I found in the first look and dry fit was a little yellow splotch at the bottom. I tried to sand it out the best I could but figured a dark stain plus the Bigsby would do enough to cover it.

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I went for the first stain and realized there were a ton of sanding marks so I brought it back down and hand sanded them out and restained with a Black Cherry oil based Minwax stain

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Went with an Ebony stain for the side wall and then learned my lesson of cheap amazon tape and scraped the binding almost everywhere. (these photos were before I scraped the binding)

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Dry fit with the pickups sitting in to see how itll all look together.

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My big question is for next steps as I have not done a hollow body before. Do I set the neck, poly finish, and then fish the electronics through the pickup cavities? Or should I do the electronics (with or without that extra tubing to help keep everything together) and then set the neck and poly finish?

Thank you for any suggestions on best practices for hollow body builds!

Hi DrJackalope,

I have not done this kit, but I think I would add some poly to the neck and body, set neck, add poly to whole guitar, then add the electronics. Adding some poly will protect the stain a bit from accidents and excess glue from the setting of the neck.

BTW, the stain looks great. Good colour choice with the gold hardware.

I think it would be better to finish both the body and neck separately with poly and buff them, then glue the neck and the go ahead with electronics.

Reason. Poly offers some protection even if you scratch the body while doing electronics.

But make sure that you don't stain or clearcoat the neck heel joint.

Sent from my NE2211 using Tapatalk

Thank you both!

Built this kit 2 years ago. Always stain/poly/or paint body and neck separately before setting neck. Electronics last step. Bigsby means tuning each time you pick it up. Good luck.