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Interesting question.
Having built 2 explorers, one set neck and the other bolt on, it is easier to finish as much as possible before setting the neck. Once set it is such an awkward shape to handle which adds to the degree of difficulty.
Adding finish after gluing neck will help to fill the joint. From memory i think about 75% of the finish was done on neck & body then final 25% on the whole guitar.
Hope this helps in some way.
Cheers Waz
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Having set my neck prior to applying finish, I would wholeheartedly endorse Waz’ approach to finishing an EX.
Its all personal choice but they are a big awkward beast to handle when finishing in one piece.
Thanks both, that’s exactly the kind of mental trade-off I was going through in my mind. I think I’ll get a few coats of gloss (nitro) on before assembly, and then perhaps a final blow over once assembled
An additional reason to apply the finish first is that it makes the excess glue easier to wipe off - at least so I was advised, so I am applying shellac before glueing the neck.
Hi guys, dumb ass question #125; my Grover tuners, some of them are marked ‘5.D’, some ‘5.B’ and some ‘5.C’. I can’t see any visible difference between them. Any ideas if it makes any difference? At first I thought one for each string but don’t have any marked E or G
No difference at all. It probably marks the machine they were stamped on so they can trace any faults they pick up in the factory.
I assembled my EX-1 before spraying. It is an awkward shape and you need a large area available to work on it easily. I had many 'incidents' where the wet body caught things as I was turning it round to spray, requiring a lot more fixing up afterwards.
On the other hand, as I was doing a solid colour finish, it did allow me to get a very smooth blend between neck and body. But if you are just spraying clear coats, then you won't be using a lot of filler to get the blending, so doing body and neck separate and then just having to spray the join area once it's assembled does make things easier.
Just don't forget to mask off all the pocket and neck areas that will be glued before you spray.
Here's my answer to Lappa's question about the bridge saddles, which should answer your original question 2.
"ABR-1 T-O-M bridges normally have the screws facing forwards, Nashville T-O-M bridges normally facing backwards, but they work both ways round. on an ABR-1, the screws sit near the top of the saddle and can get in the way of the strings as they leave the saddle, so the screws generally get faced forwards as a result, On a Nashville, the screws are smaller and lower down, so dont get in the way and being lower, are easier to access if facing rearwards.
The main thing to consider is the saddle orientation when you come to intonate. Flat side facing forwards allows more forwards movement; the flat side facing backwards allows more rearwards movement. It used to be that T-O-Ms came with the 3 top saddles facing forwards and the bottom 3 facing backwards, but now they often all have them facing the same way. On ABR-1 bridges, its easy to remove a saddle and rotate it. On a Nashville style TOM, there's a very small circlip to remove to free the saddle which is almost impossible to do. There are YouTube videos on it, but whilst I've once managed to remove a clip, I've never managed to put one back on."
From the picture, you have a copy of a Gibson ABR-1 style Tune-O-Matic bridge, so screws pointing forwards is normal for that style.