EX kit

Yeah is fairly much the explorer I was coveting, though I have a few ideas in the pipeline to finnish it. The intonation should be fine as I measured 22.75 when I glued it. I was cutting the bottom of the neck/fingerboard to fit the pickup without having to rout the other side, which has worked really well. I bought what was advertised as 70s lawsuit era Jap pickups from ebay. They are both around 5k and a gorgeous worn gold colour. It isn't set up properly to hear the bridge pickup yet but from the sound of the neck things are quite promising. Really smooth and Explorer like..

I have been using a really nice hand drill I found in the market for 3quid to do all the small screws, unfortunately decidedly wonky in the bridge pickup surround case! Am gutted. Will have to plug holes and redrill I think though it shouldn't show from above.

Next to knock the nut off and have a play around sanding the back of it til the graphite one arrives, and decide on the tuners and decal.

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Pickups look the part, and I'm sure you'll get the pickup ring straight without any repair work showing. it only needs to move a small bit at either end.

The 'lawsuit era' misnomer hides a multitude of sins against guitar building as well as a few very well made guitars. My first electric was a '70s Columbus Les Paul Custom copy, complete with plywood body (with a visible gap between the arched top and main body section visible when you took the pickups out), bolt-on neck, rubbish tuners and single coil pickups in humbucker covers. However with a couple of replacement bits it actually played really well with a good low action. The pickups actually sounded very sweet playing through a friend's AC30, but they certainly weren't rock monsters. Sounded OKish through my solid state Marshall combo.

Yeah I am a big fan of 80s Japanese stuff my first guitar was a Westone Spectrum. Still my favourite.

Now this is more like the Explorer I was coveting! Almost there! note the wonky bridge pickup as well as the gorgeous klusons

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Looking good. Half the fun is fixing the goofs :)

It's come out looking a lot like the classic korina explorers. Great job.

disaster strikes. I thought a pal couldnt do any damage with 1500 grit sand paper. It sanded really smooth but she sanded the stain off! so I had to sand the top completely and start staining again. It has what looks like mould come up with the stain. I will sand the top tomorrow and see if I can do some art rescue. Lesson- dont attack the guitar stoned under artificial light

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I sanded stained and oiled again and a nasty mouldy looking bit came up. So I sanded the whole thing all over again. Also getting rid of the strange curls the random orbital sander had made. I don't like sanding.

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Hopefully stained for the last time. Also experimenting with the truss cover. needs to go darker with a bit of dry brushing

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I thought Australians would like this sort of humour for some reason

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