my first build (pbg-2)

hello,

this is my first build and it is of the pbg-2 guitar kit.

i bought the kit a while ago but due to me customizing the kit with a t-type head it took a while to get here in the U.K.

when it arrived i was in the middle of doing exams so i couldn't start it and when i eventually started the build i started taking pictures but only just got round to making this build diary.

i seem to have lost the first few pictures i had of the project, but these are the pictures of what i have got.

the inspiration for this guitar comes from many other guitars but mainly from Matt Bellamy's "Manson Ali Top" guitar (i'm a big Muse fan ;) )

i started off my using dowel to plug the holes that were already cut out, it took a lot effort (and glue) but it worked, i then painted the body with wood primer.

after a few more coats of primer i started to drill the new holes for the volume pot (i kept one of them there for the tone)

http://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-con...reanManson.jpg
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after sanding and priming and more sanding and priming i drilled the hole for the switch and it was ready for the spray primer

after a few coats of the spray primer and a bit more sanding it was ready for the glitter silver spray paint to go on

about 5 coats later is where we are at at the moment

we did this same process to the headstock of the guitar

the camera on my phone doesn't really do justice the shine of the glitter but at the moment i think it looks goodd
http://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-con...f-DSC_0040.jpg
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at the moment there isn't much for me do because my dad is out at the moment but i drew around the edge of the guitar so that i could make this template to do the silver burst that we're going to try soon,

that's where i am up to with this build so far,

thanks for reading,

alex
http://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-con...7-DSC_0043.jpg

Well done Aex, and welcome to the forum! We are a really friendly bunch here and because we want you to feel welcome we wont mention anything about the Cricket .

Great work so far Alex! Looking forward to seeing how the burst goes!

cheers,
Gav.

Welcome Alex. It is indeed looking good. Keep the updates coming with lots of pictures and have fun building the guitar you want.
And don't pay any attention to Gav. We will probably mention the cricket a lot. Unless things change ;-)
Cheers.

looks great so far Alex, welcome

Welcome along Alex - great to see people picking up PBG gear from outside Australia.

Hey Alex, welcome aboard. I was wondering how you were going with your custom order PBG-2 kit. Looking great so far. I look forward to seeing how this one turns out.

yeah i know, the crickets not going great for us, my local town plays better than England are at the moment!

anyway, this morning i checked on the burst that we did last night and the burst worked fine but the boxes we used to hold up the template left a mark which is a shame because it worked really well.

so we had to spray over the squares left behind and around them to get the silver back.

i'm now waiting for the silver to dry and then i can try the burst again

thankfully we only did the back and we're going to use the cavity for the springs of the trem to put the boxes in,

now to catch up with the cricket :)

thanks for reading,

alex
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Alex, sorry no good news for you with the cricket. Better news is that I can see where the guitar is going and I like where it's headed. Hopefully you can sort out the issue with the boxes.
Good luck.

Bummer about the boxes Alex, but the burst is looking awesome! Hope you get there in the end.

cheers,
Gav.

Silverburst is the sexiest burst. It looks great.

hello again,

its been a while since the last post so i've got alot to catch up on, last time i was covering the back with silver to hide the marks from the boxes. we thought we would be clever by putting a thick layer of paint on to hurry up the process, in short, DON'T DO IT!!!! we ended up with alot of runs from the paint and strange marks all over the guitar. in order to fix this we had to sand alot of it down and start with the silver paint again that's why progress has been slow.

anyway whilst we were waiting for the new layers of silver to dry, we turned our attention to the neck. for the neck i wanted a darker brown but not so dark that the grain wasn't visible. so i decided on an oak varnish which gave an amazing finish and the grain is still visible.

back to the body, the paint has dried and everything is silver again. we had a lot of trouble with removing the marks, but we finally did it, and this is what it looked like a few days ago whilst it was drying.
http://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-con...04_1450011.jpg
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whilst the paint was still drying, we went back to the template and made some adjustments, these adjustments were the addition of 2 blocks (nailed in place) the height of the boxes which we used last time and the height of the cavities for the pickups, this would hold the template up the same height as last time but have no marks that would be left behind by boxes holding up.

when we started to spray the black on it worked like last time, however, unfortunately (yes, we had more problems) the burst was much bigger than the desired effect, so to get past this we had to spray it all silver again and start fresh.

http://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-con...105_163139.jpg
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so once the paint had dried we tried the burst again, this time instead of using the template we sprayed it free hand, as suggested by a few youtube videos.

It was perfect the burst had worked exactly as i wanted it to!!

while we waited for the body to dry we lacquered the neck andhave just done another coat.

we have just done the first coat of lacquer on the back of the body and are waiting for it to dry.

thanks for reading,
and congratulations with the cricket :)

alex
http://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-con...109_180255.jpg

Looking fantastic Alex - great job! If it makes you feel any better, I havent had a build yet without do-overs, especially those with sprayed on finishes. The important thing is that you got there in the end. Awesome!

cheers,
Gav.

Looks great alex! Looking forward to seeing the finished product :-)

That's a knockout, Alex! The PBG2 is a killer guitar too.

glad it worked out - looks good!

That's a great burst Alex. Yes painting can be very testing at times . I have been air brushing for years and still now and again I make silly mistakes, then think what the hell did I do it like that for. But you know another name for mistake in the painting world is (Learning Curve). I bet you your next burst is perfect the first time. And buddy No matter how long you have been painting or airbrushing there is always going to be (Learning Curves) now and a again. Good luck with the rest of the build because it's looking pretty special up to now.

hello again,

quick update this time as a lot of the work recently has been just lacquering the body and head.

we decided that the head has reached the point where there is enough lacquer so i have attached the hardware and in my opinion its looking great.

the hardware i've used is some old tuning pegs off of another guitar i own which was my uncles which he gave to me for parts and then a locking nut from a chrome Floyd Rose i bought of ebay for about £10.

i have got one question as to the truss rod hole cover, i was wondering how i would get the engraved text like they do on other manufactured guitars and i was wondering how they do it and if there is away on how i could do it at home?

thanks fr reading and thanks for any advice you might have regarding the truss rod cover :)

alex
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You might need a double layered piece of plastic for the truss row Cover, black on the one side and white on the other (for example). A template with the writing your want and a thin Drexel bit should do the trick. Or you could jump onto eBay as there are a few folk out here who will give you a professional looking job without going to the expense of buying dremels, dremel bits and sheets of plastic.

Gav was talking about a Dremel bit - in terms of the plastic for the truss rod cover, you could also look for a 3 ply sheet of black pickguard material from eBay. Look for ones that specifically mention black / white / black - you should end up with a 2+mm thick sheet of material pretty cheaply.

Alternatively, take the current truss rod cover to an engraver and see what they can do - gut feeling they'll have something to highlight the text in gold / silver - whatever's your poison... If they have a CNC machine to do the engraving you may be able to get something extra special (trophy stores may do as well)...

hello again,

thanks for the help with the truss rod cover, I've found a guy on ebay, just need to decide on a name for the guitar now, im thinking something along the lines of "the most frustrating thing I have ever tried doing"!

looking back, i think i have thrown myself in the deep end a bit, especially as the silver burst took forever and the floyd rose is being a pain to install, but anyway here's where we're at.

firstly we have finished lacquering "the most frustrating thing I have ever tried doing" and it's looking good.

i started working on the wiring for "it" and the pickups went in :) I'm using the stock bridge pickup and the dream 90 from guitarfetish.com in the neck position.

Here is a picture of the wiring, its not the neatest as I am still learning how to wire and stuff, but i followed a schematic that came with the dream 90 pickup.
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here's a picture from the top of the body after most of the wiring is done, the picture also shows the glossy reflectiveness of the lacquer.

i just need to ground the bridge and wire it to the jack plug and the wiring is done, however (it wouldn't be a proper update if there wasn't a however, would it?) when i was adding the floyd rose to the guitar the screws of the chrome one that i bought are too long to fit in the cavity, so i'm now looking for replacement screws that are smaller, and just looking to see if they even exist, i mean it's not the end of the world if they don't exist, i'll just use the black one that came with the kit, but i would like to have the chrome because i think it looks better.

anyway, realizing that i couldn't get any further with the wiring, i attached the neck and it looks great!

i am so close to finishing the build now but it's frustrating how like 2mm of screw are what is stopping me from getting any further and from what i've seen i cant find any replacement screws, but i'll keep looking.

Thanks for reading,

alex
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If its only 2mm of screw that is too long, you could always shorten the screws by the appropriate length. The way i do it is to lock the screws into a vice grip and then using a sander, sand the screw down to the right length. Try to maintain a sharpish look to the screw. When preparing the holes in the wood to receive the screw use a drill bit that is 2/3rds of the diameter of the screw and then mark the drill bit with tape to ensure you do not drill too far that your drill bit comes out the other side!! Run your screw through some candle wax as a final measure. This will reduce your chances of having the screw snap in half when the time comes to screw the bridge in place.

The same procedure applies to the machine head screws and the neck screws.

Alex - have you shielded your cavities? A little bit of copper now can save a lot of noise later...

http://www.pitbullguitars.com/?page_...wtopic&t=302.0
http://www.stewmac.com/tradesecrets/...0052_shielding

Hello again,

Firstly, thanks for the advice Brendan but after i tested the electronics with the strings on i didn't notice any unwanted noise, but later if any occurs i'll shield the cavities, thanks :)

O.K, so the Floyd rose that i bought wouldn't have fitted even if i had got smaller screws because of the string spacing, so i decided to use the one that came with the kit and swap the fine tuning screws on them so that i had a bit of chrome on the tremolo. Installing it was a pain but i got there in the end.

I also added the chrome knobs that i got from guitarfetish.com, i went for chrome to fit with the other hardware on the guitar.

I then put the strings on to set up the Floyd rose.
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I then went to set the intonation and get it in tune however some thing seems to be wrong with the action because im getting alot of fret buzz when the open string is played, all of the tutorials and instructions i've seen say to get the guitar in tune first and then deal with the action, but it's just not possible to get it in tune.

I adjusted the truss rod to get the neck straight but it hasn't really helped much. I don't really know what I need to do here, so help would be greatly appreciated.

Here are some pictures of the action in case that helps diagnose the problem.

Thanks for any advice that you give,

and thanks for reading,

alex
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A floyd rose is a tough one for a first build. As you tune it currently, the most important photograph that i would like to see is not here, the first two are great but what does the floyd rose look like when your action is this high? Is is angled or is it flat (see my next post)? I am betting it is angled out of the cavity! You will need to 'balance' this by making sure there is equal tension by adding tension springs or tightening the screws in the cavity to add tension to the floyd rose bridge.

Pic 1 is balanced tension which is what you are after.
Pic 2 is too little tension which is what you seem to have currently.
Pic 3 is too much, and the reason why the floyd is pulled into the body.

Now think about Brendan's earlier advice to you about shielding. Whilst this has nothing to do with your current issue, I am concerned that you don't understand the reason why we shield our guitars.
You mentioned that there was 'no noise' but if it happens later you will shield the guitar. You do realise that the noises and interference we shield against are not actually produced by the guitar itself but by outside sources interfering with your guitar signal and being amplified by the guitar circuitry? By shielding your guitar you isolate the circuitry to only amplify the signal coming from the pickups rather than from radio frequencies and other energy such as fluorescent lighting , mobile phones, etc.
Once you have set your guitar up properly, do you really want to pull everything apart and have to start over to put in the shielding? Just a thought!
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Hello again,

So last night i figured out the problem, after looking at my other Floyd rose guitar i noticed that there was a piece under the locking nut which we had forgotten to add to the nut. The reason for the Floyd rose being so high was an attempt to fix the action and prevent the fret buzz at the 1st fret. Now that its done i decided to test the guitar.

I now understand what you mean about shielding and apologize for shrugging it off before as there is a lot of interference with the sound, such as my phone interfering and just using the controls creates an unwanted buzz. One reason i didn't think that it was necessary was because my other guitars that i have taken apart to fix don't look like they are shielded, it looks like there is a bit of tin foil on the covers, but that's it, would this fix the problems I'm having or would I have to shield all of the cavities: control cavity, pickup cavities and the tremolo cavity??

Anyway after playing it a bit i realized that i have wired the switch slightly wrong, so in the up position it's the humbucker and in the down position it's the p90, but that's an easy fix. The p90 also seems to be a bit weak, so I'm going to look into that today, i think i might have wired something wrong.

All that is left to do is cut the control cavity cover down to the right size and fix it in, shield the cavities, fix the truss rod cover on (it's not arrived yet :( ), sort the wiring out and add the strap buttons and then she's done!

Other than that it sounds fantastic, until you break a string :(

thanks for reading,

alex
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Alex, some manufacturers use a chrome tape (almost tin foil) for shielding. Better and dead easy to get your hands on is the copper tape (PitBull can even supply it)!... Great that you've got the Floyd Rose under control. Will have to give one of those a go at some stage!
Overall though - it's a cracker of an axe - make sure you enter it in GOTM!