Here we go... Muzza's first build. Non PBG PRS-1TS

OK, the first 2 posts are my initial thoughts - a bit of an 'unboxing' and 'review'. I want to reiterate that this is NOT a PitBullGuitars kit. (It may have come from the same factory... I hope not, as you'll soon understand...)

So...not too impressed with the kit straight off the bat. First up, I thought I was buying this kit...
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But got this kit...
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And with all the crap going on in my life at the moment, I only just realised tonight...

I paid an extra $110 to upgrade to 4 wire wilkinsons and gold hardware. I got a nice surprise when I saw the gold faces for the humbucker mounts in the kit. I wasn't expecting that.
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Makes up for the missing 3 way switch cover. ($1.20 from my local brick and mortar music store.)
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I was REALLY disappointed with the headstock though. The neck itself looks OK. I guess I won't know for certain until it's finished and strung up.

When I placed the truss rod cover in position, as you do, it didn't look right. I thought I had the wrong glasses on. So I put the hardware on the headstock and yep... centreline to E machinehead hole was 3 mm different to centreline to e hole. Look at the space between the machine head washer to the edge of the headstock. 3mm doesn't sound like a lot, but look at the picture.
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And the machineheads? If this is an upgrade, I'd hate to see the quality of the standard hardware. Of the 6, I could only hand tighten ONE to about 75% of its total travel. That's not a quality fit. I had to get a 10mm ring spanner on to them to get the rest of them past 2 turns.

However, once they're on, I shouldn't have to worry about them. The machine head action seemed very precise - no wobble and that part of them feels 'right'.
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Here you can see how far off centre the holes were.
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The other poor quality thing about the headstock is that it looked like somebody got a little over-enthusiastic about hand sanding the front face and left a visible dip on both sides just in front of the nut.
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Overall I'm pretty disappointed, but... I love the flame maple. I wish I'd discovered PBG and this forum a week before. As it is, the PRS I THOUGHT I was buying is winging itself over from WA as I write this.

Hi Muzza, bit of a bummer however being a first build use it as such to fine tune your skills before starting on your dream guitar that way hopefully any mistakes are made or discovered on this one and not on the next.

First up, I got stuck into that appalling headstock. Some of you may have caught my post about not pre-drilling the headstocks. I hate the Gibson type headstocks, so a redesign was always on the cards, regardless of a drunken Chinese 'craftsman's' inability to accurately locate a drilling template.
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First thing I had to do was cut some 'plugs' from the excess headstock material. I needed 6, but there was only enough for 3.
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So I've decided to put some flame maple veneer on the face of the headstock (from guitaraust.com.au -$7.95 for a headstock) This enables me to cut some plugs from any old timber for the top, and cut the 3 maple plugs in half for the underside.

This is where I came a little unstuck, and I unreservedly blame the Americans for not following the rest of the world in adopting the Metric system.

My plug cutters are imperial. Try and find an imperial clean cut auger bit... Well, I found one, but it's quite long.
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So to cut a loooong story short... it wasn't a very pleasant experience and the plugs didn't work as well as I'd liked. (Better late than never, I'm now the proud owner of a Carbatec 8 piece Forstner/Plug cutter set...)

Luckily, the back of the headstock and neck are going to be solid 'Black Stump', so I can fix the f@%kups with wood filler, and the veneer will cover all sorts of evil on the top.

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(Yes, I've got a Rockerverb MKII. Cool huh?)

I've still got a bit of final shaping to do on the headstock, but for a first go with dodgy equipment, I'm satisfied I won't make the same mistake on the NEXT PRS.

And I learned something very valuable... Never do any critical work on your guitar build if you've had a couple. No matter HOW impatient you are...!

Actually, let me re-phrase that... never do ANY work on your guitar build if you've had a couple.

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Originally Posted by Muzza

And I learned something very valuable... Never do any critical work on your guitar build if you've had a couple. No matter HOW impatient you are...!

Actually, let me re-phrase that... never do ANY work on your guitar build if you've had a couple.

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I think that might include purchases for a build after having a couple. I was browsing stewmac after going to a gig and made a purchase for a build that I didn't entirely think through

So, after all that crap, I guess I'm happy with how the headstock is going. Nobody will see the learning curves.

Now on to the bits where I ask for advice. When I first did my dry test fit, to my eye the neck looked to be dead straight, lining up perfectly with the body. But when I put the straight edge on it tonight I found that I DO in fact need to straighten it out a tad. Do I take material off the neck's heel, or from the socket? Uber, sooper dooper, mega sharp chisel, or more f@%king sanding???
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The bottom of the heel doesn't quite sit snugly on the bottom of the socket. I reckon I might just put the eensy weensy tiniest of shims in there to fill the gap. Or will the Titebond fill it up?
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I measured from the face of the nut to the centre of the 12th fret and (I think) it was 314mm. It was also 314mm from the centre of the 12th fret to the centre of the hole for the bridge on the treble side. I'm assuming the hole will be in the correct spot for the bass side. (Unless the same guy that drills the headstock also drills the bridge holes... :mad: ) Any advice on the correct location of the bass side bridge hole?

Then I put the straight edge along the fretboard (after straightening the neck with the truss rod) and measured the height at the bridge location. It's 18mm. Is that about right for a Tune-0-Matic bridge?
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LAST QUESTION! (Well, for tonight, anyway...) Where the neck sits in the socket, it partly obscures the hole where the wires are going to pass. Should I remove a bit of material from the corner in front of the hole, or should I just get over it???
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Thanks in advance, and thanks for having me Adam.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wazkelly

Hi Muzza, bit of a bummer however being a first build use it as such to fine tune your skills before starting on your dream guitar that way hopefully any mistakes are made or discovered on this one and not on the next.

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Yep, we're on the same page there Waz...

With the neck, I reckon it's be easier to take from the neck heel.

The pickup wire route, wouldn't hurt to take the back corner from the neck, depends which way you have to feed the wires as to whether you need to put in a feeder ramp or not.

I got this on Friday. Should avoid any more plugging dramas. I'll probably end up plugging and veneering all my future headstocks.

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My current build has 4 holes for the pots, (potholes???) but I only need 3. So I'll either cut a plug from the flame maple veneer I've ordered for the headstock, or use a Strat style output jack. (could prove awkward as the PRS has an arched top.)

Anyway, I just did a rushed example using all 4 sizes (8mm, 10mm, 12mm & 15mm) using a bit of cheap pine. Normally I would take measures to prevent tearout, but as this is just a quick trial, I didn't bother. (Note to self... wash your hands!)

The maple veneer shouldn't tear out like this. I would imagine that if done properly and carefully, it would be damn near invisible - especially so with clean fingers.

Here are the plugs drilled out and the guinea pig holes.

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Here are the plugs ready to go in and the roughly finished end product. The grain on this bit of pine fell away at a very acute angle, which is why the two tone grain doesn't line up on a couple. Shouldn't be a problem with the veneer as I'd be working with gnat's testicle thicknesses.

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You could also try using a file to create some clean grit-free super fine saw dust from an edge piece of your maple veneer and rub that into the plug cap seams when you glue them in. That may help to hide any glue line and allow some stain to take.

I really don't think there will be a visible glue line when I do it 'properly' Scott. This forstner/plug set has a pretty fine tolerance, and next time I'll take my time, with clean fingers.

Even so, I think the rough-as-guts throw-together still looks HEAPS better than using a dowel.

Even if I make a complete pig's ear out of this build, I could always do something like this...

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My guitaraust bits just came in. What do you think of my idea to cover one of the pot holes? I only need 3 knobs.

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I've got some knurled dome top gold knobs on the way from China and this also turned up in today's delivery. Cost me 5 times more than most 3 way switches, but geez its nice...

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The nicely prepared spalted [Edit: 'quilted'...] maple headstock veneer has some really interesting patterns.

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The flamed maple veneer is only roughly finished but seems to have a nice flame. I won't know how good until after a lot of very careful sanding...

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Ooh, very nice. That switch is tight.

Hey Muzza that gold hardware looks the ducks nut and the F type output jack would be a cool mod.
That spalted maple veneer looks more like quilted maple.
This will be a very cool build

Oops, yes. Thanks Wokka, I meant quilted maple. (Maple schmaple...)

This particular kit has a very high arch and the humbucker mounting rings didn't just need scribing, I had to add to them as there were large gaps between the mount's corners and the guitar top. Too much to ignore.

I tried making a 'bog' out of shavings from a spare mounting ring dissolved in acetone to fill the gaps. Only moderately successful and very messy.

Next I tried slicing off strips from the sacrificial mount and glued them on with the acetone. Somewhat more successful, but I still had to make up the shortfalls with builder's bog.

Should come up ok after I've sanded them back and hit them with a coat of black enamel.

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The things you do while you're waiting for the finish kit to arrive huh? (I'll never finish it if I pay this much attention to every little detail...)

Hey Muzza so you saying the arches in the mounting rings don't match the shape of the archtop ? you need to file the rings to suit the shape of the archtop

I didn't think that that wasn't an option Wokka. To close the gap between the corners and the guitar face, I would've had to take off way too much from the neck mount, and then the top surfaces wouldn't have lined up with each other.

These two line up perfectly now.

I'll take a photo with the metal Les Paul mounts to show what I mean.

The problem is mainly with the neck mount. Ideally, I would have liked another bridge mount which would have enough meat to take away. But I can only find these in sets, they're not available individually, or not that I could find. My third build is going to be an ES-2V, so hopefully these mounts will fit nicely with only a little filing/adjustments.

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As you can see, if I took off the requisite meat from the mount, it would only be about 2mm thick at the centre.

Even before filing any off, the top surfaces didn't align, as can be seen from the red projection arrow. If I filed it down just at the back edge, the blue arrow shows where it would align.

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no worries Muzza I can see clearly now. Looks like you are ontop of the issue. There is quite a steep angle between bridge and neck pup heights

lots of work here Muzza, you are doing well

The changes are great, nice work, even if some is obviously a P.I.A

Thanks boys. A labour of love... until I get tired of it.

Yeh i can dig it, i have a few guitars in the rack that i just cant be bothered with now, after spending alot of hours getting to where they are, one day they will be back on my bench.

By the way, this is the finish I'm going to attempt - but with gold hardware.

It's a Maton BB1200JH. I own this guitar, not the one pictured, but it's identical.

I can't justify owning a $4k guitar at my age/ability. Hence the attempt to copy the essence of it. I'll be selling the JH in the near future if anyone's interested.

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My first 2 builds (both PRSs) are practice runs for my third build - which will be an ES-2V. Inspired by the above Maton. All my builds will have the same finish for the following reason...

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I just looked through the gallery and there aren't any PRS-1TS completed builds in there.

Have you sold many Adam?

Hi Muzza,
there's a good chance Ads has sold some but not everyone does a build diary and uploads to the gallery.
I remember about 2 years ago a woodworking magazine did a review on that model, I may have a copy somewhere

I just did a search for 'PRS-1TS' and got "Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms."

I know for a fact that there's at least ONE PRS-1TS thread in the PitBull forums... This one!

Doesn't the forum's search function work?

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Originally Posted by wokkaboy

I remember about 2 years ago a woodworking magazine did a review on that model, I may have a copy somewhere

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Hey, that would be great if you could lay your hands on it Wokka!

Hi Muzza, remind me next week, I have never been so under pressure at work in 30+ odd years of work

the search function isn't very effective. I'd read through all the titles in the Build Diary section

No hurry, take your time. Look after yourself. I know what it's like to be under the hammer at work.

Hi Muzza I sent you a PM, please message me your email address please, pdf is too large to post here

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Originally Posted by wokkaboy

Hi Muzza, remind me next week, I have never been so under pressure at work in 30+ odd years of work

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Drink a cup of concrete Woks :p

DB I will sort you out next catch up

I will put an unbearable amount of chilli on the next pizza bwhahahaha

there is a concrete manufacturer across the road at work

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Muzza

By the way, this is the finish I'm going to attempt - but with gold hardware.

It's a Maton BB1200JH. I own this guitar, not the one pictured, but it's identical.

I can't justify owning a $4k guitar at my age/ability. Hence the attempt to copy the essence of it. I'll be selling the JH in the near future if anyone's interested.

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My first 2 builds (both PRSs) are practice runs for my third build - which will be an ES-2V. Inspired by the above Maton. All my builds will have the same finish for the following reason...

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DO NOT SELL THAT BEAUTIFUL GUITAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
From personal experience, you will regret it.

Regarding the search function, I've found the same thing - doesn't seem to work well but Google can help - just try using google search for PRS-1TS site:buildyourownguitar.com.au. Lots of results.

Yes, Peter, that worked. Thanks.

Not a lot though. The PRS models are in the minority's it seems. Which is probably why I went for them.

The DingoTone arrived today.

Keen as mustard, I put the 'Black Stump' on the neck and, well, I was expecting more... black!

The instructions say to hang it up for 5 days after putting the stain on. I figure I'll need at least 10 coats to get this as dark as I want it. Like, 'Black'.

I'm looking at 50 days before I even put the enhancer on. Which is another 3 days... each coat?

Am I reading the instructions right?

Hi Muzza, the curing times are pretty conservative, being in Sunshine Coast may take less time if it's warm.
Can you please post a photo ? The maple necks take a few coats to soak in the stain.
I'm sure after another 2 coats of stain coat it should darken up.

Remember patience. Start work on the body while you wait

This is after 4 coats on the body and 5 on the neck.

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Is it going to go black, do to think? I thought maybe I hadn't shaken it up enough, but I really gave it some.

How will I know when I can put a few more coats on? Instruction sheet says 5 days, Dingo's video says 3-4 days.

ok Muzza I see it's not really that black. Have you used the stain coat and given it at least 3 days curing between coats ?

better wait for DB to see if he can suggest anything.

I will get in trouble for suggesting this but Feast Watson Proof Tint Black will give you darker results

the shade of black you got is similar to wudtone black magic woman, it's not really a black black