First kit build - PBG-2!

Hi all,

Decided it was time to plunge into the kit guitar craze with a couple of mates. My first kit arrived today after ordering it yesterday (feels good to live in WA).

I decided to go with the PBG-2 as it was a nice basic shape to start on, Has a basic bridge setup instead of trying to go floyd rose tremolo for the first one and has 24 frets which I really like. My options that I went with were Ebony fretboard and Black hardware. (Can anyone confirm that the kit I got is actually Ebony by the way? Always thought Ebony was darker that this?)

Still unsure on what finish I want to go for exactly but a couple of options Im leaning towards is either a dark red/wine stain or might even go a totally different directon and try a chameleon paint (if I can find out where to get the blue to green colour shift paint).

At this point I plan to keep it all stock but if the paint work goes well and Im happy with how its coming along.. then I dont mind spending a little extra on some better pickups etc.
Hoping to get started on the sanding process tomorrow!!
Just a couple of questions I have before starting...
1.Do most people try put it all together properly (eg set up a couple of strings etc) to check alignment before they start sanding/painting? Was a little worried about hammering any pegs for the bridge and then taking them out and causing chipping.
2. Do you guys know anyone who has done a pbg-2 build? went through several pages of builds and havent found anyone yet! Would be nice to see how others have done it! I did see one but it was custom ordered and didnt really give me much info.

Thanks for any help in advance and let the journey begin!!!

Nice guitar! I haven't seen one of them built on here yet.

So yes it is a good idea to do a mock build and check it will all work. You are right you don't want to push the bridge pin posts in and take them out again. Most people wrap tape around them to get them to fit snugly in the holes for testing or you can get some clear tube from the big green shed and use that as a temporary holder.

There was someone painting an EX kit in flip paint, but he seems to have dropped off the radar. I think you can get it in rattle can form at Supercheap. I spy a JMA kit there as well. They are a really nice guitar when finished.

If you have a look at Volgars thread there is a heap of discussion about painted finishes. Otherwise we have guys like Phrozin and Jarrod who really know their stuff when it comes to getting the best out of them.

First for everything I guess!
Will have a crack and doing the mock build later, thanks for the ideas! the plastic tubing sounds like a winner to me!

I have looked into flip paint a little, I have found a place that does the purple to blue switch but I see a fair few of them and would prefer to do something different like a blue to green. Just seems harder to source the paint for it unforunately. Not sure If im allowed to post links or not but would love to get this finish on it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FW5O0l-xcM

You are right about the JMA kit :) That one is my mates guitar who is also having a crack at his first build, Im sure he will post a thread shortly too!

Welcome to the forum and best of luck with your build. I haven't seen a PBG-2 build yet either so ill be following with interest.

Tough searching on this forum, but I knew there was a couple:
Astro
PBG-2

(Floyd versions, but the only ones I could remember)

Yes, looks just like an ebony board. You can normally tell it from rosewood by the fact that the board is very smooth, whilst rosewood has more pores and a more open grain. Most of the ebony from a tree is not in fact black, but is like your fretboard. A lot of ebony was wasted because people only wanted the black wood from the tree, and a lot of the rest was historically thrown away (adding to the general shortage of ebony in most locations). Now ebony is scarcer and only really obtainable form a very few countries, people are rightly making far more use of the non-black ebony. It's still a great fingerboard material. I had a Warmoth parts Tele that had an ebony neck like yours.

It's funny, but I always preferred the less black portions of ebony anyway. Such a waste so much perfectly good (and good looking) wood was turfed.

Anyway, welcome to the forum! Look forward to following your build

Well Well Well.. Its been a long time since I posted due to a certain company giving me the absolute ****'s. 2 months and I still havent received my stains and the other package from them came broken and not even the correct order so decided to go a different direction with the build. Luckily things have been going positive the last few days. My cousin had a bunch of leather dyes left over so we decided to have a crack at the wine red colour that people on the internet seem to have a lot of trouble with and I think we came pretty close. (Maybe slightly lighter than wine red but happy regardless) We mixed Red and Rose 50 - 50 and then added a touch of black to get the result you see. The pictures show it with its second coat of wipe on poly (still in the smoothing out process of the clear) I also used ebony timbermate to try pop the grain a bit more on the body.
On the neck I used a finishing oil which Id rather not say what it is purely coz I dont want to promote the company after what they have put me through. Sanded back the neck part to a satin finish for playability and gave the headstock another coat to keep that a semi gloss. Went a very basic headstock shape as it is my first build and wanted to keep it simple. Few imperfections over the whole guitar but I figure it just adds characteristic to it!

Nice job mate, sorry to hear you had some issues with a poor supplier, glad to see you've turned it into a positive result

Looking pretty good. I've had issues with product myself and whilst the supplying companies have been great (even if one was a little slow), it's still hassle you don't want.

If you want a true wine red, it has a touch of blue in it (5%-10% depending on how dark a red you want), if you ever want to mix some up up again.

Ahh interesting, thanks for that! In normal light it looks like a wine red at the moment but in the direct sunlight like those photos it does unfortunately appear lighter but Im still happy with the colour so far :) I will definitely try add the blue next time as I love wine red!

Actually it's probably more like 10-15% blue. Here's a scan from the StewMac guitar finishing book, using the StewMac colour stains. I adjusted the scan to get the best colour match to the book picture on my screen, but it may vary a bit on your device.

Attachment 25044

Ooh, I like that red wine look, I was tossing up between red and blue for the build I’m doing now and blue won. My older brother has a Gibson bass he bought new in 73 and it’s a similar color.

Ok... so where do I begin... Unfortunately I made the huge mistake of being impatient... The guitar was coming along soooo well and I had finished my clear coats when I decided to try polish the guitar... Problem was... I had only waited a few days and the polish went straight through it and got trapped in the clear :( RIP. I then left the guitar sitting there for quite a long time as I lost motivation after this happened. Luckily.. A good friend of mine is a extremely good air brush artist (IG: blackhartairbrush). We discussed what we could possibly do on this guitar to make it unique and look nice as he has always wanted to paint a guitar himself. We ended up coming up with some designs based off a wolf in amongst the northern lights. This weekend he got started on this and I have the first update of this now. Still plenty to do but already happy with how its starting to come out! Will keep this thread updated with progress pics. Cant wait for this to be put together now! Attachment 26193

That's great airbrushing! Wow!

Some more updates for everyone. first picture was just adding in the mountains and northern lights sketch with a start on colour on the first. The second adds a little more detail (eg fur and eyes are a bit more defined) and picture 3 is where the project really start to show. The depth he has managed around the mouth etc... This is only the beginning too! cant wait for this to be finished! More to come!
Attachment 26256Attachment 26257Attachment 26258

It's almost going to be a shame to put hardware on it.

Ye we did try think of ways to avoid hardware but there was always something in the way. However... now I feel like I have to spend more on pickups etc. Would be such a waste to have a guitar like this with Chinese hardware on it.

Tiny. Wee. Mind...BLOWN.
🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯

I’m loving the art work.

So once again.. problem after problem... we tried to clear coat the guitar after my mate did his amazing art work and of course.. the clear coat reacted with the previous stain that I did and it bubbled and destroyed half of it... so he re painted it and tried to clear again and bam... bubbled and ruined again... After sanding back to wood AGAIN and re painting it... We finally have some success on getting some clear coats on! Here is a few snippets of how it is coming out so far! Image on the front, green flake on the back. Very slowly we are getting there!
Attachment 26988Attachment 26989Attachment 26990

That is looking really nice loving the green flake.
I know how painful it is to have to start over on a finish gone wrong great job of recovering it

Well done, it looks fantastic. Well done too for sticking with it after some difficulties!

Paint....the final frontier. Yup gotta be to so careful about what will go over what. Credit to your mate for coming back for the 3 times lucky routine. It's going to be an awesome guitar when finished. I think with that wolf on there you are going to need some snarly pick ups!

Have attached the neck and hammered in the bridges etc. Pickups are just loose for now. Also attached the neck strap buttons and then tried to get some photos in the sun but hard to catch the flake in photo. Will be a bit before anymore updates, am waiting for new knobs and copper shielding to come. I will probably upgrade pickups at some point but for now I just want to get it together. Im thinking alnico 2's of some kind. In regards to wiring... should I be getting better wire? shielded wire etc or will the stock wire be fine and not buzz? Any help on that would be great! Thanks guys!
Attachment 27024Attachment 27025Attachment 27026Attachment 27027

The kit supplied wire will do the job but it is very thin, rather weak and most likely fail without too much warning.

I have gradually gone back and re-wired all my builds with the vintage cloth push back stuff as it is a heavier gauge and much easier to strip as you simply just push back the cloth to expose wire to be tinned and soldered. If your PUP selector switch is close by in the control cavity no need for the braided shielded stuff which seems to be used more where there is a long run required as in the case of where PUP selector switch is located in LP's.

Cheers, Waz

What Waz said. I find it so much easier to wire and solder with the thicker and stiffer push-back wire.

Thin stuff breaks way too easy when trying to strip it back.

Thanks for the advice. Do you guys normally use the 22 awg push back from pitbull's site? or other stuff? any recomendations? Dont really wanna go expensive, spent to much on this as it is haha.

I'd say its worth popping a few extra dollars on! your guitar looks fantastic. I tend to save wire out of stuff that gets checked out, giving me a whole load of bits in different gauges. I tend to go thicker than necessary = don't want to risk any losses!
I can see myself investing in some of the push back stuff, but as you have 4 pots in there i prefer having a few different colours to play with.

Seeing as that the whole guitar output signal goes through a very long distance of 42 or 43 AWG wire in the pickup itself, a a few cm of even the thin kit wire isn't going to cause any measurable losses. You'll lose far more signal (especially the top end) through the capacitance of the guitar lead.

However, I too prefer to use the 22 AWG stuff. It's just easier to work with. I often use the Allparts wire that PBG sell, though with me being in the UK, I get it direct from Allparts UK. But the PBG price is a a good one.

Agree with Simon as on the PBG store site it is only $1.50 per 500mm lengths compared to $0.90 per 300 mm length from All Parts/Real Parts.

I tend to use white for hot and black for earth, and therefore purchase double quantity in black. For your build 1 x white & 2 x black should be plenty and probably even have some left over for other builds or restorations.

Thanks again guys. They are out of stock for the white. Is the braided stuff just as easy to work with? if was to 1x black and 2 x braided?

Would wait for more stock or place an order on the other site if needed in a hurry. Braided would work, just overkill and more chance of introducing a short if some of the outer wires are accidentally touching anything they shouldn't.

The braided stuff is 2 wires in one. The central core is the signal cable and the braid is the ground connection. Which makes it a bit harder to use for wiring in-between pots. You'll have to cut a lot longer and strip back the braid at each end, then twist it together to get a length that you can bend and use. You may also need to run some heat-shrink over it to stop any chance of it touching lignal connections and grounding it all out for a nice silence. It's meant more for longer runs or connection to pickups, but your controls are all within the one control cavity, so it really is a lot of extra hassle to use it. If you want to use the push-back wire then I suggest getting some from Realparts (bottom of the web page) https://www.realparts.com.au/electronics/wire-tape.html

Decided to just go down to my local electronics store and just buy some standard wire that is a fair bit thicker than the wire that comes with the kit. Spoke to a bloke I know from a local music store and he suggested it would be the best way and that you wouldnt notice any difference especially if Im using copper foil in the cavities etc so decided to just do that. Only worry now is working out how im going to thread all this thick wire through the tiny holes of the pots. Just waiting for the copper shielding and knobs etc to arrive now and then the fun begins :)

After a few wiring problems which luckily ended up being easy to fix.. I finally finished the last details of the guitar today. Really happy with how this turned out and cant thank all of you enough for the help and advice you have given me. Will most probably put better pickups etc on this as Im really happy with how it is playing but all in good time :)
Attachment 27241Attachment 27242Attachment 27243Attachment 27244Attachment 27245

That flecked finish is very impressive - it looks about an inch deep. :)

That turned out really well. The bridge and tailpiece aren't as much of an obstruction as they could have been.