GHQ-1M - Pinky

So first off I want to preface this by saying DAMN YOU, ADAM!! I was all content to work on other stuff then you had to go and get a REALLY REALLY interesting kit in that I couldn't bloody resist.

So with that out of the way, yea I couldn't help see a Headless Semi-Hollow and take the plunge with it. Too intriguing of a design for me, and hey we'll see how it goes.

First impressions: Holy hell it's light. I don't have any scales to weigh it, but i am pretty sure the Trem itself is heavier than the whole guitar. Weighs damn near nothing.

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Body work was pretty decent. Lot of the routs on the top have little shavings hanging off them, a "freshly routed but not cleaned up yet" sort of feeling. Feels solid, and some decent thickness on the neck, which I always appreciate personally.

Haven't had a chance just yet to grab some good pictures to show the figure, but the top figure looks pretty decent, and there's a bit running through both the fretboard and the back of the body!

In doing a dry fit, it was mostly good. I'm a little unsure what screw are used to hold the bridge down at the moment, but I'll grapple with that part later. I did notice though that the Bridge Pickup Rout was not wide enough for the pickup, strangely. Will have to file that back, nothing that can't be fixed.

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Also on the Treble side of the neck, right near the Zero Fret, the fretboard has been cut in a little bit more than the neck. Not sure what my plan is with that at the moment, I don't think it was particuarly noticable when I held the neck because of how close to the end of the neck it is.

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At the end of the day though, it's pretty much just little fix-ups to deal with.

In terms of finishing, I'm planning on staining it Pink, with Wipe-on-Poly on top.

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Stain of choice. Saw a sample image on their Facebook page and it looked pretty much right on what I wanted.

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However Cass did include a sample of their Purple because the pink apparently has a tendency to be a bit thin. I'm not sure if I'll go with straight Pink, or a blend, that's gonna be down to some testing. Also not totally sure how the Maple will take it, but hey we'll see.

here's another one my 5YO will want :)

I love that you're taking something that is already pretty eye-catching, and staining it hot pink. :D

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In doing some testing with the stains on some Pine I had lying around, I definitely understand what Cass meant by the Pink being a bit thin. It doesn't get soaked in to the wood as well as the black stain I used on my Strat neck, or even the Purple stain here.

That being said, the colour of the Pink is pretty much spot on what I want, and if I do a couple of coats of it, it does get in there well enough to give the colour I want.

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Also did a couple on the back of a Maple neck for another build that will be covered over later, to see how that took the stain

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Happy enough with that all to lock the colours in

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Originally Posted by G-Axe

I love that you're taking something that is already pretty eye-catching, and staining it hot pink. :D

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What can I say? I just love the colour!! Haha

Snagged a couple of damp top wood images too. The top is quite nice, the fretboard didn't come through as much as I expected, and the back of the body has some nice little rivers through it. Quite happy with the figure.

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And finally: While I was testing them out, I mentioned to my partner that I had the idea in the back of my mind that maybe I could stain the fretboard pink too, but after seeing how it came through on one part of the Maple neck (not shown cos it didn't turn out great, and was more grainy than figure-y) I thought I'd pass. But she suggested instead doing the fretboard with the Purple. So I did a quick mockup to get a rough idea of the colour pairing and now that is the plan!

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Got delayed a bit 'cos I needed some coarser sandpaper (only had 600+ around somehow...) but sanded it smooth, filed out the pickup rout to get the pickup in, and taped up the binding to start staining

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Second one's probably the most accurate picture to the real life colour at this stage

Then did the fretboard and back, and this is where we're at

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Super happy with the colours. The Pink took a bit of work to get in there, and doubling back over parts, but the stain is pretty easy to work with. Purple took a bit to work in to the Maple of the fretboard, but MAN it the Mahogany ate it up when I did the back.

Overall though, super happy with the stains, and will almost certainly use more at a later date.

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Did end up with some bleed and carelessness getting some on the top, but I'll sand that back and give it a finer go again with the Pink, not today though haha

I like where this going. Be interested to hear about how the finished guitar plays.

Gosh I really am awful at getting builds done in timely fashions. Small update, pics soon.

Cleaned up the binding, edges and most of the stain runs. Still a couple of little bits visible but I'm ok with them. Little accidents and flaws are what makes something your own.

Went over the back of the neck with Purple, the Pink just didn't come through super well on the non-figured Maple.

Snagged some PRS SE pickups for cheap to pop in there. Heard good things from the videos I've seen with them and always prefer the extra options of 4-wire pickups. Will be hooking them up with Series/Parallel switching (hopefully just a single Master Toggle for it).

Gonna start oiling it tomorrow, expecting good things as my test pieces with the oil didn't tint the pink drastically.

And just need to pick up some screws to lock the bridge down. Even though I did a try fit when I got it, I didn't investigate thoroughly enough to check the smaller things like screws. I think it was also missing a Trem arm, but I've heard bad things about these Trems, so I'll be locking it off since there is a bit in the back of it to do so.

I think that's pretty much all. Was good to finally get back in to it, even if it's a small step overall. Have a good day, everyone!

Alright first coat of oil on the front. Doing front of both neck and back first and at once since it's a set neck and I have no good way to set this thing up to hang if I was doing everything at once.

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Not sure how much it's gonna show up in the pictures, but it is definitely showing the grain better now, as pretty much would be expected. Got some nice depth to it. It's also made the Purple a bit, i guess richer? Deeper? It's a bit darker and less washed out than it looked before, which is good!

Also while it overall hasn't drastically changed the colour of the pink, there are some parts of the figure in which the amber of the oil does show through a little more but I don't think it shows in the pics. I wasn't sure how I felt about it as I was putting it on but it looks fine, and it might even just be something that I only notice because I'm extra aware of what I'm doing with it.

Either way, happy results.

Man, I was so close to being done on this tonight. Ah well.

I've declared the oiling done, partially because well it's probably got enough on there, partially because I'm gettin' damn tired of waiting on it and I wanna get it done gosh darn it!

Mocked in the PRS pickups I got in to it, I'm not normally big on Zebras but I'm pretty happy with how they look there.

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Also upon putting the bridge plate in there to get it lined up to drill it, I noticed that there just was only half enough wood under two of the intended screw holes. Woops. So chunked off a couple of bits of wood I had lying around, glued them up and they're drying now.

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And well I have lost my chuck key for my drill, so I can't even get the other hardware pieces on there tonight sadly. With some luck, might have it all ready to go tomorrow though!! Also pictures of the back will come then. Didn't really wanna move the guitar around too much while the glue's drying.

Looking forward to seeing this one complete.

Thanks Fretworn, almost there, coulda been there last night but well when do things ever go perfectly to plan.

So all the hardware is on now, and I'm really pleased with how it looks

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I did mention offhand that I'd stained the back of the neck purple in one of my previous posts, but this is the first picture I've popped up. Since I used pink on it first it ended up a lighter purple than the body, which I am totally happy with, it still looks nice to me.

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Now, no strings on it at the moment because while I was grappling with understanding this (to me) completely alien bridge and nut system, I was trying to lock down the low strings and I'm not totally sure if I crossthreaded the screw or if it was just the metal isn't very solid, but I stripped the thread of the nut. I've ordered a replacement for it and I'll be a bit more careful with it. Hoping I don't have to resort to completely redoing things to fit a new type of nut on, but we'll see what happens.

Actually might be useful to comment on the stains too.

Now that I've used these, I wouldn't say I don't recommend them, but there's some caveats with it all.

The way that the stain feels to apply, it kind of feels like it sits on top and doesn't penetrate the wood very well. With the Pink it worked fine because it was a light colour and the figure was able to shine through well. The purple though, there was a good few rivers of figure throughout the fretboard and the back wood, but none of that really came through at all, it was all just a deep purple.

But in saying that, I don't think that's strictly a bad thing. I think if you've got a less interesting wood or something that you want to get a more solid colour on (like it was with the back of mine) then I'd say go ahead. The stains are nice to work with, the colours that I got were really nice, plus there's a whole whole heap of colours available, and I do possibly have plans to use some of the others in future. Some cool Pearlescent and Metallic ones are available that I suspect could look pretty good honestly.

But yea, I'm happy with how it turned out, but they're definitely not gonna be ideal for every project.

The purple is a nice shade, even if it covered some grain!

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Originally Posted by JohnH

The purple is a nice shade, even if it covered some grain!

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Yea definitely can't complain about the shades, happy with that part for sure!

Got the replacement nut today, and got strings on there safely, but looks like the nut is sitting up a bit, and not pulling the B and high E strings down on the Zero fret properly. I'll have to pull it back off in the morning and see if filing the shelf down a bit will do the job, or if I'll have to fill and re-drill a hole.

Alright, tried to shim and do a little bit of filing and so on to try and get the nut sitting properly, but no luck. So re-drilling it is gonna be the go. Got it all set up, just waiting on it to dry now.

I really like the way the purple came out on the back of the neck.

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Originally Posted by PJSprog

I really like the way the purple came out on the back of the neck.

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Thanks PJ! Happy with it too!!

I think we're all done now!! Had a bit of an issue with the grounding but sorted now. Had a wire heading to the bridge, and ran it under the bridge plate, but the connection there wasn't doing the job, so soldered it on to the corner of the plate. Looks a little sloppy, but it's not right up front and it saved having to take it apart at all haha

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And a couple outdoor shots

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I think that's about it! Happy with how the pickups are sounding in it too. Overall, quite happy with the build :)

What’s it like playability wise?

I'm going to have to preface my comment with damn you too. I didn't realise he had a headless kit either. Now I gotta get one.
Love the stain work all except the back which is just a tiny bit dark for me but that's a personal thing.

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Originally Posted by Fretworn

What’s it like playability wise?

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It's... Different. The headless-ness throws me off a little bit, but not so much that a bit of playing won't get past that. The action would probably be too high for most people, and there's not a great way to lower it at all because the posts on the bridge aren't adjustable. But I've never been a big shredder so it's not the end of the world for me personally.

Honestly though, getting a good replacement for the bridge would make it a good deal better, because that's really the weakest part of the kit. The fine tuners aren't great, the saddles are super tall so there's only so far you can lower them, and it just doesn't feel great. I've had the bridge locked the whole time so as a Trem bridge I can't say for sure, but I've seen other people talk about the bridges being awful for it, and just from what I've felt from it, I would definitely suspect they're right.

Everything else about the guitar though I dig. It's insanely light (even with the bridge), the neck feels good and the semi-hollow nature helps with sustain. So I'm happy with it overall.

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Originally Posted by Oby

I'm going to have to preface my comment with damn you too. I didn't realise he had a headless kit either. Now I gotta get one.
Love the stain work all except the back which is just a tiny bit dark for me but that's a personal thing.

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I KNOW RIGHT?! He just got me again with a surprise Mockingbird kit too, so I guess there's no escape haha

Thanks!! I do kind of agree with the Purple on the back. If I did it again I'd put a layer of Pink on first as with the neck, but I'll still take it as it is haha

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Originally Posted by B'Lark

If I did it again I'd put a layer of Pink on first as with the neck, but I'll still take it as it is haha

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And if you don't mind I'm gonna pinch that idea with a twist for my next project. I've got some purple thermochromic pigment powder I've been wanting to use but I couldn't think of a background colour. Pink it is. :p

OK, Little update:

This guy was giving me a bit of grief with playability. The routing in the back for the bridge plate wasn't quite deep enough to give a lower action. The bridge saddles are chunky and I couldn't lower them any more than they already were.

I was going to file the saddles down, and leave the routing as is, but it was getting to be a drag doing that, and I took a chisel to it. The carved section is separate pieces of wood to the back, so I had a guideline to take off as well, which helped a ton.

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Hopefully this shows that it's sitting down a bit further than what it was, the edge of the guitar shows the original level.

So now I am able to set the string height properly. Unfortunately not all is done yet, I've got a bit of fret levelling that I'll need to do, hopefully sort that on the weekend.