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.
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
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)...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Gavmeister
