It's finally looking less like a project and more like a bass. As of a few minutes ago, all the electronics are in. I have strung it with two strings for test purposes. The nut is not yet at the right height and is in with no glue just for test purposes, and the guitar is strung with just two strings at the moment... Even so, I was able to play a short walking bass line on it and it sounded pretty good. It has a bit of a buzz when it's in the stand, but it's better when I am holding it. Not too bad for single coils, and the tone controls roll off a lot of it.

The flaw in my "shielding" approach was two-fold. First, I underestimated how flexible the harness would need to be to be able to work it through the f-hole and into place. The other problem was that for some reason it was difficult to get a good solder bond between the wire mesh tubes and the pot cases. So in the process of working them into place the first time, three of those bonds failed. I also broke a couple of other connections.

This time I was much more gentle, but still broke off the connection to the bridge ground wire. It's fortunate that I saw it at all, but I only saw it after the harness was entirely inside the cavity. I manage to solder it to the harness through the f-hole. That took some doing. All in all, I am pretty sure that it took me between 2 and 3 hours to fix the connections and work everything into place. Most of the time was working stuff into place.... But it's all in and working! Whew!!