Friday I pick up where I left off. Nearly. My pickup rings arrived in the post on Thursday, and as I'm figuring out which is the neck and which is the bridge, I notice that the fretboard is poking halfway into the pickup cavity (something I was plainly aware of well in advance from reading other EX-1 build diaries, but apparently forgot until after I'd glued the neck.)
So, not wanting to run a router over it without a some sort of jig/guide, and not wanting to invest the time to creating said jig/guide - I grab my forstner bits and drill out a quarter inch worth of fretboard/neck. I used a small one for the initial drilling, and a bigger one like a router bit to smooth off the edge.
Not the prettiest solution, but one that will keep things moving, and most of the ugliness will be hidden by the pickup ring. So in the photo, you can see where the paint has flaked away, and my feeble attempts to fix it by spraying some paint into a shot glass and touching it up with a little brush.
That just wasn't going to work, so I mask up the whole thing, and spray to cover the bit of the neck I'd left unpainted as a glue surface, as well as the bits that had flaked away when the vinyl came up.
Once it's touch dry, the mask comes off, and the hardware goes in. I use the drill press to push in the bushings, and use a multimeter to ensure continuity through the painted tail (thanks Simon for the hint on that - I had to scrape back some paint where the tail contacts the post.)
The pickups go in, and so do the tuners - tomorrow I just need to finish the wiring, string it up and set up the intonation/relief. As it stands, there's a bit of back bow in the neck, which might come up under tension, but I suspect I'll be giving the truss rod a work out.
Barring some catastrophic failure in the wiring, or a neck that pops out once I put some tension on it - I might actually have this thing ready for tomorrow night. It will never stand up to close scrutiny, and will probably end the night with the vinyl lifting and half the paint missing - but after a few beers who's going to notice?
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