First Guitar - EXM-1 - Built at 15 with my dad.

[Maverick_aus]

Day 1
The package arrived. We checked the contents. Boy made a list of everything and we ticked it off. Everything arrived thanks Adam and co. exactly as promised.



Day 2
One of the major preparation steps was organise the garage! Great excuse. Son and I really motivated to clear the bench and organise the tools.
All ready...


Day 3
Decided on some Entwistle pickups. So we ordered those.
We've done a full dry fit here.
Everything looking very good.


The black hardware chosen by Boy will be rather attractive along with the ebony fretboard.


Found the same thing as a few other forum users/builders: when the neck is placed ideally (for string length), there is not quite enough room for the pickup ring.
As you can see here, with the neck held in place, the ring is aligned in one direction ok, but if I pushed it over the pickup cavity it would bump into the neck.
It's out by a few mm. If we went ring-less, it would be ok, but thinking about either extending the cavity towards bridge, or filing the fretboard back a few mm.


A Further Note on Scale Length
Having watched the very helpful primer video by the Pitbull guys on scale length and compensation, I wanted to know what the precise lengths of the strings should be based on this 'compensation' principle. I did a little more research and found a compensation calculator on a website here: https://www.liutaiomottola.com/formu...mpensation.htm
Based on a scientific paper on the subject, the programmer of the calculator on the website uses formulae to output an offset from the nominal/theoretical length.
For example, on our particular kit neck - measuring from nut to middle of 12 fret = 312.25mm
So the nominal length from 12th to bridge would be 312.25mm as well. With an overall nominal scale length of 624.5mm
Inputting this value into the calculator, the formula takes into consideration some other variables such as the action height, string type (eg electric, steel core) etc and gives an output per string. This output is the extra length you add to the nominal length, to achieve a length which compensates for pitch sharpening. So, based on a scale length of the output for each string was as follows:
String | Pitch | Offset + Nominal length = Total Compensated length
1 | E | 1.32mm + 312.25 = 313.57
2 | B | 2.47mm + 312.25 = 314.72
3 | G | 4.58mm + 312.25 = 316.83
4 | D | 3.67mm + 312.25 = 315.92
5 | A | 4.58mm + 312.25 = 316.83
6 | E | 7.5mm + 312.25 = 319.75

With the neck fit as far into the pocket as it will go, (held with clamp), when i measured these out on the guitar, I found the bridge in a perfect position. The saddles within the bridge have a range of about 8mm they can move, and with that flexibility, we'll be able to hit all the ideal, compensated target lengths as above!

So a) thanks to Adam and co for building such a precise and refined kit. and b) it means we can glue that neck in the 'default' place (as far in as possible against the end of the pickup cavity) and know we're going to be able to set the intonation of the strings ideally.

After sweating a little over the whole scale length business, I'm now feeling a lot more confident that we'll end up with an accurate instrument, and super impressed at the precision of these kits to be honest.

Frets
The other awesome thing is: after straightening the neck, we checked the fret levels and they appear to need almost no work at this stage. (We'll slightly adjust a couple). So again - hats off to Adam as design/organiser and the guys in the factory.

Neck Straightness
Stringing up the low and high Es, and checking the line all the way down to the saddle - the neck appears to be as straight as necessary and needs no adjustment.

Filing fretboard
With the issue above, we had to make a call on either going ringless, or filing a little of the fretboard to accomodate the rings. Boy decided he preferred the 'ringed look', so we filed a few mil off the fretboard! Yikes! I'll post pics tomorrow to show the outcome.