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

[Maverick_aus]

@Brendan - thanks for the responses. I'll have a look at that Feast Watson stain.
@Frankenwashie - thanks. Interesting. Good to hear others took a similar approach. No - not too stressful , but both of us were nervous. I'm not 100% sure with the outcome yet, but it's in the ballpark. (more to come soon).
@Fretworn - thanks! Nice to be welcomed to the community

Pickups
In choosing pickups I wanted to try something a little different (and interested to see how a lower-cost pickup compares), rather than the same old standards. After discussing back and forth a few times with Simon from Entwistle, we tried to come up something based on my pickups of reference - Seymour Duncan JB & Jazz. I ended up with the Dark Star (ceramic) (bridge) and HV58+ (neck). They've arrived and look good. Some good attention to detail with tinning of the cable ends. It will be interesting to see how they sound.



Room For Pickup Ring Issue
So on to the issue we found. Recap - whilst the neck as cut fits beautifully for the right length, there's not quite enough room for the pickup ring. (Making room results in the bridge being too far away).
We marked off where to file to. After filing for a little while, Hobbydobby came up with the idea of using our very coarse grit paper instead. This worked rather well. We paused to check and voila! just the distance we needed.


We test-fitted with the pickups in the rings and it's close but fits.


Our sanding/filing job was not perfect as you can see, but will be mostly covered by the ring.

How Should We Handle This?
Onto the next thing to solve:
The neck pocket 'edge' arrived with these two minor imperfections. We're thinking about what to do if anything. Any advice would be most appreciated.

1. On this first one, you can see the wood had split off at the very edge on the corner

Based on feedback in the forums about not sanding or modifying the inside of the pocket, I'm not sure about how to level this corner out.

2a. You can see the thin end of the two sides of the pocket walls come to an end at different points. One is thicker and ends with a right angle to the floor of the pocket. The other (closer to the 'lower point' of the explorer shape) is a little thinner and ends a mil or two short.


With the neck in it really isn't noticeable, but I'd like to get it as perfect as possible and be interested in the what others would do.

2b. The other qn here, in the above photo is the you can see on the shorter one, the verticle line is not straight - it's a little jagged looking. Would you try and straighten it with sanding?

Whether and How to Smooth the Neck-Body connection
My son specifically said he doesn't like the big step from the neck up to the body, and he likes the smooth flowing look from neck to body you see on other guitars.. See below


Could something like this be achieved? Maybe not as scooped but just smoother.


Could we sand down that step to a point where it meets the neck? Or does it need to be thicker for strength?

Also the next spot down: ie the 'D' shaped part on the neck itself, could that be sanded down smooth too?