My first build diary: TLA-1

[Dan McEvoy]

So, I've finally gotten around to getting a bit more time in on my TLA-1 kit. Got the bridge pickup rout extended, router bit couldn't quite reach the bottom. I'll probably take care of that with a dremel later, main thing is to get things moving forwards so I can do a full mock build:



Bridge mounted:



Done a bit of initial shaping to the body, mainly around the cutaway, to make things line up with the scratch plate a bit better:



Aaaaaannnndddd.........Bugger :









I couldn't find anything on a sure-fire on how to determine the exact centre-line & I used several methods to try and determine it, they all came out within 1mm of where I placed the bridge but there's clearly a much greater distance from string to edge of the fretboard on the treble side sadly. I unscrewed the bridge after this and making sure the two strings were the same length and the bridge square across the guitar, I determined that I would have to move the bridge towards the treble side by 3mm which places the centre-line from the bridge quite obviously toward the treble side of the guitar.

Nut has shifted a bit possibly which may contribute but not the full 3mm it seems to be out by, was going to replace that with a GraphTech one anyway as I figured I'd just do the initial mock build with this one but might have to replace that first possibly?





Anyways, looks like I will have to plug those holes with dowel and re-mount the bridge sadly. Any help or suggestions on what might be my best course of action from here would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Dan