Following on from last time, the veneer was stuck in the bottom of the trem cavity and left to dry overnight. The UV resin was poured into the holes (after first putting a few bits of veneer in the 'slots' to help bulk it out so it wasn't all resin) and taken outside to set in seconds in the sunlight.



I then levelled the top of the resin with the router after carefully checking the router depth twice to make sure I didn't repeat my earlier mistake.

The weather was has been quite cold and wet for the past week, so apart from working out how I was going to fit the GK board and still keep both switched pots (I can do it), I didn't do any more until today, when I created the hole for the 13-pin GK socket to sit in.

As you can see, the 13-pin socket is a lot bulkier than standard jack socket, and necessitates the hole being rectangular. As I was all out of rectangular drill bits, I decided to drill out as large a hole as I could, and then enlarge it with a chisel. Yes, I could have tried doing it all with a router, but it would require a reasonably complex jig to support the router above the curved edge of the guitar and whilst I'm getting happier using routers, I'm still not very good at making templates, let alone a template plus a jig.



The socket position was selected so that it's sitting underneath and joining up with the jack socket rout beneath the surface, making it relatively easy to get the two cables and their headers from that rout into the main control cavity. The only other position it really could have gone was on the underside and straight into the control cavity. But, the connector would then be in an awkward looking position on the side of the bottom curve of the body, and you couldn't sit down to play it on your knee in synth mode.

So I marked out the centre of the body depth, in a rough line with the jack plate. I then checked the GK socket when fitted on its mounting plate, and realised that it sat offset on the plate, so I then moved my drill hole centre by 3mm (phew!).



A 22mm forstner bit was used to drill the main hole. I needed a final hole that was roughly 22mm x 28mm, so I drilled out the corner locations with a 4mm bit and then set to with my trusty chisel to remove the remainder of the wood. And in no time (well about 2 hours in all), I had a deep rectangular hole.



I then needed to cut out a rebate for the mounting plate to sit in. In theory, the plastic mounting plate is flexible enough to simply sit on top of the curved edge. But posts in the VG Guitar forum seemed to indicate that this could cause intermittent connection issues with the 13-pin connector, so flat it would be. And in mere moments (maybe another two hours), I had a rebate for the plate.



It then took little while longer to finesse the depth and get it as level as I could, but eventually the socket and plate fitted.



I couldn't quite match the corners of the rebate with the rounded corners of the plate, so I'll either paint the bottom and lower sides of the rebate black to help hide the gap, or else (more likely), make a rectangular plate from pickguard material, that should fit exactly (I can do rectangles and simple round holes).

The next thing to do is to enlarge the cable hole between the jack socket rout and the main control cavity, big enough to get those headers through. And then it's time to drill the 2-point trem post insert holes. They'll probably get inserted directly after that, as I need to work out exactly where the trem will sit when its all set up. Which means fitting the trem temporarily and stringing and setting it up, not something you can really do with tape around the posts (I'll fit some screws into the inserts to keep them clean when spraying the body).

The GK pickup needs to sit 1mm or less from the strings, so I need to know whether I can sit the GK on top of the pickguard, or just have to cut away some pickguard to mount it a bit lower, or whether I need to rout out a channel for it in the body as well. Not something you can really guess at, though I expect a small channel in the body will be required. The pickup can be mounted on springs and made height adjustable, but it's only between 6mm and 8.3mm high, so I don't want to cut away anything unnecessarily and end up with a visible gap underneath it.

Weather forecast for tomorrow (Monday) isn't great (it's a UK bank holiday, so rain is 99% guaranteed), so probably Tuesday before I can do any more work on the body.