It has to be a solid colour because of the exposed bridge pickup rout, which has been filled in at the ends and the rout widened.

I sanded down the sealer/filler and the first coat of sonic blue has been applied.



My second go at routing a scratchplate also ended in a small chunk tearing out in the neck cavity area where it couldn't be fixed by modifying the shape, so a lot of swearing and some more blanks ordered. I will revert to rough jigsawing and then sanding to shape, and will then fix the scratchplate on the body and rout out the neck surround area on the guitar to get an exact match (I did this on the Hexacaster scratchplate and that worked well). I can also mark out the control plate join and get that a slightly better fit than the stock scratchplate does.

Oh, and of course this meant I had to order an oscillating bobbin sander so I could do it properly.