No big deal about the pot shafts. I have a Dremel grinder bit that I use to relieve a bit from the underside. Just feels like work I shouldn't really need to do.

A pickup ring question: both rings have a slight slant to them. It's not immediately obvious if it should tilt towards neck or not. In the one good post y'all shared about another XB-1, the guy replaced them with flat rings, so no data for me.

ALSO, feels like a huge mess: The wiring diagram shows pickup hot to switch and ground to volume pot. While that seems normal, the switch cavity and volume pot cavity are almost 5" away from each other. Am I really supposed to spit the wire cover, untangle the braided ground/shield and run it bare to a different cavity? Seems like a waste of it's shielding power as well as an operation that is likely to end in failure (ime, the braid isn't going to play nice when I try to split away 7" worth). Here's the provided diagram: https://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-co...2H1v3_2014.pdf

I'm a bit leery about breaking the star ground, but grounding the pups to the switch (and switch to pot) would be much easier and I'd get the shielding benefit from the pup wire.