So...a few things .. and the budget is balooning

I still need to deepen some of the fret slots, but I have the fretwire.. 2.7mm stainless jumboes.. I applied some epoxy thinned with a timber treatment to the board, gave it 30 mins to wet out the timber then wiped off the excess:



Since I decided to go with the Metallica theme, I looked up "what strings does Robert Trujillo use?" Turns out , he has his own :



I have read numerous posts around the traps claiming that if you have stainless frets, you will never need a re-fret. I wonder how that statement holds up when stainless strings enter the mix ne?

The pups turned up and the "recommended" wiring added another component to the mix. I swear "recommended" is just a trigger word EMG uses to get more green from gullible schlubs like me. In this case the addition is a pot for active balance control, similar to the passive balance control on my Toby to adjust the neck/bridge bias. The thing ain't cheap. So I ordered the ABC, and then discover *another* component that was part of "recommended". the tone control is an "active tone control" , also listed as VLPF. I looked online for the sucker, and found it at a music store in Victoria I think. Because of the price i was going to wait till next pay day. The next time I went looking for it, I could not find the store, and reverb had secondhand ones for $40somethingand shipping even higher.Yeh, f*** that! The ABC turns up today in a box massively too big for said component. Now, the pups:



See the pups? pretty much the rest of the contents of the box goes ......"in the bin" (viewers of Mighty Car Mods will get the gag). The reason is because:



None of the vendors I looked at mentioned any of the stuff that comes with the ABC. In the package that has the ABC we have the ABC, volume control, and the mythical active tone control. I don't have to buy it! Win!!!!! The wiring diagram with the ABC is identical to the "recommended" wiring diagram that came with the pups. Not sure I will use the knobs that came with it.. think I need to try match what is on the Vulture.

Next step I think is to make the jigs for carving the truss rod channels in the Cliffenbacker, the 8 string and the Unicorn . I'm also looking into using the CNC router at the Men's shed to accurately mark the frets in the other fretboards. I'd like to radius the other 12in radius fretboards while the neck shaping jig has the 12in cams on it.