Quote Originally Posted by EsquireEsque View Post
Well - it's got two coats of Danish oil - it needs more but I had to put it together to see what I have now...

It's not wired up and the string trees are still needed (I wanted to see where the strings are first).

Found out the bridge is just a tiny bit crooked) the Neck end is a little less than a millimetre skewed to the lower bout.....

Overall - very happy with a first try.
It looks pretty good! Not sure what you mean by the bridge being crooked. The E strings look symmetrical on the neck, the D & G strings look equidistant from the dots. It looks like you have plenty of travel available for the saddles. If the bridge is slightly twisted it is not enough to attract attention, and would only be an issue if it put there was not enough travel for the saddles or if the strings didn't line up... So, if it were me I'd remind myself that tiny flaws are generally only seen be the builder and I'd declare victory ;-)

There is a lot of fret buzz - but I've noticed aa number of the frets need to be tapped down - acoustically it's not as loud as my Tele - and the tone is a bit "off" with the fretbuzz...... something to try to figure out.
The important thing is that it gets louder once you have it wired up and plugged in ;-)

You may want to check to see that the frets are level. If you haven't got a fret rocker, a leveling beam, a notched straight edge, they are cheap and/or easy to make. You will also need some 350 grit sand paper and a crowning file (I have a baroque crowning file that cost me $25, one of my most expensive luthier tools and worth every penny). If you don't want to spring for a crowning file, you can crown with more ordinary precision or even flat files. It's just more work ;-)

Once the wayward frets are identified you can try to them tap down. Every neck I have worked on has also needed leveling--with one exception. (I had a Warmoth neck that was perfect--but given what those necks cost it should also have mounted itself.)

The strings seem to be tighter - more tension.... I had thought it would be the opposite.
The scale length (24.75) seems to be better for me though.
All things being equal the tension could be less...but a lot of things can affect it--string height and gauge in particular. Will be interesting to see if this is still the case once you have it completely set up.