DK's STA build

[dave.king1]

The black bits came to the door today and a quick dummy fit suggests that this is going to come up alright

[wokkaboy]

nice one Dave, love black and yellow combination. You got black tuners to go on as well ?
Is this a Pitbull hardware upgrade or other ?

[dave.king1]

nice one Dave, love black and yellow combination. You got black tuners to go on as well ?

Sure do, the full PB black option kit.

I've got to flat the clear off and polish before assembly, it's had a couple of weeks to cure so I reckon be this time next week it should be all together and settling before full setup

[wokkaboy]

good work Dave, this will be a cool looking axe when its buttoned up

[stan]

total black out looks just the thing!

[dave.king1]

A bit of an outbreak of tourettes here today, I hit it lightly with a bit of 1200 wet to flat the clear off and bugger me I have undercoat showing through on the front of the lower horn where it won't be covered by the pickguard.

The guitar is to be a worker not a show pony but I would like it be be a bit better than it is now for it's first outing so off to Supercheap tomorrow for another can of yellow and clear to touch up a spot about half the size of a match head ( maybe 2mm )

[dave.king1]

More bloody Tourette's today, touched up the spot I had rubbed through and decided to get the buffer out today and bring the shine up.

Bloody thing tossed the pad which left my with some pretty serious wheel spin on the back, looked like one of my sons had chucked a burnout on it.

So it was out with the wet & dry to get the marks out and respray, it's in a nice warm dry room so should be good to try again soon.

[wokkaboy]

Bummer Dave with the small set backs. Should look a treat once it's all sorted

[dave.king1]

More Tourette's again, last night I bolted the neck on taped up the body and marked it up to set the bridge up.

The 12 fret to bridge is too long by about 8mm which reminded me of Pab's issue with his previous STA, I did bring it to Adam's attention straight away and then went away to go through all of the possibilities which I will report back to him.

Both of my Teles and my Strat have 21 frets and the length of the fretboard on these three and the STA are the same so I am ignoring fret spacing of the higher frets for now, next step was to compare my Fender pick guard with both the black and white pickguards, identical down to the screw holes, likewise the bridge is identical.

With the Fender pickguard in place the bridge route is pretty much in the correct place give or take maybe 2mm.

All of the above tells me that the intonation lengths should be close to spot on but they aren't and I have no idea of why.

If I bring the bridge as far forward as I can in the route and bring the E1 saddle right forward I have a couple of mm to play with the intonation, given that the rest of the strings are all a little longer than the E1 when intonated I think I can get away with it and if I can't I'll knock 5mm off the heel of the bridge where it contacts the socket to pull it in a bit.

So where is the issue :-
The neck is the same length as a 21 fret Fender neck
The Fender scratch plate mounts in an identical position
The bridge has the same dimensions
With the bridge in the middle of the cavity the nut to 12th fret is 323mm and 12th fret to bridge is 335.

This simply does not compute, if everything is the same dimension as a Fender Strat why is the intonation so far out and how can it be that bad a manufacturing fault when everything is identical to "the real thing"

The stock Strat trem is only for wiggles not dive bombing ( which it can do ) or soaring ( which they won't do happily ) and I only want wiggles for James Wilsey type sounds ( Chris Issac Wicked Game )

I can make it work one way or the other so watch this space.

[GeneralKaos]

Yeller n black look good together!