Itīs been a while but the whole family have been sick for almost a week - the s**t and puke syndrome a k a gastroenteritis....
But - Itīs almost DONE! After the TO had dried I put the pieces together and did the wiring. Too bad the mini switch I had turned out to be broke so I had to bypass it for now. Already took it out to band practice and what can I say except I'm very pleased of the results! Sorry - don't have pics from this stage.
The neck pup is not so muddy that I suspected at first and has some nice growl to it. The single coil on the other hand seems very "thin" compared to the neck pup. Have to maybe raise the pup a bit so that I may get more bass to it (?) - although now it works almost like a bridge pup and works very well with the neck both in series and parallel. Also gives a totally different type of tone by itself. Especially the sound when itīs on series is awesome - had to dial my amp down almost 50% compared to my low power jazz pups!...
So far I love the D'addario Chromes - silky smooth strings as!....
These pics are the closest I got to the real color which is a little more gray and darker still. Hope they give some kind of idea on the color though. My first plan was to put a coat of orange on this but it actually looks very much like old used and weather worn + smoked wood and I just could not hide it.
My plan is to make the truss rod cover from the same wood I have left from the body and finish it the same way to put some of the color on the laquered headstock which is just a bit pale compared to the body. Also I have to figure out a way to use some wood on the knob for the 4-way switch. Other than that it's finished.
I think this build is one example of what you could do with a "bare" kit if you had the option to just order the pre shaped body with just the neck pocket routed. You could more easily then route your own pup cavities of choice when you first just attach the neck and position the bridge. A blank canvas to experiment and put your own vision on it. One cool option would also be to order pre shaped scratchplates if one would for example want to make a P bass with p51 single coil pup, a humbucker, some sort of combo etc. The option would be good for people who have maybe done a few "all included" kits and want to move on to a little more challenging work but don't want a total scratch build just yet.
I've enjoyed this build very much and even though a scratchie it has been my fastest build so far. Took about 50-60 hours to finish and would have been about 20 hours less if I had the "bare option" to order. Considering it was my first time using a router, rasp etc I think it went quite well. Being the fourth build overall I now planned every step a couple of days before I took the tools out and this saved me a huge amount of time too.
So here are the pics I promised at last:
to be continued...
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