Hi folks,
its been a couple of weeks coming but the RC1 is done and has been stress tested by a freind of mine who is a much better player than I am. Other than some on going tuning that will no doubt be required as the guitar beds in, my first guitar is done.
The story so far.
A friend of my is making an acoustic guitar from scratch and its fair to say this inspired me to at least have a go with a kit. I only have acoustics and a bass so an electric guitar seemed fitting. I was going to get the ES kit but on watching the videos and reading about the fiddly electronics fit, thought I'd start with something a bit simpler for my first.
Enter the RC1. I promptly ordered, paid the money, and set about reading the support pages and watching the videos on this site to get the juices flowing.
I happened to be home when the courier pulled up with my PitBull guitar and if I wasn't heading out for a ride along the great ocean road would have stayed home to get started. The packaging had some dents and scratches on it so I took a couple of photos in case it penetrated to the kit. Thankfully all was good on the inside of the box so I set about laying out the kit to check the parts and basic fit.
Having made a lot of kit airplanes (both static and remote control) as a kid I know the value of prebuilding to get your head around how things go together before making it permanent with cuts, glue etc. During this process I found several things that challenged my understanding of the guitar.
Neck setting -
There were a couple of things that didn't gel with the neck in this kit when compared with the video. Firstly, the base of the guitar where the neck was to be glued had a fairly pronounced rocker on it. I'm not sure if this is deliberate to allow adjustment when gluing it in, but (against most of the advice on the site) I set about flushing the base to allow a better fit and stronger adhesion when I got the gluing process and if required, add a shim to set it. I did in the end use a shim of approx 0.5mm on the leading edge.
The second thing that concerned me with the neck was the string length between the 12th fret and the bridge. There is a post on this topic in the support pages. Thanks to Adam and DB for their thoughts on this, and special thanks to Gavin who set the mind at ease. In the end I have a very slight issue with the 12-Bridge length which manifests itself as a marginally flat second scale but its not a huge issue. I could have moved the front humbucker recess a couple of mm and sorted it but as a first attempt I'm happy with the results nonetheless.
Staining and finishing -
I wanted to be able to do this with easy access to products to finish the kit and for this one wen the Mitre 10/Bunnings path for sand paper, stain, glue and shelac.
As the forum says, sand, sand, sand, sand. And when you've had enough, get your wife to sand. So it was. Lots of tidy up with the 240, then a finish with some 400 before the first coat of stain went in. I was going to go with a very dark colour but as the process unfolded I decided to make it look like a refurbished older guitar.
The colour scheme on the body is a black stain sanded back and reapplied, then a baltic stain applied and sanded back with 400 each time, coated with several thin coats of a poly/shelac blend. Again with sanding between coats though now with 600.
There was quite a bit of glue in places on the body that took a bit of rubbing to remove, and a couple of spots I left to avoid sanding valleys in the body. The one area I had the most trouble with is the tail recess. Where the bass wood body finishes and the laminated top starts is a bit finicky and heavily glue laden. For this reason I made this area the darkest finish to hide some of the imperfections. Once the tail piece is fitted it takes the eye away from the body anyway.
Its also worth mentioning that allowing curing time is critical between coats. Patience will prevail. In the absence of patience, the top of a warm oven post dinner can help aid the process on a cold wet day.
Gavin suggested that on his he was going to strengthen the f-hole with some balsa so I followed his lead on this front also. To do this I made a template of the hole by using the old school trick of getting a led pencil and a piece of paper. Masking the paper to the face of the guitar, lightly scribble back and forth across the f-hole with the side of the pencil tip. This will show up the shape on the paper which you can then use as a template for the balsa. Some trimming to make a shape that will fit inside the hole itself, a bit of glue and viola!
The neck I went for a straight shelac/poly finish to contrast the darker body. This really brought out the grain in the maple and I love the look.
Shaping the headstock -
I went for something that would fit in with the body and look a bit Rick. What I ended up with, I think, looks great.
Fitting the hardware -
This was all pretty straight forward. The prebuild process should unveil a logical order to your build. For this kit, I used the bridge holes and pick ups as the anchor point and fitted them first. Where the bash plate was placed was then determined by the remaining space. It prefitted the lot before the soldering process so the holes were in place for the screws when the wiring was complete.
Wiring -
Watched the videos, printed out the schema and off I went. It's not a pretty soldering job but it worked fist go and there is no noise to speak of. And that's without the copper tape which I have yet to acquire.
So there you have it. A guitar in a little over 4 weeks. The next one will get more time to cure and maybe have a second on the go so I have something to do while I hurry up and wait.