hi guys,
I finally finished my first 335 semi-hollow guitar kit today and I thought I'd share the results. It wasn't a Pit Bull kit, hence its appearance in this section, but I'm pretty happy with the results all the same. I finished the body of the guitar in Colortone (Stewmac) Vintage Amber dye, trying to pop the grain with repeated applications. The neck is natural mahogany which has been grain filled with dark timbermate. The neck and body were then covered in countless layers of Tru-Oil to finish.
In terms of hardware, I replaced the pots with 500K CTS, the tone caps with orange drops and the output jack and 3-way switch with switchcraft items. I have installed a treble bleed on each volume pot, and wired them up using Vintage 50s wiring. I also added the independent volume mod. The pickups are GFS surf-90s, and they really bring the jangle. Since the Surf-90s do not provide additonal wires for coil splitting or wiring out of phase (only a ground and hot wire are supplied), that was the extent of the mods for this build.
I gotta say, it sounds sweet - even though I broke the smallest E string on its first run out. I owned a 12 string acoustic many years ago and I seem to remember this being quite common then too. I must remember to use the delicate artistic hands, not the rock power hands on this one...
cheers,
Gavin.