Dan's SG-1F

[Dan]

It's Fathers Day so I finally got to open my SG-1F kit and will be able to start sanding soon enough.

The top looks pretty decent. The body seems to be three and a bit pieces with a little extra bit opposite the control cavity. A bit of different colouration on one of the horns as well so I think that's confirming my thoughts of doing a burst with black around the edges. I'll probably go pretty dark or even black on the back as well since there's quite a bit of variation there as well.

The neck seems quite good. The frets are a little rough on the edges but still better than many guitars I've picked up in shops. The shape feels pretty good in my hand as well. The maple has some interesting figure on it so I'm not sure what to do there either - leave it a lighter colour or go dark and try to match the body.

The neck doesn't fit in the body at the moment either so I'll need to sand it down a bit before I can get a proper feel for how it will come together.

[wokkaboy]

Hi Dan, nice fathers day prezzy ! Kit looks pretty good. Your plans sound good. Get a sanding block and sand the sides of the neck pocket till the heel fits nice and snug. I recall building this kit (about 3 years ago) and think I had to cut a small notch out of the step in the neck heel for the neck pup to fit. Once you get the neck in place check the scale length, ie distance from crown of 12th fret to bridge saddles should be about 317 ish mm to low E saddle and 314ish to high E saddle. From memory I may have chopped a bit of the bottom part of the heel to move the neck closer to the bridge to get those distances

[Dan]

The last photo shows the step, there's two steps in the neck and I assume the top bit is what you are talking about for the pickup to fit in. The fretboard isn't quite square across where that cutout has been made so I'll see how it looks once I get the neck to slide in.

[wokkaboy]

Hey Dan, please post a pic of the neck where you think it isn't square. If you aren't happy with it then it can be replaced

[Andy40]

yummy flamed

[Dan]

I sanded the neck down so it would go in tightly and did a mock build.

There's a couple of minor issues which shouldn't be too much of a problem:

• The routing in the control panel is not quite deep enough, so there isn't quite enough thread on the pickup selector switch and output jack to fit all the washers
• One of the tone knobs doesn't push down fully so it sits up a bit (I'll probably get some different knobs anyway)

When I had the neck lined up with the pickup route I got the following measurements:

	Adjusted back	Adjusted forwards
Low E	321mm	315mm
High E	318mm	313mm

I get 313mm for the nut to 12th fret, so I think it should be ok as is?

I've added some photos of the neck - there's about 1mm difference in the distance from the last fret to the end of the fretboard on either side. So there's a slight gap when the cover is in place. I think it will be fine, I'll just make sure to blacken that bit of the neck so it can't be seen.

[Dan]

I've been doing a bit of sanding and dyeing this week. The top has been dyed black and sanded back in preparation for some colour, and now the back and sides have been dyed black as well.

The basswood hasn't taken the dye 100% evenly (the middle piece is a lot lighter than the others) but I don't reckon it looks too bad. I'm not sure if I'll go one more hit of black or leave it as is now.

[Dan]

A bit more dyeing and I've come up with this. The neck is almost sorted as well so soon I'll be on to finishing.

[Andy40]

It might darken up with the finish...what finish are you going to use Dan?

[Dan]

It might darken up with the finish...what finish are you going to use Dan?

The plan is to use boiled linseed oil, let that soak in well and then some thinned varnish wiped on over that. I'm expecting a bit of darkening and some yellowing like I saw on a test piece of meranti.