Copper KH-1

[HooligansMusicLab]

I'm back. Sorry for leaving you hanging for a few days. The tragedy I mentioned above was that I loaded the freshly painted and clear coated body into the car to take to my father's shop to show him the paint job. Upon arriving, his dog leapt into my car and dug his toenails through my beautifully finished guitar! He left deep gouges in the finish and sent me all the way back to square one. I don't have pics of the damaged body. It was just too traumatic.

But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I learned from the experience that the Rustoleum clear I had used was neither especially hard, nor well adhered to the copper paint. A better clear coat solution would have to be found. Also, I had been thinking that the volume pot hole was too close to the pick guard, and this was a good opportunity to move that hole a bit. My father felt guilty about his dog messing up my paint job, and offered to do the body work to get the body back in shape. He filled holes and sanded. I moved the volume pot hole. He sprayed it with automotive primer. I sprayed it with Rustoleum copper again. He sprayed it with nitrocellulous. I was back in action!

[wokkaboy]

good result in the end HML !

[HooligansMusicLab]

While that was going on, I got to looking at the pickups. I knew I wanted to add a push pull pot so that I could split the humbucker, but the humbucker that came with the kit only had two wires. It had a plastic cover on it, so the first job was to get the cover off and see if I had access to the wire that carried the electrical signal from the first coil to the second. The cover was glued on with some sort of foamy white glue, and it gave me some trouble prying it off, but eventually it came off. And the verdict on the wires? Luckily, the wire I needed (short black wire in the photos) was easy to get to.

[HooligansMusicLab]

I snipped the wire and soldered up a pair of new wires that I'd be able to use later for the coil split.

[HooligansMusicLab]

I did a mock up of the pickups in the guitar and decided at that point that the covers would have to come off of the single coils as well. Not only did I like the look better, but the plastic covers meant I couldn't really know how far the poles would be from the strings. These covers were also pretty seriously glued on, and the tops of the pickups had been painted or coated in something black, so the poles couldn't be seen. It was a pain to clean the poles, and I can't say I did a great job if you look closely. But they look pretty nice from 5 feet. It was also time to shield the cavities.

[HooligansMusicLab]

About this time I noticed that the humbucker ring that came with this flat top guitar kit was angled, causing the humbucker to sit out of parallel with the strings. I had to do some sanding to flatten it.

[Andyxlh]

I wonder if that humbucker ring is from the neck pickup on a les Paul? Kinda looks like it.
Looking great so far!