Simon B's Custom ES-1/ES330 style build

[Simon Barden]

Well, I ordered a laser printer and some decal paper. The laser printer is here and installed, just waiting for the decal paper to arrive.

And then the custom wound dog-ear P90s pickups arrived today from Creamery. There is something about me and pickups. I'm not having much luck with them.

The bridge pickup is fine. The cover sits nicely over the mounting ears and flat against the top of the bobbin.



The bridge pickup I like. It's a lovely pickup for the bridge position. As soon as I saw it, I said, "Hello! What a lovely pickup for the bridge!"

However, the neck pickup is another matter.





Those with good eyesight may have spotted the issue straight away. For the rest of you, I will point out the large gap between the mounting ears and the underside of the pickup cover. So when installed on the guitar, a) there is a big gap between the cover and the body and b) the pickup sits too high on the body, so even if the cover was deeper, the top of the pickup sits far too near the height of the neck for comfort.




The cover height is about right for the location of the pickup, so it's the height of the legs for the mounting ears that's incorrect.

Looking back at the bridge pickup, you'll see that the legs are very short, but the cover is correspondingly tall. In comparison, the legs on this neck pickup may be described as of 'medium' length, when in fact they need to be 'long'. (Note that the neck is only loosely fitted and not glued in, and that the neck rout need to be enlarged backwards by 1mm as the cover doesn't quite fit in against the end of the neck).

These are handmade custom wound pickups, so I fail to see how their maker got it so wrong and still sent them out. I ordered these on 30th Jan, so have been waiting quite a while for them. A(nother) complaining email sent and am now awaiting a response (Creamery is a one-man outfit, so emails take some time to be responded to).

[Simon Barden]

I got my neck pickup back from The Creamery. Jaime had just bent the base plate ears so that the pickup sat lower, which now gives me a perfect fit.

The transfer idea over the abalone disk on the headstock worked very well. I'm now just recovering form an ill-fated attempt to add some lettering on the face of the headstock, where the glue I used to try and stick a reversed transfer on wasn't clear enough and also attacked the paint. So at the moment I'm just adding TO coats to fill in the pits it left.

This was with the abalone disk stuck on and 4 coats of black paint sprayed on to build the level up to that of the disk (paint scraped off disk surface):




Another 4 coats and the paint level matches the disk. This was it before scraping and levelling the paint:




And here's the headstock with the decal over the disk. This was following a sanding level to remove all teh sunken grain lines. It's then had a quick cover with TO that has attracted quite a lot of dust and looks rather gritty.



It then has several coats of Tru-Oil, a sanding flat, then attempts to add some decal lettering down the middle like a LP headstock ('Three Thirty' in a script font). I should have done this before sanding down the headstock spray paint, but I wasn't thinking ahead and was more interested in seeing what the decal over the abalone looked like.

It should all work well in the end, but that will be a few days off yet (grrrr). At least its a clear sunny day here, as opposed to the week of light to heavy rain we've just had, so I can go outside and do some other things.

[Sonic Mountain]

Logo looks pretty rad. Shame about the grit but hopefully a good cut back will smooth it out.

[Simon Barden]

It does smooth out after a sand.

[VonScott]

The logo looks awesome!! Do you do your own decals or outsource them?

[Simon Barden]

I printed by own. Just bought a Brother colour laser printer (so cheap these days!) and some decal paper. One big benefit with lasers is that the toner doesn't dry out over time like the ink in inkjets does, so for me, it's ideal as I don't do much printing at all. The colour printing on transparent decal paper gets really washed out when on a black background, so I'm trying the reverse printing method with an outline filled in with a metallic gold Sharpie, and once the headstock is in a suitable condition again (almost there), I'll be adding that decal (as long as it sticks OK).

In future, I think I'll use the same method for any headstock lettering when I'm doing a black headstock; a thin piece of inlay as the backing for the lettering, then build up with paint to the same level, flatten it all off, add a black outline decal over the top and then clear coat the lot.

[Simon Barden]

So this is the headstock with the text. I just hope I can get it to blend with the background. I've a little bit of tidying work to do with the black Sharpie, as some of the metallic gold ink has spread outside the black outline. No Tru-Oil over it yet, so there's a difference in reflectivity at the moment.

[Gary B]

Simon, have you used Creamery pickups before?
Its a way off but I have something else from his range in mind for my next build so would be interested in your thoughts on them.
I love the headstock. Heck of a lot of work but the sort of touch that really makes the guitar your own.

[Simon Barden]

No, first time with Creamery. Jaime is a bit disorganised. He sent me an email about soime alternate metal pickup covers, to which I replied immediately, but then he modded and sent the pickup back before even checking to see if I'd replied. But his prices are very reasonable for custom pickups; you'd pay the same (or more) for Seymour Duncans.

I think the lettering will work. It's got a couple of coats of Tru-Oil on now, and once I've built-up enough to hide the step round the decal, it should look fine.

But the next one, the ESB-4, will have the lettering done in the same way as the logo, with a white pearl veneer behind it rather than the abalone of the logo.

[Gary B]

Thanks Simon. I look forward to your opinion on how the pups sound when the time comes