Checked the kit. Seems to be all right. No damages in the wood, straight neck. Some little things to be sanded, but it's fine.
Started to prepare the body. Had to sand the neck on the sides, for it was too wide for the neck pocket. Fits tight now and good, but I am wondering why the neck raises so hight out of the body? I thought that you can only see the high of the fretboard rising out, but it seems quiet high to me.
It's not an exact copy of an Explorer where the fretboard is at body level, but on the EX-1 it does sit a bit higher. With the flatter neck angle used by the kit it need to be a bit higher in order to get the strings at the right height for the bridge.
Here's my EX-1 when I'd just glued the neck on so you can see the height for comparison.
I would have waited a while after getting the kit before any neck sanding. The wood has been through a lot of different climatic conditions on its journey to you, and it tends to swell up slightly. Always best to leave it one or two weeks before making any decisions on how well it fits.
If it does become loose over time, you can always stick a piece of thin veneer to the side of the pocket and then sand that down until you get a tight fit again before glueing.
Halli. Thank you very much for your answer. Maybe I was already too fast with sanding on the neck, hope I can fix that in case the wood shrinks, as you described. But then I am fine with the neck hight, I really was concerned about thatSo maybe I should slow down a bit. Also will check other threads, for there is a lot of experience inside here
Did you route out a groove to the switch on yours Simon?Originally Posted by Simon Barden
It's not an exact copy of an Explorer where the fretboard is at body level, but on the EX-1 it does sit a bit higher. With the flatter neck angle used by the kit it need to be a bit higher in order to get the strings at the right height for the bridge.
Here's my EX-1 when I'd just glued the neck on so you can see the height for comparison.
I would have waited a while after getting the kit before any neck sanding. The wood has been through a lot of different climatic conditions on its journey to you, and it tends to swell up slightly. Always best to leave it one or two weeks before making any decisions on how well it fits.
If it does become loose over time, you can always stick a piece of thin veneer to the side of the pocket and then sand that down until you get a tight fit again before glueing.
I did. I wanted it to be more Explorer-like. I put a piece of dowel in the original selector switch hole and redrilled it as the second volume control hole. Bought an Explorer pickguard from WD Music and used that to position the selector switch location and draw a suitable wire channel route and routed that out. First go at routing anything and I started off using a cheap router bit that was just too small for the router, so came loose and kept routing deeper as I went along etc. Bought a decent router bit and finished off the job without any more issues. So not as neat as it should have been, but it will all be hidden so am not too concerned.
No doubt about you mate, you come up with some great ideas.! I've never used a router so I can only imagine the trouble I would get in..
I'd seen it done before on here, so I certainly can't lay claim to the idea of doing it! A lot of my knowledge is 2nd hand wisdom. I'm just good at remembering the stuff I've read.
Lack of time to work on the project, but I am trying.
After some first little sanding I started to set up the bridge and hardware to see how it works.
In my eyes an issue appeared which I try to explain. Hope the pics will help, for my English is maybe not good enough and confusing...
When I set the neck 90° to the PUS niche the strings go quiet up on the fingerboard. It does not matter how i move the bridge, it stays quiet the same. But when I move the neck a little over the 90°, the distance between the fingerboardedge and the lower and higher E strings becomes quiet equal. It is just 1 mm, but seems to be enough. Should I better go for that option when gluing the neck to the body, or is it something I can adjust later by setting up the bridge right? I hope I am not too pernickety
Second theme is, that I do not want PUS coverings, similar to the project of wazkelly https://goo.gl/KSY9W9
I want to use some Aluminium bolt, to fill the lower niches under the PUS, to drill proper and stabile holes for the screws, using the springs betweet the PUS and the Aluminium to keep it adjustable. So my question is, if the Aluminium could have some effect on the sound, did someone had experience with that? For it is not magnetic, but maybe could still have some negative impact?
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