The Team will be complete.

[FrankenWashie]

Specialist artist's supply stores?

[DarkMark]

There are other options to transfer an image. I’ve seen acetone painted onto the back of a piece of paper ink side down onto wood to transfer an image.

[WeirdBits]

The two wire pickups do limit your options, particularly with the chrome covers. Any phase or neck & bridge series shenanigans will mean the neck chrome cover would become part of the signal path... and it’s almost impossible to pull these pups apart without destroying them, so you can’t mod them to 4 wire or separate the shield.

If you decide to stick with the stock pups you could always try some funky tone options, like having 2 volumes with a master treble tone and a ‘bass cut’ tone. or something along those lines.

[Simon Barden]

The very high DCR pickup readings (e.g 16.7k) are normally because they've used thinner gauge wire in order to add more turns (for a hotter output) in the space available on the bobbin. As thinner wire is more resistive, that puts the DCR up, and then extra turns are added, which puts it up even more. So they are certainly hotter than the standard, but not quite as comparatively hot as the figures may suggest.

If you are sticking with the kit mini-humbuckers, then I'd use the yellow one on the bridge and red on the neck - providing there was enough cable length to do so.

Remember that it's easy enough to swap out the pickups and pots after the kit is built, so you may want to assemble it first to make sure it plays well enough to be worth spending more money on.

[ozzbike]

Wetsanded to 600 grit with Tru oil.

Love the grain and textures that Mahogany has.

[wazkelly]

Mmmm, that does look purdy.

Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk

[ozzbike]

Mmmm, that does look purdy.

Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk

Waz...when they come back into stock you gotta do one. After a good dose of timbermate mahogany is so easy to work with.

The neck is really well done...and my kit was even bound on the fretboard.

Best quality kit I have seen so far.

Really liking it....the marquetry idea for the pickguard, headstock, and truss rod cover intrigues me.

[ozzbike]

I have had a long haul with this build. Today I did a fret dress and full setup and fitted the Ernie Ball strings from the kit. I am still working on the veneer pickguard and headstock and truss rod cover.

List of work completed:-

Lots of Sanding.....mahogany timbermate pore-filling.....lots and lots of Tru Oil....wet sanding and then Meguiars Polish and Bowdens Own Wax on both the neck and the body.

Factory pickups...factory pots....for now....two by treble circuits on both volume pots...2 x orange drop caps of 0.223uf for the firebird mini-humbuckers. (Not the norm of .447uf as the firebird allegedly has a little more bark to it.) I actually like the tonal differences with other humbucker driven guitars I have.

I have fitted a switchcraft jack socket. However neither the standard or the switchcraft jack have long enough thread to come through to the top side of the guitar body. So, being a little different myself, I bored out the hole to fit and dropped in a chrome recessed tele-style jack socket mount. It looks a little different with the recessed jack socket....but a little more chrome never hurt anything.

The Tune-O-Matic bridge has its own issues of course. I am really not a fan. But the low E string is down to 4/64 and the high E string is set nicely at 3/64 at the 17th fret.

I bought the Grover mini tuners with the kit...and love how easy fitting a string to these locking tuners really is.

Future upgrades:-

1. TUSQ nut.

2. Gotoh/CTS pots.

3. Pickups that are coil-splittable.

Other than that I just want to get the pickguard made out of Veneer and the dark wood headstock veneer and truss rod cover completed.

[ozzbike]

I like the finish and the feel of this guitar.....

(Please note the tuners are set at 90 degrees to the edge of the headstock.....as this headstock shape varies in angle through its length so do the alignment of the tuners.....I tried other ways but they bumped into each other.)

[wazkelly]

Looks pretty damn good Ozzie.

Really surprised how light the natural 'hog came out.

Cheers, Waz