A good mate passed this on to me, as changed circumstances meant he wasn't going to progress with it.
You could consider this a continuation of Simon's ESB 4 build diary, but the fittings and accessories will be very different.
Apparently the neck pocket wasn't quite as accurate as one might like, so he had shimmed it with maple veneer so the neck ran down the centreline, but this left the end of the maple shims exposed, which looked worse than one might hope. So to disguise this I first thought of a strip of maple each side, but the piece of maple I had didn't match the body at all. Binding and purfling right round the neck pocket might have been best, but I was unable to duplicate the purfling so I just put in some 2mm white plastic I had. The ends should probably have curved round the pocket, but i wasn't too confident about cutting a neat curve by hand, and it will be fine from five feet away...
I've also tweaked the headstock just a touch to radius the sharper corners as this may end up as something of a knockabout live by the desk instrument.
Next I have to make decisions about bridges and pickups.
The original plan for the instrument, before things changed, was to have a good number of high end components, but they were mostly not to my taste, and also, frankly, a bit pricey. So I've got the standard bridge and no pickups. To my mind the Gibson design the bridge is "inspired" by was not one of their finer moments, either aesthetically or mechanically. What I'd really like to do is to put a Schaller bridge on, which I think will just get down to the required spacing. Providing a flat surface to screw it down to, on the other hand, will be complicated. Alternatively I could purchase the planned upgrade bridge, which is Hipshot, a considerable improvement, but still not that pretty to my eyes.
Oddly I discovered at the back of the cupboard a battered Maxon humbucking pickup which has exactly the right pole spacing. I cannot remember what its provenance is, and I wonder if it dates back to when Maxon were the highly regarded company that manufactured Ibanez' pedals. or alternatively some earlier date and standard of manufacture. Its very battered though. A local distributor has some of Artec's Giovanni series wood encased pickups, and something in me suggests one of those might be rather sweet.
The other thing I'd like to do would be to fill in some of the control holes. "Just" need to find some matching maple. I don't want a full set of 4 knobs and a switch.
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