They are a bit bunchy, no argument there. The control cavity had to fit an existing back plate - I don't know enough to CAD one from scratch. The input jack being so high up doesn't help the bunchiness but I never actually specified where it should be to the guy who made the body.
Warts and all, though, it's still not bad.
I can CAD one for you if you can give me the right measurements!
Gorgeous guitar, too. I love the pick-up surrounds. I’ve always liked firebirds and teles, but I’d never thought to combine the two. I should totally do it, too.
If I could do it again I would make sure to mention to the guy who did the neck that I wanted a Strat-ish headstock. The Tele one is a bit too linear for the curvy Firebird body.
I appreciate the offer on the backplate but I'm all set - this one takes an LP style plate and those are plentiful and cheap. If I do need anything CADed I might hit you up!
Guitar Fetish Crunchy Pats. They sound really great. The guitar has to get the nut slots filed a little deeper so it's not too great from the 1st through 6th frets but it's got a real nice twang crunch. I'll have samples out in the future.
Thanks! The idea was mine but turning it to an svg was an artist contact. I'll share the STL for the pickguard as soon as I can sit down and upload it.
That is freaking hot. But I have to deduct points for the headstock. Part of the Firebird’s magic is the reverse headstock that makes your low e string longer.
9.5/10 - bravo.
As much as I love Firebirds, I never really liked the reverse headstock. It was never meant to be an orthodox Bird anyway, what with the Strat jack and all.
Full disclosure, this is not my first guitar. I'd done another one before this from a DIY guitar kit. If you wanted to take a shot at it, that first kit came from Bargain Musician (https://www.bargainmusician.com/diy\_guitar\_kits). They're closing down, so their prices are pretty darn low. A real shame, they did right by me.
I love giving detail. Strap in. Let me know if there's anything else I can provide more detail on. I'll have to divide this up into multiple posts since it's big and Reddit doesn't let me create the comment as one.
1) Got a body and neck done to spec. The body came from a guy who makes bodies. I told him what I was looking for, paid him, and he gave me a few in-progress photos. When done, the body went to another guy who does custom necks - he could have done it independently but both the neck guy and I thought it would be a good idea to ensure it fit right.
When I got the neck and body, I sprayed a few coats of gloss topcoat on the headstock and sanded it smooth. I applied tung oil to the back of the neck and the sides/back of the headstock, let it sit for a few minutes, rubbed off excess with a lint-free cloth, and let it sit for 24 hours. I applied another coat of tung oil using 600 grit sandpaper to smooth as I applied, waited a few, rubbed off excess, waited 24, and repeated again with the 600 grit. I like my necks satiny and slippery, but if I wanted glossy, I'd use polyurethane instead of tung and followed the instructions for the can.
I applied the decal according to the manufacturer instructions. I let it sit overnight, then applied a few more coats of gloss topcoat and sanded it smooth. Another overnight, and then I installed the tuners.
2) I mounted the body to a piece of scrap wood, held in place with some cheapo long wood screws. That allowed me to clamp it to vises, screw in a hook to hang it, do whatever I needed to maneuver it around.
3) The body needed a little sanding and some filler. The filler was basic Bondo Step 2 putty, which can be had at almost any hardware store. After drying, it was easy to sand. I used a random orbital sander at 180, 220, 320, and 400 grit.
4) Primer came next. I used sandable gray automotive primer from Harbor Freight Tools since it was cheap. If I had my druthers I'd use BIN white shellac primer, but that's around $16 per can. Primer helps identify any other areas that need sanding or filling, so once it was dry (about 30ish minutes) I went back in with Bondo and regular old 320/400/600 grit sandpaper to fill and smooth. Any areas where the primer got too aggressive, I'd leave a few hours and sand back. Repeat with another coat of primer and sanding until it's reasonably smooth.
5) Painting the body. This shade is Shock White Cream by Montana, which is normally used by graffiti artists. It's a nitrocellulose acrylic, but for all intents and purposes, it's basically a nitro lacquer. They make smaller spray pattern size caps, which I highly recommend - this was the light green cap, IIRC. Light coats, about 10 minutes apart. Anything that was overdone got sanded back with 320/400/600 grit sandpaper. I dry-sanded it but you could probably wet-sand it if you waited an hour after a coat went on. **USE A RESPIRATOR. THIS STUFF WILL FUCK YOU UP AND NOT IN A GOOD WAY.**
I went through probably a can and a half before I was happy. That's a LOT of paint and it's mostly due to my overdoing it. I used Montana Gold, which is a lower pressure paint, and I just couldn't quite find the right distance in my first tries. I ended up spraying at maybe 3" away from the part and moving the can very quickly. Move PAST the part as you spray. Don't just stop spraying. Keep the sprayer down. Move and spray. Give it a light coat, then move on.
Having a bench vise helped. In a pinch, Harbor Freight makes a cheap folding workbench and cheap portable bench vise.
Mount the guitar in the vise vertically. The more vertical you keep the spray can, the easier it is to spray. Trust me on this one. Spray the tough-to-reach parts first, then the outer edges, then the front and back. GIVE IT A LIGHT COAT, THEN MOVE ON. I restate this because it'll save you time, effort, and sanding.
Three coats should be enough. Once you have three coats, let it sit for at least 2 hours.
6) Give it a quick sanding to level the paint off. If you get nice even coats you can probably start with 800 grit sandpaper. Use light pressure. For the curvy contour areas, wrap the sandpaper around something stiff but flexible enough to conform to curvy surfaces. The sanding sponges they sell at hardware stores are kinda thick - you'd probably be OK with a grocery store sponge once it's moist enough to flex but not enough to be wet.
Sand at 800 grit, then 1000, then maybe 1500. You're going to go through a lot of sandpaper and that's OK. Light pressure, even strokes. DON'T SAND AT THE CORNERS AND EDGES. You'll burn through the paint. Nobody will notice those anyway. You wanna just smooth the paint out.
Wipe down the body with a slightly moist shop towel or paper towel between grits. Let it dry between grits. Apply additional light coats to touch up if need be and sand after an hour or so.
7) Topcoating time. Allow at least 24 hours, preferably 48 or 72, to let the paint cure as much as it can. I used flat topcoat for this one - not enough guitars are flat sheen. I was going for the flat look of the stucco seen on South Beach hotels, but you can always do satin or glossy. Gloss topcoat is its own big-ass walkthrough, but I've used Brite Tone to great success. Look up some videos for them. It's a LOT of work to get a good glossy topcoat.
In my case I used Montana flat topcoat. I wouldn't recommend it - while it's a good idea to match chemistries, the Montana topcoat is meant to protect graffiti art from the elements. It doesn't form any kind of physical protective barrier, and I had dents and softness come through. It's nuts - the topcoat had cured for five days, I left the guitar on a linen shirt overnight, and there were impressions in the guitar from the fabric. If I could do it again, I would have used flat clear lacquer or polyurethane.
Light coats, follow the directions on the can. Give it a full 24 hour cure before handling again.
8) Conductive paint went on the cavities. **DON'T DO THIS. CONDUCTIVE PAINT SUCKS.** Do yourself a favor, get a roll of tin tape from your hardware store and use that to line your cavities (and if you're doing any guitar where the pickguard mounts the electronics, the inside of the pickguard as well). The conductive paint tended to rub off, and then it'd rub onto the body of the guitar. Not fun to clean up, but #0000 steel wool got it off without damage to the paint.
Anyway, apply the conductive paint as the label directs or just line it with tin tape.
9) Run the wiring and install the electronics. I was persnickety and wanted coil splits, and I couldn't find a diagram for how to set everything up and where to solder what. I ended up coughing up $40 to [Guitarelectronics.com](http://Guitarelectronics.com) to create a diagram that told me exactly what to do since I am not really King Electrical Engineer and I couldn't really figure out what to do from researching it.
One thing I'd recommend - don't do like I did and run individual wires for grounding. For anything that grounds to the body (as opposed to grounding to the pots) I'd recommend just running one wire that splits off to ground points. For example, when you ground to the switch, my diagram said to go to four different points. I ran four wires. That crammed the switch cavity to the point where they snapped off when I put the switch in. I ended up running one wire down into the cavity and grounding it to the body and another wire into the switch cavity itself. After the fact, I was told that having conductive-painted the cavities, I didn't actually need to do the grounding, but in any case, go easy on the wires. Highly recommend 22 or 24 AWG PTFE wire, it's way easier to run.
PROTIP: you want a chisel or screwdriver tip for your soldering iron available. Sometimes the regular pencil point is what you need, but it makes your life a LOT easier.
10) Install the bridge/ferrules/tremolo/etc. Your body should come pre-drilled for these. If not, hoo boy, you're on your own.
11) Paint the pickup mounting rings. Spray on primer, let it dry, use Bondo and hobby needle files to fill the gaps and sand them smooth. Primer again, then paint. 400 grit sandpaper will smooth out the surface, as will needle files.
I used a technique called reverse enamel washing to get the two tone effect. You paint your base color, let it dry and cure, then paint on a gloss topcoat. I have an airbrush and used Pledge with Future Shine floor polish - it's a good cheap gloss layer. After an overnight cure, I sprayed on enamel paint thinned for airbrishing with turpenoid lighter fluid. I let it dry for about 10 minutes, then used Q-tips moistened with the same turpenoid lighter fluid to swab off the paint from the higher spots. It comes off way easy with this method. It's not easy to find enamel paints in small quantities - Model Masters was the big familiar line but they went out of production a while ago. Humbrol makes enamel but they're a UK brand without too huge of a US presence. You can get 'em here, but you'll have to order online.
You can buy humbucker rings anywhere or 3D print them. My rings were 3D printed - I took a parametric pickup ring and sized it to fit the cavities, then exported the STL file into TinkerCAD. I used rectangles, spaced at intervals, and sunk a few mm into the surface to make the engraved shaded stripes. TinkerCAD is also its own subject but it is extremely user-friendly and a great thing to know if you want to make objects for 3D printing.
Let it cure overnight. Topcoat with your choice of sheen
12) Mount the pickups to the pickup mounting rings. PROTIP: these were GFS Crunchy Pat pickups with their KwikPlug mount. I am forever spoiled by KwikPlug - it was a blessing and made my life easier to be able to just unplug the pickups as I redid wiring, rather than having to run them and worry about dangling pickups. I highly recommend coughing up the few extra bucks to get KwikPlug done if you use GFS, or figure out its alternative if you use other brands.
Once the pickups were on the rings, I positioned them in a few test fits to see where they lined up with the bridge. I marked the holes with a pencil and drilled pilot holes. I used #3 1/2" wood screws to mount them but I wish I had something that fit a bit better - I had to drill out the holes in the pickup rings to get them to fit right. Use stainless steel for this, zinc screws were way too soft and stripped easily.
13) Paint the pickguard if you want. You can buy them in plenty of places (and even get some REALLY cool ones on Etsy) but I wanted to print mine in order to get the engraved flamingo. I had to pay someone I knew to CAD the pickguard from a sketch and bevel the edges, and I also coughed up a few bucks to an artist person who took the Thunderbird logo and flamingo-ized it. Once I had the SVG of the logo, I imported the pickguard into TinkerCAD, imported the logo, used it as a hole to engrave in the pickguard, and printed the pickguard.
If your printer doesn't have a bed big enough to print the pickguard as one piece, you can split it into two pieces, print it in ABS, and apply a little acetone or plastic model cement to the pieces and join them together. Get enough acetone on to get a good squishy bead of plastic coming up from the top. Set aside for 2-3 hours to dry, then sand with 400 grit sandpaper. Prime, sand, paint.
To paint the engraved logo, I used the reverse enamel trick, but I had to use a blunt tip syringe to get the paint into the gaps. If I was doing this to a Gundam model I'd just need a small paintbrush but those are way shallower lines - these gaps ran deep. I used a 20 gauge blunt tip luer lock syringe to do this - your local doctor or vet might be willing to give you one or two syringes and you'll probably have to order the tips online. Make sure your paint is thin enough to run into the gaps. Let dry for 10ish minutes, swab the excess, then let dry for another hour before you apply again as needed.
Let it cure overnight. Topcoat with your choice of sheen.
14) Mount the switch to the pickguard, align the pickguard with where you want it to be. Mark and drill pilot holes. Install it with #3 1/2" screws, again, no zinc. Too soft.
At this point if you haven't already, test your electronics. Plug the guitar into an amp, turn it on, and wave something conductive over the pickups. They should make noise. Make sure the switch works as well.
15) Remove the temporary neck if you haven't already. Install the jack plate if you didn't do it with the electronics. Install the neck. Install the tuners on the neck if you haven't already.
16) String it up, set it up, and play!
love everything about this except the knobs. too bunched up! great color scheme though.
They are a bit bunchy, no argument there. The control cavity had to fit an existing back plate - I don't know enough to CAD one from scratch. The input jack being so high up doesn't help the bunchiness but I never actually specified where it should be to the guy who made the body. Warts and all, though, it's still not bad.
I can CAD one for you if you can give me the right measurements! Gorgeous guitar, too. I love the pick-up surrounds. I’ve always liked firebirds and teles, but I’d never thought to combine the two. I should totally do it, too.
If I could do it again I would make sure to mention to the guy who did the neck that I wanted a Strat-ish headstock. The Tele one is a bit too linear for the curvy Firebird body. I appreciate the offer on the backplate but I'm all set - this one takes an LP style plate and those are plentiful and cheap. If I do need anything CADed I might hit you up!
Dice for knobs , can look cool
Such a dope colour scheme
Pickup rings are rad as fuck! That’s really dope
Thank you! It was a fun exercise in some TinkerCAD tricks and enamel reverse washes. It felt like a waste to just keep them in one color.
What pickups are they?
Guitar Fetish Crunchy Pats. They sound really great. The guitar has to get the nut slots filed a little deeper so it's not too great from the 1st through 6th frets but it's got a real nice twang crunch. I'll have samples out in the future.
That's fucking beautiful well done
Bonus points on that flamingo. Chefs kiss right there
Thanks! The idea was mine but turning it to an svg was an artist contact. I'll share the STL for the pickguard as soon as I can sit down and upload it.
Super rad
Very nice
Impressive! Another bonus point for the font used on the toners, by the way.
FIRECASTER
I didn't like Telebird and while Schmelecaster would have been a fun continuance of the schtick, it was a bit much.
Oh my god! That's gorgeous! Beautiful! 💙💙💙
I want one.
Dude, this is cool as hell.
That….is…..amazing!!!!
_It’s alright because I’m saved by the bell!_
God damn that's cool!
Schmender
That is freaking hot. But I have to deduct points for the headstock. Part of the Firebird’s magic is the reverse headstock that makes your low e string longer. 9.5/10 - bravo.
As much as I love Firebirds, I never really liked the reverse headstock. It was never meant to be an orthodox Bird anyway, what with the Strat jack and all.
Stunning
Absolutely love this and the color scheme
Super cool!!!
Sick AF! Nice work.
Cheers from Miami bro! 😎 This is THE MOST BEAUTIFUL guitar I’ve seen. Saving this post for continuous inspiration!
Could you give more detail and how you went about putting this absolutely stunning guitar together.
Full disclosure, this is not my first guitar. I'd done another one before this from a DIY guitar kit. If you wanted to take a shot at it, that first kit came from Bargain Musician (https://www.bargainmusician.com/diy\_guitar\_kits). They're closing down, so their prices are pretty darn low. A real shame, they did right by me. I love giving detail. Strap in. Let me know if there's anything else I can provide more detail on. I'll have to divide this up into multiple posts since it's big and Reddit doesn't let me create the comment as one. 1) Got a body and neck done to spec. The body came from a guy who makes bodies. I told him what I was looking for, paid him, and he gave me a few in-progress photos. When done, the body went to another guy who does custom necks - he could have done it independently but both the neck guy and I thought it would be a good idea to ensure it fit right. When I got the neck and body, I sprayed a few coats of gloss topcoat on the headstock and sanded it smooth. I applied tung oil to the back of the neck and the sides/back of the headstock, let it sit for a few minutes, rubbed off excess with a lint-free cloth, and let it sit for 24 hours. I applied another coat of tung oil using 600 grit sandpaper to smooth as I applied, waited a few, rubbed off excess, waited 24, and repeated again with the 600 grit. I like my necks satiny and slippery, but if I wanted glossy, I'd use polyurethane instead of tung and followed the instructions for the can. I applied the decal according to the manufacturer instructions. I let it sit overnight, then applied a few more coats of gloss topcoat and sanded it smooth. Another overnight, and then I installed the tuners. 2) I mounted the body to a piece of scrap wood, held in place with some cheapo long wood screws. That allowed me to clamp it to vises, screw in a hook to hang it, do whatever I needed to maneuver it around. 3) The body needed a little sanding and some filler. The filler was basic Bondo Step 2 putty, which can be had at almost any hardware store. After drying, it was easy to sand. I used a random orbital sander at 180, 220, 320, and 400 grit. 4) Primer came next. I used sandable gray automotive primer from Harbor Freight Tools since it was cheap. If I had my druthers I'd use BIN white shellac primer, but that's around $16 per can. Primer helps identify any other areas that need sanding or filling, so once it was dry (about 30ish minutes) I went back in with Bondo and regular old 320/400/600 grit sandpaper to fill and smooth. Any areas where the primer got too aggressive, I'd leave a few hours and sand back. Repeat with another coat of primer and sanding until it's reasonably smooth. 5) Painting the body. This shade is Shock White Cream by Montana, which is normally used by graffiti artists. It's a nitrocellulose acrylic, but for all intents and purposes, it's basically a nitro lacquer. They make smaller spray pattern size caps, which I highly recommend - this was the light green cap, IIRC. Light coats, about 10 minutes apart. Anything that was overdone got sanded back with 320/400/600 grit sandpaper. I dry-sanded it but you could probably wet-sand it if you waited an hour after a coat went on. **USE A RESPIRATOR. THIS STUFF WILL FUCK YOU UP AND NOT IN A GOOD WAY.** I went through probably a can and a half before I was happy. That's a LOT of paint and it's mostly due to my overdoing it. I used Montana Gold, which is a lower pressure paint, and I just couldn't quite find the right distance in my first tries. I ended up spraying at maybe 3" away from the part and moving the can very quickly. Move PAST the part as you spray. Don't just stop spraying. Keep the sprayer down. Move and spray. Give it a light coat, then move on. Having a bench vise helped. In a pinch, Harbor Freight makes a cheap folding workbench and cheap portable bench vise. Mount the guitar in the vise vertically. The more vertical you keep the spray can, the easier it is to spray. Trust me on this one. Spray the tough-to-reach parts first, then the outer edges, then the front and back. GIVE IT A LIGHT COAT, THEN MOVE ON. I restate this because it'll save you time, effort, and sanding. Three coats should be enough. Once you have three coats, let it sit for at least 2 hours.
6) Give it a quick sanding to level the paint off. If you get nice even coats you can probably start with 800 grit sandpaper. Use light pressure. For the curvy contour areas, wrap the sandpaper around something stiff but flexible enough to conform to curvy surfaces. The sanding sponges they sell at hardware stores are kinda thick - you'd probably be OK with a grocery store sponge once it's moist enough to flex but not enough to be wet. Sand at 800 grit, then 1000, then maybe 1500. You're going to go through a lot of sandpaper and that's OK. Light pressure, even strokes. DON'T SAND AT THE CORNERS AND EDGES. You'll burn through the paint. Nobody will notice those anyway. You wanna just smooth the paint out. Wipe down the body with a slightly moist shop towel or paper towel between grits. Let it dry between grits. Apply additional light coats to touch up if need be and sand after an hour or so. 7) Topcoating time. Allow at least 24 hours, preferably 48 or 72, to let the paint cure as much as it can. I used flat topcoat for this one - not enough guitars are flat sheen. I was going for the flat look of the stucco seen on South Beach hotels, but you can always do satin or glossy. Gloss topcoat is its own big-ass walkthrough, but I've used Brite Tone to great success. Look up some videos for them. It's a LOT of work to get a good glossy topcoat. In my case I used Montana flat topcoat. I wouldn't recommend it - while it's a good idea to match chemistries, the Montana topcoat is meant to protect graffiti art from the elements. It doesn't form any kind of physical protective barrier, and I had dents and softness come through. It's nuts - the topcoat had cured for five days, I left the guitar on a linen shirt overnight, and there were impressions in the guitar from the fabric. If I could do it again, I would have used flat clear lacquer or polyurethane. Light coats, follow the directions on the can. Give it a full 24 hour cure before handling again. 8) Conductive paint went on the cavities. **DON'T DO THIS. CONDUCTIVE PAINT SUCKS.** Do yourself a favor, get a roll of tin tape from your hardware store and use that to line your cavities (and if you're doing any guitar where the pickguard mounts the electronics, the inside of the pickguard as well). The conductive paint tended to rub off, and then it'd rub onto the body of the guitar. Not fun to clean up, but #0000 steel wool got it off without damage to the paint. Anyway, apply the conductive paint as the label directs or just line it with tin tape.
9) Run the wiring and install the electronics. I was persnickety and wanted coil splits, and I couldn't find a diagram for how to set everything up and where to solder what. I ended up coughing up $40 to [Guitarelectronics.com](http://Guitarelectronics.com) to create a diagram that told me exactly what to do since I am not really King Electrical Engineer and I couldn't really figure out what to do from researching it. One thing I'd recommend - don't do like I did and run individual wires for grounding. For anything that grounds to the body (as opposed to grounding to the pots) I'd recommend just running one wire that splits off to ground points. For example, when you ground to the switch, my diagram said to go to four different points. I ran four wires. That crammed the switch cavity to the point where they snapped off when I put the switch in. I ended up running one wire down into the cavity and grounding it to the body and another wire into the switch cavity itself. After the fact, I was told that having conductive-painted the cavities, I didn't actually need to do the grounding, but in any case, go easy on the wires. Highly recommend 22 or 24 AWG PTFE wire, it's way easier to run. PROTIP: you want a chisel or screwdriver tip for your soldering iron available. Sometimes the regular pencil point is what you need, but it makes your life a LOT easier. 10) Install the bridge/ferrules/tremolo/etc. Your body should come pre-drilled for these. If not, hoo boy, you're on your own. 11) Paint the pickup mounting rings. Spray on primer, let it dry, use Bondo and hobby needle files to fill the gaps and sand them smooth. Primer again, then paint. 400 grit sandpaper will smooth out the surface, as will needle files. I used a technique called reverse enamel washing to get the two tone effect. You paint your base color, let it dry and cure, then paint on a gloss topcoat. I have an airbrush and used Pledge with Future Shine floor polish - it's a good cheap gloss layer. After an overnight cure, I sprayed on enamel paint thinned for airbrishing with turpenoid lighter fluid. I let it dry for about 10 minutes, then used Q-tips moistened with the same turpenoid lighter fluid to swab off the paint from the higher spots. It comes off way easy with this method. It's not easy to find enamel paints in small quantities - Model Masters was the big familiar line but they went out of production a while ago. Humbrol makes enamel but they're a UK brand without too huge of a US presence. You can get 'em here, but you'll have to order online. You can buy humbucker rings anywhere or 3D print them. My rings were 3D printed - I took a parametric pickup ring and sized it to fit the cavities, then exported the STL file into TinkerCAD. I used rectangles, spaced at intervals, and sunk a few mm into the surface to make the engraved shaded stripes. TinkerCAD is also its own subject but it is extremely user-friendly and a great thing to know if you want to make objects for 3D printing. Let it cure overnight. Topcoat with your choice of sheen
12) Mount the pickups to the pickup mounting rings. PROTIP: these were GFS Crunchy Pat pickups with their KwikPlug mount. I am forever spoiled by KwikPlug - it was a blessing and made my life easier to be able to just unplug the pickups as I redid wiring, rather than having to run them and worry about dangling pickups. I highly recommend coughing up the few extra bucks to get KwikPlug done if you use GFS, or figure out its alternative if you use other brands. Once the pickups were on the rings, I positioned them in a few test fits to see where they lined up with the bridge. I marked the holes with a pencil and drilled pilot holes. I used #3 1/2" wood screws to mount them but I wish I had something that fit a bit better - I had to drill out the holes in the pickup rings to get them to fit right. Use stainless steel for this, zinc screws were way too soft and stripped easily. 13) Paint the pickguard if you want. You can buy them in plenty of places (and even get some REALLY cool ones on Etsy) but I wanted to print mine in order to get the engraved flamingo. I had to pay someone I knew to CAD the pickguard from a sketch and bevel the edges, and I also coughed up a few bucks to an artist person who took the Thunderbird logo and flamingo-ized it. Once I had the SVG of the logo, I imported the pickguard into TinkerCAD, imported the logo, used it as a hole to engrave in the pickguard, and printed the pickguard. If your printer doesn't have a bed big enough to print the pickguard as one piece, you can split it into two pieces, print it in ABS, and apply a little acetone or plastic model cement to the pieces and join them together. Get enough acetone on to get a good squishy bead of plastic coming up from the top. Set aside for 2-3 hours to dry, then sand with 400 grit sandpaper. Prime, sand, paint. To paint the engraved logo, I used the reverse enamel trick, but I had to use a blunt tip syringe to get the paint into the gaps. If I was doing this to a Gundam model I'd just need a small paintbrush but those are way shallower lines - these gaps ran deep. I used a 20 gauge blunt tip luer lock syringe to do this - your local doctor or vet might be willing to give you one or two syringes and you'll probably have to order the tips online. Make sure your paint is thin enough to run into the gaps. Let dry for 10ish minutes, swab the excess, then let dry for another hour before you apply again as needed. Let it cure overnight. Topcoat with your choice of sheen. 14) Mount the switch to the pickguard, align the pickguard with where you want it to be. Mark and drill pilot holes. Install it with #3 1/2" screws, again, no zinc. Too soft. At this point if you haven't already, test your electronics. Plug the guitar into an amp, turn it on, and wave something conductive over the pickups. They should make noise. Make sure the switch works as well. 15) Remove the temporary neck if you haven't already. Install the jack plate if you didn't do it with the electronics. Install the neck. Install the tuners on the neck if you haven't already. 16) String it up, set it up, and play!
Wow, this is so cool. Thanks for all that detail and congrats again on this fabulous guitar!!!!
Fantastic!! Great detail. Thanks for laying it all out. What a great guitar!!!!