[:project guitar:]

Now that the parts mentioned in the previous post are done, we can start on the assembly of the electronic parts.
The kit comes with some of the bits pre-assembled such as all the parts on the control plate etc. For various reasons I have decided to replace these so was starting from individual parts. These [...]

After about 8-9 coats total the lacquer is finally done (not least because I’ve now finished up the can and that is a pretty substantial amount!). It does have a nice sheen to the surface, I haven’t sanded/buffed it to an ultra-shiny finish as it looks better slightly matt due to the design.
I left it [...]

The transparent pickguard arrived (quite a few days ago actually!) and is much better with the paint than the original white one they supplied. I might ebay the white one – nothing wrong with it at all, it just doesn’t really go with the paint as it would end up covering up a lot of [...]

Before starting on the lacquer I’ve taken some pictures of what the body looks like “so far” and with the neck placed on (not actually attached) to get more of an idea of what the overall thing will look like.
Here are some results:

I’m pretty pleased with the result so far, even with a lot of [...]

The white pickguard that came with the kit is OK but is just a generic white and it seems a pity to cover up about 1/3 of the area of the paint job (on the front) so I have decided on a transparent pickguard instead!
It’s from ebay and coming from the Netherlands to the UK [...]

Finally we’ve had some decent weather again and I’ve been able to finish the spray paint job on the body! After painting the darkest squares (previous post) and masking the horizontal stripes only to do half of the “medium” coloured squares – I removed the horizontal stripes, put the vertical ones back on, and did [...]

After masking stripes the other way as well (making squares) I have applied the first paint in the charcoal colour – 2 coats total (quite thin ones). The squares being painted here are the ones that are going to be the darkest colour in the final thing. The parts that have both a vertical and [...]

After 2 coats of paint (3 in parts) the silver colour on the body is finished and sanded smooth etc. Next step is to mask it off ready to do the design using the darker colour!

At the moment it looks like it will just be stripes, don’t worry though as it won’t end up as [...]

Having decided to do a “self coloured” headstock I have now primed and painted it and it all looks like it’s finally taking shape!:

It’s not too easy to see from this picture due to slightly strange light, but it is actually much darker than it looks, it’s a metallic dark grey charcoal sort of colour [...]

We had more nice weather suited to doing ‘outdoor’ stuff today. So as well as doing another coat of paint on the body, I now have the headstock complete! This was done by tracing round the “paddle” (blank) headstock including the holes for the tuners, then drawing the required shape onto paper and transferring it [...]