Wednesday 8 October 2014

James' Les Paul Jnr: Assembly Begins

Today I made some progress on James' Double Cut LP Junior build. With 3 weeks away from the man cave, the Butterscotch Wudtone on the neck and body has cured nicely. By default, Wudtone provides a nice 'satin' finish that can be burnished with some A4 printer paper to give it a little (only a little) shine. The overall effect is quite nice indeed. Most importantly, James is happy with the satin finish, so there's nothing more need be done. The headstock is still devoid of its decal, but that's still waiting on a delivery from Andy at City Signs and Print!

What I *was* able to achieve today consisted of some of the basic assembly tasks. I lubricated the neck screws with a little Dingotone Guitar Wax and got the neck screwed down tight. This was follwed by the installation of the bridge and a final check of the neck alignment using the two E strings. Everything looks good!


I'm not sure whether the neck will eventually need a shim or not. Currently the E strings are sitting just off the low frets. I would have prefered them to be sitting *on* the frets but we'll have to see how it goes. If a shim is required, then it won't need to be much.


With the E strings travelling up the neck, I was also able to get the P90 screwed into place, making sure that the pole pieces corresponded to the string position as much as possible. I think I got it placed pretty damn exact If I do say so myself.

Now I just need some more shielding tape and I can continue down the home straight with this one. That's gonna take a little while to arrive, so a few more days delay. I might tackle the scratchplate in the meantime. It needs to be heated and bent to correspond to the archtop body shape, and the screw holes need to be drilled before it can be finally mounted.

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