ES175 Hollowbody - Wiring Harness Complete!

After procrastinating for several weeks over which way to approach it, today I finally completed the wiring harness for the ES175. It was a mammoth undertaking, spread over 3 days. The reason for the complexity was my choice to try a 6-way freeway switch, instead of the normal 3-way. It's pretty neat - allowing the following pickup combinations:

Lots of cool single-coil goodness is on offer, but what a sow this thing is to wire up! See what I mean?

I wired it up using a nice set of 500KOhm CTS pots, as well as orange-caps for the tone circuits. This baby should purr! I dithered a little while, wondering whether to use multi-strand shielded wire or just my plain old single-core shielded wire from Stewmac. In the end I went with the single core as it's what I have always used. I also toyed with the idea of not soldering the pickup wires directly to the switch to give me the option of swapping the pickups out in the future. In the end I decided that this wasn't a very likely scenario (given how awesome these GFS Nashville Retrotron pickups are said to be) and therefore there was no point tying myself up in knots over it. The damn circuit was complicated enough without adding more wires to the mix!

In the end the wiring harness came out OK. The harness is, well, kinda neat and hopefully wont be seen through the f-holes. I did a quick tap-test on the pickups to make sure things were working as planned (this tests pickup signals but not tone pots). Everything passes muster at the moment.

The wiring in and around the freeway switch is pretty complicated, however. Let's hope I don't break anything during installation and have to troubleshoot it. Now that would be a bitch.

Fortunately, the hollow-body promises to be a much easier installation than with the 335. I can take all the pots down through the pickup holes and there's plenty of depth to make sure the wires don't get in each others way. Here's hoping anyway. See you at the finish line!

ES175 Hollowbody - The Hardware is Here!

Today I received the hardware for my ES175 build. The excitement is really building now - you can see how this beast is going to come together. I have a Bigsby B70, Bigsby small bridge, and a set of Nashville Retrotron pickups from Guitar Fetish. I'm considering going to chrome knobs as well - just like Gretsch's Orange 6120. What do you guys think of the choice? It isn't Gibson standard I know, but I think it looks awesome with the orange.

I think that this bad boy is really looking the business now. This is going to be one psychobilly beast! The chrome humbucker surrounds and the Bigsby bridge need a little bending to more closely fit the archtop (see the gaps?) but that should be a reasonably straightforward fix. I have only applied the Medium Stewmac ColorTone Polishing Compound to the Tru-Oil at the moment (after wet-sanding to 2000 grit), so that leaves Fine and Swirl Remover to go before I can put this baby together. Oh, and there's the small matter of a wiring harness to build. I better get rubbing and soldering!!

ES175 Hollowbody - Tru-Oil, Tru-Oil, Wet-sand, Repeat..

The ES175 is coming along nicely. During the last few weeks I have been applying successive thin coats of Tru-Oil to all surfaces. After 12 initial coats of Tru-Oil, it was time for wet sanding. During the dying process I managed to get all surfaces of the body sanded to 600 grit, so my wet sanding couls start at 800 grit. I always wet-sand the Tru-Oil with boiled linseed oil. I find that wet-sanding with Tru-Oil itself can lead to problems when it dries too fast, leaving messy marks on the surface if you dont get the excess cleaned off in time. Typically I apply 5 or so coats of Tru-Oil between each wet-sanding grit, moving from 800 to 1200, 1500 and 2000.

If you don't want to sand with oil as a lubricant, I have found another technique on this build that works equally well 'dry' if you are careful - especially for the coarser grades. Take your sandpaper and sand very lightly with the grain in small strokes over the entire surface. When you are satisfied with the smoothness of the finish, wipe the surface with a rag soaked in methylated spirits to make sure all the fine grains are removed from the new scratches you've made. Remember that wet-sanding is a technique that reduces the chance of creating deep scratches in the finish. If you are working 'dry', like this, then you run a much higher risk of marring your final finish!

After sanding to 1500 grit, this baby is really staring to look awesome. The flame maple figure is really popping, and although I would have liked a deeper orange colour on the front of the guitar, the whole look is really coming together.

Sweet huh? I have hardware ordered, including GFS Retrotron pickups and a B70 bigsby. I just can't wait to get this bad boy assembled - it's going to be a rockabilly beast!!

ES175 Hollowbody - New kit started from RM Olson

With the 335 12 string all but completed, I now feel justified in starting the other kit that I ordered from RM Olson Guitars (www.rmolsonguitars.com) in the USA. The kit is a full hollow body ES175 kit in flamed maple. Out of the box the kit looks well made and sports the flamed maple veneer top and bottom - a detail often overlooked by other kit makers. Like the 335, the fixed neck also came pre-assembled - something that I am very thankful of Robert (Olson) for. All in all, a great kit and I couldn't wait to get started.

I'm planning to go with an orange dye job with this one, in the hope of emulating the classic  look of the Gretsch orange hollowbody guitars. Initially, I hit the kit with the 240 and 360 grit sand paper to remove any glue and machnn marks. With these initial sandings were complete, I decided to do a trace dye - a step I was not able to complete with the 335. The aim of the trace dye is twofold. Firstly it enables you to detect any patches of glue that were missed by the initial sanding, and it also allows colour to soak deep into the figured parts of the maple veneer.

 

Using Colortone orange from Stewmac, the initial trace dying did indeed highlighted a couple of regions where glue had squeezed out around the bindings, and in particular where the fixed neck was attached.  I was able to concentrate on a couple of these glue spots (mainly at the top and bottom of the veneer-join) as I took the majority of the dyeoff again with 360 grit.

The trace dye seems to have done its job and the figure is standing out nicely. Now for more sanding, from 400 to 600 grit, to smooth the surfaces before the final dye job is done.