Solid Body PRS: A Bone Nut & Ramping the Last Few Frets

Well, I've been enjoying the PRS for a week of two now. It's really nice to play, even with the standard plastic nut. The fretboard inlay stickers are staying put (I haven't even noticed they are there) and it really is a beautiful instrument under the fingers.

To improve the action still further, two more tasks remained to get this axe into silky smooth territory. Firstly, as always, new a bone nut would allow me to get the string height at the top of the fretboard down to it's absolute minimum. The nut was quickly shaped and the nut slots painstakingly filed until the correct height at the 1st fret was achieved. Open chords are now wonderful to play :).

Along with the nut, I used my new 8" sanding beam to level a "ramp" into the last 6 frets at the end of the fretboard. Kudos to Fletcher guitars and their scratch build YouTube series for tips on performing this addition to standard fret levelling. The result is a much lower string action!

Basically you lay 3 layers of tape across the 6th fret up from the end of the fretboard and then sand the remaining frets with the beam resting on the taped (raised) one. The end of the beam resting on the taped fret does not have any sand paper stuck to it so that it can glide on top of it easily. The result is a "ramp" down to the end of the fretboard, reducing buzz from these frets as the string action comes down.

She's now even more spectacular to play. The action is the lowest out of any of the guitars I have put together to date, and I really love the feel of the fretboard. A little Dr Ducks axe wax, and a new set of D'Addario extra light strings, and she's now as shredable as she's ever likely to be.

Solid Body PRS: Shredder's are Go!

Well, she is all put together and she looks amazing. Today I received my CTS 500K pots and Sprague Orange Drop capacitor in the mail and they went straight into the control cavity. From there it was a relatively painless job to get the rest of the wiring soldered in and the Switchcraft jack with stylish oval jackplate installed.

I really love how this build has ended up, from the beautiful flame maple veneer to the Wudtone Vintage Yellow neck, from the art-deco trapeze tailpiece to the jet black headstock. Of course the bird inlay stickers are the icing on the cake.

I wish I was skilled enough to add *real* fretboard inlay to my bulds, but at the moment the stickers will have to do. I've done a few bends over them and they seem to be staying in place, although I haven't got any Dr Ducks Axe Wax on there yet!

Even the basswood body came up very nicely with the Colortone dye and Tru-Oil finish. I was a bit disappointed with the final colour (as the original turquoise went green under the influence of the Tru-Oil) but that's a lesson learned. With my next build I'm going to try blue Colortone dye with just Acrylic Clear over the top. We'll see how much chatoyance we achieve without the Tru-Oil..

Anyway, I've managed to get quite a low action on this baby and she plays like a dream. The GFS Surf-90 pickups sound really nice - a good vintage growl - and they sound really nice both clean and through the overdrive. It's not too heavy, and is very balanced on the strap. I'll be shredding this bad boy (if you can call what I do shredding ;) ) for the next few weeks no doubt!!

Solid Body PRS: Shielding and Pickups

Well the PRS is in the home straight now. I have gotten all the cavities shielded with copper shielding tape and soldered wires between them to make them electrically conductive. With the ground wire from the bridge post now soldered to the wall of the bridge pickup cavity, this means all my shielding will be nicely grounded. All I will need to do to ground the rest of the circuit come wiring time is to run a wire from the control cavity wall to the back of the tone pot. Simple, easy.

The GFS Surf-90s were next to be installed. I put a slight bend in the thin (but tough!) chrome humbucker rings using just my fingers, and it was enough to allow the screws to pull the corners of each surround all the way down to the body.

As usual, the wire conduit hole drilled from the bridge pickup into the control cavity was directly under one of the pickup mounting screws. When will kit manufacturers realise that the bottom right corner is the worst place for this conduit? I had a few stressful minutes wondering whether the pickup screw would break the wires from either the ground or the 2 humbuckers (it was getting pretty crowded in there), but a quick tap-test on the pickups after screwing down the surround seemed to suggest that everything is OK. Seems like I was able to keep the pickup wires more or less out of the way as the screw went in.

With the pickups in and the neck strung up, this baby is really starting to look like something special. I must say I wasn't that fond of the black headstock when I first did the paint job, but it really does suit ths body shape. In spite of the trapeze tailpiece (I do love a trapeze tailpiece!!) she is looking like a real shredder. With just a simple set-up I was able to achieve quite a comfortable and low action, so I can't wait to get the rest of the wiring in there and take her for a spin.

I'm waiting on CTS 500k pots and an orange drop cap before I can finish the wiring, but that should be here in the next day or so. Hopefully she'll be screaming by the end of the week!

Solid Body PRS: Fret Birdies

Another neck and another fret-level and re-dress completed. It's pretty hard on the hands - that little "Little Bone" file of mine. I'll be feeling it for a week. Anyway it's done. And now I can get my fret-marker stickers installed. I've never used these before, but have heard good things. I got them from Jockomo and they promise that I won't be able to tell they are even there. I guess we'll have to see. I can't wait to see how she plays!

Solid Body PRS: Headstock and Control Cavity Cover

A bit more progress on the PRS today. I traced the control cavity on the back of the guitar and cut a cover out of a pickguard blank for it. Successive trimming on the bench sander allowed me to get a reasonable fit. Not perfect, but not bad. It's very hard without the original routing template to go by (at least that's my excuse)!

I also got the headstock sprayed black and a couple of layers of Minwax Wipe-on Poly applied. It's not my best headstock attempt, but it will do in a pinch. I really should have sprayed it *before* applying the Wudtone to the neck (like I did for the Stone Roses Tribute) but I did the best I could under the circumstances. Lesson learned for next time > do all your staining and spraying before touching any Tru-oil or Wudtone!

Solid Body PRS: Surf-90s are Here!

My GFS Surf-90 Pickups with white surrounds arrived today for the PRS and they look awesome! Finally I get to see what this funky axe is going to look like all put together! What do you think? I reckon it's going to look killer..

Just a few more coats of Tru-Oil for the body and a last coat of Wudtone top-coat for the neck and I can start to think about the headstock. I'm really digging the vintage yellow neck with the greenish body!

Currently I'm considering just spraying the headstock black. The thought of matching the Colortone dye from the body and then applying all those coats of Tru-Oil really doesn't excite me much. The black will provide a great contrast for my headstock decal anyway. Onward!

Solid Body PRS: 3 Coats of Tru-Oil

Well, I've now got 3 coats of Tru-oil on the PRS. Unfortunately, the amber hue of the oil has turned the once turquoise colour more towards green. Nonetheless she's still looking pretty sweet - the flamed figure is really starting to pop, and the chatoyance is deepening more and more.

For the neck finish, I've decided to go with a Wudtone Vintage Yellow neck kit. With the rock maple neck sanded to 400 grit, I've currently got one application of the Wudtone base coat on and drying. I'll post a pic of the neck when the base coats are done. The face of the headstock will get turquoise Colortone and Tru-oil like the body.

Solid Body PRS: 2nd Turquoise Dye Pass

This morning I set about improving the dye job on the basswood body of the PRS. I sanded back in places where the dye was heavy and then gave the whole this a pretty concentrated hit with the 1:1 mix of green and blue Colortone. The body has come up much better now, although the basswood figure is still very pronounced on the back. I'm liking it (looks more green with the flash - without it looks blue!)

On the front veneer I took the concentrated dye and created a subtle burst. I thought about adding some black to the mix to darken the burst, but the black just muddies the colour in my opinion so although I would have liked a darker burst, I think I'll keep it as it is now.

You can really see the difference in colour depending on whether I use the camera flash or not! Anyway - darker burst or no - I'm pretty happy with how it's looking. Wonder what the Tru-Oil will do to the colour?

Solid Body PRS: Turquoise Dye

Today the PRS was sanded to 400 grit, the grain raised, and the first wash of turquoise dye applied to the front veneer and basswood body. To pop the grain in the veneer I used a variation of the one-pass dye method I have used in the past. In this method, you get a first pass of dye over the entire body, then while it is still wet, keep washing over with more dye, not letting it settle in any one place. The theory is that  dye is taken up more by the figure than the plain wood. Today I varied this process by bringing in a clean cloth to soak up the excess dye from the non-figured wood after each subsequent dye wash, allowing more to be put in the figure only. The technique seemed to work well. Here is  how the flame veneer came out:

The "turquoise" colour created using a 1:1 mix of blue and green Colortone dye is very hard to photograph. Without the flash it looks blue, with the flash it looks green. To the human eye the colour sits somewhere in between the two. I've included both versions for you to compare.

The basswood was another story completely. I managed to get a pretty weak wash coat of dye over the entire body.

The colour, however, is pretty weak so far and it will need at least one more going over with a much stronger mix. It is interesting how the various figures in the basswood have popped with the Colortone huh?

Solid Body PRS: Installing the TOM Bridge

Got the TOM-bridge installed today with a little help from the Stewmac fret position calculator. I measured the scale length (2x distance from nut to middle of 12th fret) as 626mm - the same as every other kit I've ever put together. With 22 frets, Stewmac calculated the position of the treble and bass bridge posts at 627.5mm and 629.5mm from the nut respectively.

With these measurements in hand, it was a simple case of seating the bridge, finding its lateral position across the guitar with each post centred at these distances from the nut and checking the alignment of the E strings down the neck.

Using a transfer punch to mark the location of each post and a brad-point drill bit to drill the hole, the post holes were quickly drilled and the posts hammered home. One final test of string alignment and all was complete!

I've decided to go with a short trapeze tailpiece with the swirly-swirly design on it. I had a short and a long one with this same design lying around. I would have liked to use the long one (I really think the long tailpieces look better) but the top of the trapeze was just a smidge too close to the bridge's final position for my liking.

With the last of my wood-working complete, I'm now free to concentrate on the finish. First a round of sanding - down to about 600 grit, taking care not to sand through the maple cap. I think I'll do a trace dye at 360 grit to check for glue spots and to pop the flame maple figure.

Solid Body PRS - Headstock Shaped

Hello out there in google-blogger-land. Today it's raining in Holgate so instead of mowing the lawn and chainsawing firewood and the miriad other chores that the weekend brings, I could work on my PRS instead! Two tasks remain before I can begin the finishing proper on this little beasty, and the first of them - shaping the headstock - I was able to get completed today.

The headstock blank supplied with the kit from DIY Guitars was nicely shaped to permit a facsimille of the standard PRS headstock. This, then, is what I went for.

It was a fairly easy shape to produce, requiring only a quick freehand sketch and some work with the jigsaw and belt sander to get it 95% complete. The majority of the time, though, was taken getting the last of the belt-sander induced burn out of the top cutaway with 240 grit sandpaper. I think it looks the business!