Jazz Bass: Bringing the Shine

Finally got an hour or two to myself after the chaos of the Christmas season. I put it to good use, polishing the body of my Jazz Bass build and getting more Tru-Oil on the neck. Polishing started with 1500 grit, then moving on to 2000 grit and finally Meguiars Ultimate Compound. After two rounds of compound the shine is finally starting to come out. It may need a third!

Ultimate Compound for polishing.

Once I'm happy with the surface after the Ultimate Compound, I'll hit it with one round of Meguiars ScratchX 2.0 just for good measure. In the past I haven't been able to see a noticeable difference with the ScratchX but hey - why not.

In addition to polishing the body, I have managed to get a few more coats of Tru-Oil on the neck. It's definitely starting to look and feel great!

Tru-Oil almost complete on the neck.

This build is coming down the home straight now. Once the polishing is done I'll be able to line the control cavity with copper tape, get the pickups screwed in and soldered and she'll be ready to rock. Not long now!

12 String Telecaster - Polishing and Pickguard

Finally got some time to spend in the man cave today, and that meant getting some work done on the 12 string Telecaster. In terms of the body work, the finishing was almost complete. All I needed to do was apply some elbow grease to polish up the acrylic clear coats. As per usual, I got going with the 1500 grit wet sanding to level off the surface and then straight on to the 2000 grit to remove all the scratches. It was then on to the Meguiars Ultimate Compound to really bring the shine. It took two applications of Meguiars to remove all the cloudy areas left over from the wet sanding, but in the end - with arms burning - a really satisfying shine was achieved.

Polishing finally complete and time for the hardware.

With polishing done I played around with some hardware configurations to see what I really liked. While it's a real shame to hide this nice flame maple cap under  pickguard, I've always loved the classic black Telecaster look. Even though the body has come up so nicely I think I will still go with the plain white pickguard.

No pickguard. I would probably use a chrome humbucker mount.

White pickguard on black. Looking classy me thinks.

What do you guys out on the interwebs think? Am I crazy?? Well maybe. But I'm pretty happy with the combo of black body yellow fretboard and white pickguard. Can't wait to see this all put together.

Ash Mosrite: Polishing & Wiring

Big strides forward on the Ash Mosrite build the last couple of days, with the body finally cured and the polishing completed. To get the clear coats to their final state is a 4 step process. Firstly the body is wet sanded all over with 1500 grit. At the end of this step the body is completely level once more with no shiny spots at all. The surface is completely matte and ready to shine!

Then comes the 2000 grit wet sanding to remove all the scratches left behind from the 1500 grit. As the 2000 grit is applied, the surface slowly becomes more and more shiny. With the 2000 grit complete, the third and fourth steps are the application of cutting compounds - specifically Meguiars Ultimate Compound and then Meguiars Scratch X2.0 to complete the job.

Meguiars Ultimate Compound does it again.

After all four rounds the surface was as shiny as it was ever likely to get, and that's very shiny indeed! With the polishing done, I set the body aside and let the surface rest; concentrating instead on wiring the pickguard. I do love these builds with all the wiring on the back of the guard. So straightforward!!

I began by shielding the back of the pickguard using copper tape - specifically "Slugga" slug control tape from Bunnings. It's cheap and it works perfectly for shielding. With the pickguard shielded I added back all the components and soon had the simple 2PUP, 1Vol 1Tone 3-way switch circuit (one of the simplest) all soldered up.

1Vol 1Tone, 3way switch circuit.

Pickguard shielded and the 1V1T wiring complete.

With the pickguard completed, I went straight on to inserting the earth wire into the bridge post and shielding the control cavity. Slugga also made short work of this task, and I quickly had the bridge ground wire soldered to the shielding, and from the shielding to the back of the volume pot.

Cavity shielded and grounded to the bridge.

With the shielding and circuit grounded, It was time to assemble the guitar, screwing the neck and pickguard to the body. It was here that I came across a stupid mistake that I made during clear coating. Having attached my hanger using neck bolts in the usual way, I neglected to mask off the inside of the neck cavity. Although the hangar protected much of the cavity, about 1/4 of the pocket at the heel end was covered in acrylic clear. In effect these clear coats creating a neck shim and threw the whole balance of the neck and bridge out.

With a razor blade I set to scraping the clear coats back out of the pocket and with a little patience the problem was solved (phew).  The neck is now sitting nicely in the pocket and the assembly can continue.

Pickguard and neck screwed into place.

With the neck and wiring complete, the guitar makes noise and can be played. The action is still not so nice, and the whole thing desperately needs a fret level/re-crown to start playing nicely. The neck has a 0th fret, so although I don't need to make a new bone nut, I do need to file down the existing nut slots so that the 0th fret can come into play. That's the last step in this build and I can't wait to get her finished! Stay tuned for the final chapter.

Thinline Cabronita: Wired and Making Noise!

Well, she's finally finished - the Ash Surf-abilly Thinline Cabronita. I'm very, very happy with the final results - much better than I ever imagined that they would be. The seafoam green flames over the Bali green base work really nicely, and give a nod to the rockabilly set. All that chrome hardware from GFS also works nicely too, as does the retro Cabronita pickguard.

The seafoam and Bali greens are very difficult to photograph. Depending on the light, the photo you end up with is either a washed out olive green, or a light blue like the photos below. You'll just have to take my word for it - this baby looks seafoam in the flesh. That is to say, really bloody awesome!

As usual, the acrylic clear coats came up beautifully. The White King spray cans of gloss acrylic really are the easiest way to get a beautiful gloss finish on your axe - I cannot recommend them highly enough.

While the Thinline retains the classic lines of the Telecaster, the semi-hollow body removes most of the weight, resulting in a guitar that is very easy to handle. The body resonates really nicely too and you can almost play it like a hollow body (almost). Certainly there's a deal more noise coming from the guitar than a straight solid body Ash Telecaster.

All in all, I'd have to say that the Thinline Cabronita is very nearly the perfect guitar. Doing away with the control plate, it's got super-cool looks, it feels nice and light in the hands while remaining balanced on the strap, and it sounds really great unplugged. And with a couple of GFS Mean 90s on board, the package is even better!

These pickups sound really nice in clean mode - delivering just enough single coil twang for surf and rockabilly riffs. When you crank up the distortion, the pickups meet the challenge head on and really live up to their "mean" moniker. These babies rocks as hard as the best of them! So too, the xTrem tremolo from GFS is a really nice addition. It has a nice fluid feel, and combined with the roller bridge and roller string trees, doesn't seem to create any tuning stability problems. All in all a great little package that I'm having a hard time putting down!

Cabronita Thinline: Clear Coats & Assembly

After a few sessions baking under the IR lamp, the chemical smell has finally gone from the White King Acrylic clear coats and my Surf-abilly Thinline Cabronita is finally ready for its final cut and polish! As usual I started the process with a good wet-sand with 1500 grit, wet and dry paper. It took a while, but finally all the orange peel was removed and the surface was nice and matte with no shiny low spots. With this complete, I moved up to 2000 grit. After all the effort required to level all the orange peel with 1500, the 2000 took no time at all and the surface really started to take on a shine.

With the wet-sanding completed down to 2000 grit, it was time to cut and polish with Meguiars Ultimate Compound. This is when the shine really starts to deepen! After two passes with the compound - rubbing it in with small circular motions and then wiping it off - the surface looked amazing. There's no visible height transition between the flames and the background colour (the surface is completely flat) and the shine is awesome.

First pass with Meguiars Ultimate Compound.

With the polishing complete it was time for the long awaited assembly. The pre-drilled screw holes made it a snap to re-attach the neck and get the bridge and tremolo locked down without marring the finish at all.The pickups required a bit of finagling to get them lined up and screw holes drilled, but it was finally managed.

Hardware went back on like a dream.

Neck is still straight, with the strings running nicely from the tremolo,
over the bridge to the nut.

All that is left for me to do now to get the body finished is to cut a new pick guard out of plain white 3-ply material (the kit came with black) and to finish the wiring using shielded wire. Even with the bridge flat on the deck the strings are a good 5mm away from the 22nd fret, so the neck will need a shim before I do a fret level and complete the other setup tasks. First though - get this bad boy making noise! Can't wait to hear these GFS Mean 90s in action.

Ash Stratocaster: Wet-Sanding & Polishing

After a few hours on the IR lamp, and with no discernible smell of chemicals coming off the surface, I guessed that the acrylic lacquer on the Ash Stratocaster was ready for polishing. I started with 1500 grit wet/dry paper, and wet-sanded until all the low (shiny) spots were removed from the surface. There were one or two pinholes in the finish, unfortunately caused by the ash grain and my own inexperience lacquering bare wood, so this is something to look out for next time.

With the surface nice and matt from the 1500 grit, it was time for the 2000 grit. After a good wet-sanding with 2000 (which took much, much less time than the 1500), the matt look was beginning to be replaced with a dull shine. Time for some Meguiars Ultimate Compound! The photos below show the surface after one application of the Meguiars Ultimate.

Meguiars Ultimate Compound to bring the shine after the 2000-grit.

Nice huh? The transformation under the ministrations of the Ultimate Compound are always amazing to behold. The shine seems to just materialise out of thin air. The next step (tomorrow) is to give the surface a second application of this compound and then move on to the Meguiars ScratchX 2.0 to really complete the shine.

My gold hardware also arrived from Pitbull Guitars today, as well as a white perloid pickguard. The gold hardware really looks excellent with the blue body and the white guard, and I can't wait to get them put together. The hardware also includes gold mounting screws and all the bits and bobs, so in the end there will be plenty of bling to see on this bad boy!

Gold hardware is looking the business! White pearloid looks great too.

The neck also looks great, although a blue headstock would have been better.

All in all, this build is shaping up to be a really nice looking axe. Up until this point, I've not really been much of a Stratocaster fan to be perfectly honest. But you know what, this guitar might just be the one that converts me. I guess it will depend on how nice she is to play. Based on the initial neck profile, I'm thinking she's goinna be sweet with a little attention paid to the setup and the action.

Scratch Pine Toronado: Wet Sanding and Polishing

Well, after putting the final touches on my Johnny Ramone Mosrite build (and loving the results!), it was time for me to get back to my scratch build - the good old pine Toronado. Now, there have been a few little issues with this build ever since I began on the clear coats - suffice to say that  

--- Tru-Oil is not at all a good idea under acrylic clear coats ---

The main problem is that the acrylic clear coats, whilst not reacting with the Tru-Oil in any way shape or form, simply do not bond to it or find any purchase in the wood's surface. The result is that the slightest bump is enough to make the acrylic lacquer bubble - to just lift straight off the surface. Talk about a pisser! Due to this little setback, in previous weeks I've been quite reticent to get back to this build. However, with the Mosrite put to bed I have vowed to finish it, no matter what the final state. It is my first ever scratch build after all and I'm keen to see it completed!

And so, with the acrylic clear coats applied and well and truly cured, I wet sanded the entrie body with first 1500 and ten 2000 grit sand paper before applying Meguiars Ultimate Compound. The resulting shine was well worth the sore shoulders.

The final step was the application of Meguirs Scratch 2.0X to improve the shine even further.

All in all the body is looking good. There are a couple of small places where I've dinged the surface and caused a bubble in the lacquer, but overall I'm pretty happy with the results. I dont know how I will go when it comes time to put the harware on (I'm especially worried about the string ferrules creating bubbles in the lacquer at their edges) but I guess I'll have to just suck it and see. Either way this project is going to get completed, no matter what!

Solid Body PRS: Polishing Tru-Oil with Meguiar's

Well, the Tru-Oil coats are finally finished on the PRS. It is always a relief, I can tell you, to get to the end of the 15-20 coats required to build up a decent shine. I never feel like it is going to end, but the final few thinned coats went on pretty quickly (with wet sanding in between) and here I am. With just the thinned Tru-Oil, the shine you can produce is actually pretty good..

But to really dial in the shine you need to polish. This time around I'm taking the advice of Jarrod from the Pitbull Guitars Forum and trying Meguiar's Ultimate Compound and Meguiar's Scratch2.0 to do the polishing. In the past I have used Stewmac Colortone Compounds with good results. However it's pretty expensive by volume if you include the postage. Anyway, Jarrod (and also Sully from Sully's Guitars) uses Meguiar's compounds for acrylic clear coats, but they should be OK for Tru-Oil right? They're just an abrasives right?? Well only one way to find out..!

And so I got rubbing. After applying the Meguiar's Ultimate Compound, there was really nice shine developing. The surface definitely feels smoother, and it doesn't seem to have affected the Tru-Oil in any detrimental way that I can see.

Despite my arm feeling like lead, I immediately went on to the Meguiar's Scratch2.0. A thousand small circles later and the top was finished. It's only a subtle improvement from the Ultimate Compound to the Scratch2.0 but I *think* there's a difference. There better be given how much my arm aches ;). What do you think?

Anyway, now i need to polish the sides and back and this baby will be ready to assemble. First job will be to glue the neck and then we can get on to the electronics. Fun fun!!