Johnny Wishbone

FWIW myself and one of my band’s guitarists use The Drop quite a bit as we use 3/4 different tunings in our set. Works perfectly well for both of us and saves time fiddling about between songs. I will however say that if you’re precious about your tone, then retuning your instrument is the way to go. The drop pedal doesn’t sound bad per se, but it does alter your sound somewhat, as you’d probably expect. That said, if you’re in a two guitar rock band, for example, it’s unlikely that either yourself or the audience will notice the difference. YMMV, of course.

Shielding done, electrics fitted, bridge mounted. Annoyingly, I’ve now discovered that the pickup mounting screws I have are (a ) too big to fit through the holes in the pickup covers, and (b ) not long enough. I suspect the routing in the body is slightly deeper than normal as the pups themselves do seem to sit further into the cavity than I would normally expect. New screws needed *sigh*

Well, between a bit of chiselling and Dremel work, that seems to have sorted it!

Bought some tuners from Ben. All as described and turned around quickly. Good comms throughout. Cheers!

I’d highly recommend Rob at http://www.guitardecals.co.uk/. Very good quality, reasonably fast turnaround and it’s buy one get one free. I’ve had a few done him recently.

This guy collects/stocks all kinds of knobs - might be worth shooting him a message? He has an eBay shop but sells direct for slightly less. https://www.facebook.com/ampstack/

Still available?

They seem to be all or nothing. I’ve seen them twice - the first time I thought some roadies had walked into the stage and played an impromptu set, the second time was life-affirmingly good.

The neck was a super tight fit in the pocket - it wouldn’t quite go at first, so I gave the pocket rout a light scrape with a sharp chisel to clean what was left of the original red paint out and, with a little persuasion, in it went. Still plenty to do, but this ‘dry run’ gives an impression of how the finished build should look.

The saga continues. The pickguard isn’t a great fit - if I align the neck pocket cutout correctly the back edge of the control cavity rout is exposed. If I cover that then the bottom edge doesn’t line up with the bottom edge of the body properly. To make matters (slightly) worse, the pickguard that’s actually the best fit (given the above issues) is the one I didn’t want to use due to the red blotch about halfway along the bottom edge (It was only about a fiver, to be fair). I have a much nicer looking one, which I paid a bit more for (pictured earlier in the thread) but it doesn’t cover the body cavity as well as the cheaper one. This is particularly annoying because when you lay them over each other they appear to be almost completely identical! Major wiggling required, and some filing/shaving of the guard around the neck pocket, plus some light chisel work to shift the back edge of the pickup rout a couple of mm further back. Still got a couple of screw holes to sort out - one is perilously close to the edge of the rout underneath, and one is actually over the rout. I’ll probably just glue that one into the hole in the pickguard to make it look like it’s actually screwed into something. The fit around the lower cutaway is still pretty crap, but I’ll probably live with it as reshaping and trying to get the bevelled edge back doesn’t sound an attractive endeavour. The problem I now have is that the hole for the jack socket is pretty much flush with the edge of the rout (2nd picture). I can’t actually get the socket in there unless I remove some more wood, and I’m not sure how I’m going to do so. I can’t drill it as there’s nothing to drill into. Filing/sanding will be a pain in the ar$e as there’s a fair bit of material to remove, and I don’t have access to a router. I suspect some work with the Dremel might be the best solution.

Result (well, partial): the neck seller has agreed to a 50% refund and I get to keep the neck. I’m still disappointed it’s not the “right” one but it does look like a nice bit of wood, and the fingerboard in particular has some nice grain. May as well suck it up and crack on. The refin’d body has spent the last few weeks at our practice room whilst the paint cured and has finally made it home with me tonight. I’m a little short of time this week but may grab a few hours at the weekend to get the build into some sort of shape. As I think I mentioned in the OP, my long term aim with this build is a fretless. I’m not entirely sold on defretting the neck myself, however. I’d be more than happy if I could pick up a fretless neck for decent money, but they don’t seem to come up often (annoyingly I missed Beedster’s fretless neck cull in June) so I rather suspect my hand will be forced in that regard. It just seems that with defretting there are too many things I could make a right balls of, and I’d rather save myself the hassle. One could argue, though, that making a balls of a neck that has now cost me £16 isn’t exactly the end of the world. Onwards!

That’s the seller I bought from.

Just ordered some of the aforementioned Adagio flats from eBay. I’ve been meaning to try flats for a while, but £30 a set minimum is an expensive ‘try’ (about 25% more than my usual rounds). At £13 a chuck it’s a no-brainer!

It was outside business hours by the time I got home - I’ll try at lunchtime tomorrow.