This was possibly my favourite part of the process: installing the pickups. It really wasn’t that exciting and I mean, finishing the paint job and seeing it turn out beautifully was awesome, but putting in the pickups meant it was ready to go! I called up my friend Rob because he knows what’s up when it comes to electronics and stuff. I also do not own a soldering iron and this would have made the process impossible. So I went over to his house and we began installing the pickups. I had wiring diagrams ready to go, so we got started pretty quickly.

We started with the neck pickup. Seymour Duncan has a video where he installs all the pickups at once, but that’s really confusing. One pickup at a time is much more straight-forward. We desoldered the neck pickup from the switch and its ground wire from the volume pot. Then we took the hot wire from the pickup and soldered it to the switch and left the ground wires unattached so that we could save all the ground wires for one final solder at the end.

It was a very simple process and one that was repeated for the middle and bridge pickups. Attach the hot wires to the proper places on the switch and then solder all the ground wires to the volume pot. The last thing to do before screwing the pickguard back on was to reconnect the ground wire and the input jack wires. We soldered those to their respective places and we were done.

Some things to watch out for and/or make sure of when installing pickups:

·         Make sure all new joints are strong. After adding the solder, reheat the joint making sure to touch the wire or metal near the solder without touching the actual joint. This reheat will strengthen the joint. After you’re sure the joint is firm, give it a little tug to make sure the wire won’t come loose.

·         Be careful around the soldering iron. I’m sure this is common sense but it was new to me because I’ve never actually used one before. Obviously it’s hot (and I knew that) so don’t touch it, but also be aware of the smoke that it produces and avoid it. My friend said he’s cried many times after getting some of the smoke in his eyes.

·         If you’re guitar was wired like mine, your input jack will have two wires: a tip (hot) and a sleeve (ground). Both Rob and I almost missed that and nearly soldered them to the same spot.

That’s really it for the installation process. It was fairly simple and it didn’t take very long. The exciting part was putting it back together and testing it out. We got some killer tones out of it and it was really exciting! I’ll have some videos up with samples soon.

When putting the guitar back together, it’s mostly a reverse order of how you took it apart. Re-attach the neck, bridge, tuners, and all the other little screws that are needed. My buddy noticed while we were testing it out that the company did not cut either the neck or the cutaway straight as my neck isn’t aligned like it should be. Nonetheless, it still works perfectly fine.

So, pickups were in, strings were attached, sound was great. The only problem now was the intonation and some fret buzzing. I attempted to contact a guy I know to help me intonate it but he was nowhere to be found and I was in a rush. The only other option was to learn how to do it myself and so I quickly searched the Internet to find out how (http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/intonate.htm).

I began with the bridge saddles. I knew how they should look (as can be seen in that picture on the project guitar website) and I followed the instructions from the site and I was quickly intonated and very happy. I did notice however that after stringing the guitar, my bridge was now on an incline and looked almost like a Floyd Rose style bridge. To fix that, I loosened the strings and then tightened the springs that are underneath the backplate. Once they are tightened, retune the guitar and all should be well. One thing to really keep in mind when adjusting anything on the bridge is to loosen the strings. Adjusting the saddles, springs, or height adjustment screws (action) will change the tension in the strings and if you’re tightening the tension there is a likely chance you will pull your string too tight or it will break. That’s how I intonated my guitar.

The last thing left for me to do is fix some of the fret buzz. In my case, it is caused by a loose fret and so I need to take it in to have the frets hammered down. I don’t have the tools or knowledge of how to do this properly so I will entrust it to someone else.

Aside from that, this guitar is done and awesome. As I mentioned earlier, I will have samples up within the next couple of days. That’s it for project guitar number one. I will have some of my band updates on here soon as well as show reviews and possibly CD reviews as well.

-- Mike

I have finally finished the guitar! Everything is done and it sounds amazing! I’m going to quickly wrap up the paint process and then soon, I will add a pickup blog and a reassembling and setup blog.

  Body:

·         Last time I wrote, I had finished priming the guitar. As I mentioned in my “steps to come” part of that article, I proceeded with my layer of red. I applied two or three coats of red to the section I needed. There was no point in painting the whole guitar red when a portion of it would remain white.

·         After letting it dry for an entire day, I masked off my red stripes and then painted white. I was notified by a friend who paints guitars that white is extremely hard to work with and that I should use a lot. I later found out what he was talking about. I applied an entire can of white paint to the guitar and I am lucky I did. For some reason, the clear coat seemed to bring out the base colours so if there wasn’t enough white, this could have turned ugly.

·         So, I now had a fully painted guitar. I let it sit for two or three days before I began clear coating. I put on about 5 layers of clear coat one day and then 5 more another day. There was a lot of clear coat. You want to make sure you apply it thinly and evenly. I seemed to have a problem with that because I was outside and it was really windy that week. I ended up getting a pretty even finish; however it resulted in a few runs; but nothing that was too big or bad.

·         Once clear coating was done, I let it sit for a few more days. Then I did a very light wed-sanding job to make sure everything was evened out. It helped remove some of the bumps and even took out a bit of the run. It also removed some of the bug parts that happened to get clear coated into the paint job. After sanding, I used Turtle Wax Scratch and Swirl Remover to polish the guitar. Wow; did it ever get shiny!

And that’s that for painting the guitar. It’s really important to let it sit a few days between the painting, clear coating, and finishing of the guitar. Make sure the paint dries before you do anything to drastic. Now, mine didn’t turn out perfect, but for a first time at it, I’d say I’ve done well for myself.

Headstock:

·         When I left off last time, I had painted red and black on the headstock. After a day of drying, I sprayed on the white paint and let it dry for a couple of days, just like the body.

·         After drying, I got my brother to draw on a design for my headstock logo. I wanted something original and something that would mean something to me. After throwing out ideas, we stumbled upon pi. I have this weird thing about myself where I can recite 60 decimal places of pi and I used to be able to do it in less than 10 seconds. Just using a sharpie pen (0.1 fine), he wrote out 80 digits (which means I need to memorize 20 more decimal places) and drew on the Greek letter for pi. It turned out really well; I’m not sure how he writes so small yet so legibly.

·         I let that sit overnight before throwing on the clear coat the next day. Again, 5 coats one day and 5 another. Pretty soon it was shiny and done.

·         After drying for a couple days, I wet-sanded and polished it along with the body. It turned out so beautifully.

And now, my guitar is done and ready to be reassembled. After polishing, I did put the guitar back together. I put the tuners in (after drilling new holes for the screws – see pictures), put the pickguard on as well as the backplate, and attached the neck and bridge to the guitar. In the next articles, I will talk about installing the pickups and setting up the guitar (I intonated it myself!).

I finally have all the old paint off of the body and it has been primed. So I’m going to go through some step by step points to try to help you guys understand the project. I’ll start with the body and then go on to the headstock. I have also uploaded many new pictures to the pictures section. It is in the form of a slideshow video in order to save scrolling space. Anyway, back to the paint descriptions.

Body:

·         I first removed all the old paint. Now, it’s not necessary to do what I did. I scraped it down to the bare wood because I used a chemical paint stripper. The paint stripper made it fairly impossible to get all the paint to one level, unless I went to bare wood. If you are just going to use sandpaper, all you need to do is sand down until the entire layer of clear coat is gone. This ensures that your primer will have something to grip. You must be careful when using this method though because certain types of paint may react with others. So, the paint that the company used may be harmful to your finish. Though I know it is a pain, it is best to sand all the way down to the white layers beneath the paint. These are layers of sand sealer. If you use my route, you can go to Home Depot or Rona and pick up a can (or two) of Behr “The Stripper”. This is what I used and it worked wonderfully in removing the paint layers. I’m not sure what the active ingredient is in this stuff, but it reacts extremely well with heat. I found this out by accident, but it was a great accident to stumble upon. I had to spray outside because there would have been no ventilation in my basement. It was really sunny and hot this past week, so as I sprayed the paint stripper, I noticed that it seemed to be bubbling and turning the paint (all layers at once) into a flimsy papery substance. This was extremely easy to scrape off all at once and it left a relatively clean finish.

·         Once I got the paint off, I began sanding. By sanding the surface, you can smooth out any bumps as well as provide a surface suitable for painting. I began with coarse-grit sandpaper. You need to make sure you sand long enough and hard enough to remove any impurities left behind by the paint. I noticed that while sanding with the coarse-grit paper, I was removing green-coloured sawdust. Wood shouldn’t be green. Once it was a more wood-like colour, I went to the medium-grit; this smoothed the surface out even more. After a few rounds of medium-grit paper, I went to a fine-grit brick (we didn’t have any sheets of fine-grit left). Again, this smoothed out the surface and I was almost ready for my first round of primer. However, I was not completely done sanding yet (it takes quite a while). I then took fine-grit wet/dry sandpaper. This is different than regular wood sandpaper. It is made of aluminum oxide rather than the commonly used garnet-made sandpaper. This different material, along with its adhesive makes it waterproof. After soaking the sandpaper for 5-10 minutes, I began my final portion of sanding. The wet sanding removes oil from the surface and can help pick up some of the sawdust left behind by the other sandpapers. Using a dry rag, I quickly prepared the guitar for painting.

·         One last step before applying the primer was masking the electronics area. Using painter’s tape, I taped off the pickup holes, pot, switch, input jack, and bridge areas. This keeps the paint out of those areas. You want to ensure that you don’t get any paint in those areas. You wouldn’t want spray paint particles collecting themselves all over your pickups and wires.

·         Prime time! If you want to paint the entire body at once (as I do), take a metal clothes hanger, bending the end so that it can reach through the whole where the neck is screwed in. I hang my guitar from my clothes rack in my backyard. After spraying and letting it dry for a few minutes, I pick up the clothes hanger and move it to the shed and hang it there. This keeps stuff from flying into the paint (it’s windy and I have a tree that likes to shed) as well as protects it from the sun. The sun is your paint jobs worst nightmare!

And that’s as far as I’ve gotten so far using the body. Tomorrow, I will spray my base layer of red for the stripes. Sunday or Monday (likely Monday), I will begin adding the white layer. Once all the paint is done, I will be able to apply my clear coat and it will hopefully be done by the end of next week (in time for my band’s shows I hope).

Headstock:

·         So I’m currently on my third attempt at painting the headstock. For the first attempt, I used a paintbrush and this left brush marks that were very ugly. Second time, I mixed enamel paints with lacquers (without using primer) and it turned out horrible (there were runs and all sorts of bad stuff). Now, I have (hopefully) learned from my mistakes. I have a practice piece of wood to practice the design and make sure the paints work well together. I am also making sure I use the same type of paint for each layer!

·         To paint the headstock, like the body, you must sand it down until you reach bare wood. Jay Turser has an obsession with clear coat and shiny looking guitars. Unfortunately, they are poorly made guitars. Again, use the different levels of sandpaper to smooth out the surface and prepare it for painting.

·         Once it is sanded, it’s time to mask again. Use painter’s tape to mask off the sides of the headstock. Also be sure to mask off the part of the neck that touches the headstock. Paint on the neck is not good! To ensure that no paint gets on the neck, I took two pieces of newspaper and wrapped them around the neck, taping the paper to make sure it stays wrapped and securing it to the neck. Though it is tough to do, cut a piece of the tape to fit into the truss rod area.  I found some little cotton balls that fit perfectly into the tuner holes as well as the truss rod area. This isn’t necessary but it keeps things clean in those areas.

·         After it was sanded and masked, I applied two coats of primer. Though it is “fast-drying” primer, I made sure I waited a day or so to let it dry. Once I was certain it was all dry, I applied my first couple layers of red. I didn’t need to paint the whole headstock red since I am only going to have a stripe of it actually showing. After a day or so again, I masked the stripe and began painting black to get my thin black stripe below the red. Once that is dry, I will add another mask that covers that black stripe and then will begin my white layers. After white, clear coating will be the final step.

That’s where I stand and hopefully, it helps to understand the process I’ve taken to complete the project. Paint Part Two and Pickup blogs will be up as soon as I get to them. The pickups should be coming in within the next few days.

-- Mike

I disassembled the guitar today and boy was it a trip. After about 2 hours of unscrewing what seemed to be an excessive amount of screws, I finally had all of the pieces apart. The guitar is a complete mess; the construction is pretty bad and the paint job is horrible, though it generally goes unnoticed with the pickguard. It really did make me appreciate the work that goes the making of a guitar, even though this one was made very poorly.

I was really uneasy when it came time to take it all apart. I’ve always been very cautious around guitars and had never even thought about taking one apart before. So when it came down to the initial de-stringing of the guitar, it was very nerve-racking. Once I was about halfway through the process though, it was much easier and almost fun to do. This has the potential of becoming a very addicting project; I guess I’ve got to watch out.

I’ve been studying this circuit as much as possible since taking it out. It’s really confusing, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to figure it out soon.

I’ve also got a plan of how I’m going to rebuild this guitar; what pieces I will need and how I will do it.

-          New bridge
-          New machine heads
-          New pickups: purchased, modified, or made
-          New paint job (Email me for pictures)
-          And obviously, new strings

Steps on how I disassembled my guitar:

-          You will need a few screwdrivers of different sizes, pliers, and wire cutters
-          Remove strings; detune low enough so strings are loose and easily removed
-          Remove back plate
-          Remove bridge
-          Take off control knobs and switch cap
-          Remove pickguard
-          Remove circuits/wiring from body
-          Unscrew the neck
-          Remove machine heads
-          Organize pieces so you don’t lose the screws!

There you have it, the first guitar I have disassembled is ready to be recreated!