Building a twin neck guitar - Part 12: I can't be bothered with a title.

THE PAINTING IS DONE!!!

I'll say it again .... THE PAINTING IS DONE!!!

No more will Steph be complaining about the blue kitchen. Seriously, I have been making so many things blue ( and I'm not talking about language ... b'doom tish) that she's had the patience of a saint to put up with it.

So the last coat of paint is on the body. I won't post yet more pictures of layering paint on the bloody thing.

I managed to screw up the last layer of paint, as seen in my last post. So I decided to build a simple (turned out a death trap) frame. So here it is. This is just the frame and guitar at the time before last night's session.

I used my newly built "Guitar Gallows" to hang the guitar and paint it. This also meant I could put it in one place and leave it so I didn't run as much of a risk screwing up the finish .... again. The pics look the same as the before pic above, but I took the effort to take the pics!! So, here they are ;)

There are a couple (well ... a few) imperfections and a drip next to one of the 12 string pickups ... BUT I DON'T CARE!!! I can't paint this thing anymore. Also, the imperfections add a bit of character. A bit of an "I did this" element. It's been a labour of love, but you have to pick a point where you think "enough". My lungs (and Clover's lungs, and Cozy's lungs, and Yoshi's lungs, and Biscuit's lungs) have had enough. We have one more day of solvent abuse to go when I lacquer the body.

While doing this I decided to give the plastic parts a couple of coats of colour. Just for no reason ;)
The truss rod covers will do a job blending in, but the back one's really won't. Ah well :)
I was tempted to do the pickup mounts too, but I thought that would be a stupid move. I thought it might take away from the black hardware thing.

Now, originally I was going to do the lacquering of the body in my mates garage, but after some experience with the paint and lacquer already, that's going to be a nightmare for all involved. So, Steph is going away for a weekend with Aidan. That weekend was going to be "Wiring Weekend", but now it's going to be "move the animals into the living room, seal the door with masking tape, put the frame on the kitchen table and lacquer the hell out of the body" weekend.

The necks, as far as the prep work goes, are done. They a painted and lacquered, they now need rubbed down and the hardware added. Oh, and the nuts need fixed. I'm hoping to do that this weekend.

There are plenty of imperfections in the coating in places, but I've left them. Some will be covered by hardware and some are on the back and ignore-able. It'll still look cool. Plus, I've signed mine and so has Aidan ... I don't want to lose that moment.

I had gotten Aidan to sign the back of the 6-string neck, but it has faded slightly under the lacquer. It should come back through better after the rubbing agent, wet sanding, polishing bit though.

After all that it comes down to the "bits".

In my first post about this little project, when it came to the pickups I said that the pickups that came with the pack would never touch the finished product. And I meant it! Then Christmas happened and I meant it less. Then I found the Wilkinson Zebra pickups and I meant it wholeheartedly again.

I spent a fair bit of time looking up pickups for how I wanted the guitar to sound. These pickups kept getting mentioned. After a few YouTube vids/reviews I decided they would be great for the twelve-string, so I ordered a set. After a few more look arounds ... well, they were perfect for the six-string too! So I ordered another set. Turns out they are set up for coil splitting. So, I bought a set of push/pull volume pots to facilitate this.....THEN, I decided to buy another neck one to stick in my Spear TC to compliment my Dimebucker, along with another push-pull pot.

Here they are!

CREAM MOUNT?! **** off. Not happening. Not after I made the decision to have black hardware. So, I took the black mounts from the stock pickups and shoved the Zebras in 'em.

See!! Better already!

Ah :)

Like I said, I've decided to go for all black hardware. The first of that arrived today. Again, in my first post I said I didn't trust the strap nuts, so it seems fitting that the first of the black parts to arrive is the strap nuts.

The things came with a company promo guitar pick. I decided to put it in the picture, just because. Arrived before the estimated date, so fair play :)

Here's the stock pictures of the other things ordered.

2 of these (and another one for my Spear TC)

Knobs. ( *Chuckle* .. knobs ;) )

Six-string bridge.

Twelve-string bridge. The black one, ( obviously! ;) )

3 sets of these

Switch heads.

I can't wait until this is all put together.

I need to make sure I write a good track to really do it justice .... unless the build sucks. In which case you'll never hear it! ;)

Ross

Building a twin neck guitar - Part 11: Odds n' Sods ... and a major rage!

So, this has some good and bad things. Positives and negatives. I'm in a rage right now! Just a rage!

Here's the good stuff first.

I fixed the problem on the 12-string neck paint job after rubbing down the lacquer layer and re-painting. I had a small problem with the paint, I assume, reacting with the flakes of lacquer from the rub down. Another layer of paint  fixed that.

I was about to lacquer the 6-string neck when it fell over. This chipped the paint on the point on the head-stock. Unfortunately, I didn't get a pic of it before I touched it up. This picture is actually from after the touch up! Damn. I need to re-touch this again. I know it's a really small chip and would be barely noticeable, but it annoys me that much! It's like a dead pixel, but worse in my head.

I did think about just going ahead an ignoring the lack of colour there.... but I couldn't do it.

In terms of the necks, what I did do was bring it to what I wanted this build to be. It's something that Aidan and I can do together ( to a point. He won't be soldering anything) and be something that is for us. So, here's what I did. With paint dry, things ready to finish ( and with a test lacquer spray before re-doing the 12-string ), I got my red Sharpie. Aidan has written his name (and HE did it) on the back of the 6-string head-stock, and I did mine of the 12-string.

I decided to test stuff on my BC Rich Warlock. The reason? It's the oldest and cheapest of my guitars. Despite the sentimental value it made the most sense.

I was going to strip it down, re-do the finish and re-do the wiring. Literally, in terms of the wiring, I was going to strip all the soldering and do them from scratch.

I decided to just use this as practice as my soldering is shit! :0)

Here's the back before I did anything. The "after" pictures were corrupt, and after tonight I can't be arsed re-taking them now. Suffice to say, the after pictures weren't great. It didn't work as I expected. I'll put pics up another time.

I had hoped to renew the back, but it turned out to be a testing spot.

Due to the failure of the back I decided to not do the front of the guitar. I decided just take a remedial approach to the front. After a simple polish and buff the front of the stripped guitar looks STUNNING! I forgot how great this guitar could look.

In the back of this guitar I decided to practice and refine my soldering. I'm not going to commentate it all, but here's what I did. I removed all the current solder and re-do it. This is way better than I used to be! :) I didn't takes pic before ... sorry.

So .. what had me in a rage?! Paint. That's all, paint!

Here's the back of the guitar after I put the "last" coat on. Now, let's be clear, I don't care how the back looks as I will be using that as a testing ground.

The problem? The front (While taking pictures of the back ) got imprinted by the towel the body was rested on. ****!!!! I'm so annoyed. I'd left it more than two days to make sure it was ready.

So ... here's my Facebook comment about these pictures (after I'd seen the body) ....

"DAMMIT! ****! ****! ****! FRAK! ... I'm running out of expletives!I'm going to have to put ANOTHER coat of paint on the front of my guitar build. THREE days I left it since it's last coat and it STILL took an imprint of what it was resting on while taking pics of the back I'd just done. ****! ****! ****! ****!"

So yeah. Little things. I'm glad Aidan got his name on "his neck" and the necks are ready (apart from a chip to fix again) to get lacquered.

It just means I might have to re-do my lacquering plans for the body.

..... I'm going to bed.

Oh ... here's the wiring diagram I'm using. Why not? At least it's positive.