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