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AND FINALLY...
And so we come to the final assembly and setup and the moment of truth. What will it sound like?Well, I had one little problem to contend with at the death,which wasn't the biggest surprise, lets face it. Basically, I had screwed everything back together, and started to put the strings on, when even I couldn't help but notice that the pickups were quite high. Not the end of the world, I always knew that there would be a fair bit of adjustment to be done, but maybe the strings lying on top of the pickups was pushing things.
Reaching for my screwdriver, I started to lower the neck pickup using the little screws either side, and sure enough the magnets started to disappear from view, but the plastic case thing stayed exactly where it was.
As you can imagine, there was a fair bit of swearing, but I finally realised that I'd put the springs in the wrong place - in between the plastic case and the pickup, instead of between the scratchplate and the plastic thing.
Luckily, when I unscrewed the scratchplate again, the wires didn't need to be resoldered and I somehow managed to swap the springs around without taking everything to bits, but I've got to say it felt like a bit of a sting in the tail.
Other than that though, the final put together was quite literally a breeze, and even once the strings were on, there were very few issues. It was probably typical but before we started this build, basic setup stuff was something I was confident I could handle, and naturally then, the guitar needed very little apart from the raising of the strings via the bridge to remove some buzzing, and a few tweaks on the pickup heights, which I'm guessing were more down to the leftie guitar being used right handed than anything. The intonation was pretty close to perfect and the truss road was left unmolested, which was a nice surprise and the replacement nut has proved to be fine. I only had to file one slot a teeny amount deeper, and to be honest that was down to an unlikely search for perfection. I could have easily left well alone.
Incidentally, everywhere I read talked about nut files which are a hundred quid per set where you can find them (though there may be cheaper ones, I just never found them.) Obviously, I didn't buy them, and a piece of folded emery cloth proved fine for my little change.
But what does it sound like? Well, to be honest the pickups are OK but obviously were never going to be world beaters, but they are are certainly usable and Strat-like. The guitar chimes quite nicely without being plugged in to an amp, which I always figured as a good sign, but when it is wired-up it has a nice bluesy sound when you push it and clear as a bell on the clean.
One thing that did strike me was that it is pretty quiet for a single coil guitar, though whether that is really down to my copper tape cladding or due to the individual pickups, I couldn't honestly say, and I'm not going to reverse it all to find out.
The finish, well again it is not the best, and the dragon scratchplate is still yet to arrive and so that will be another job to do if it ever does, but it looks nice enough and will end up looking like a proper 'relic' soon anyway, it already has a couple of dints and scratches and I'm sure there will be plenty more soon enough.
One thing we have done though, is give the guitar a name on the headstock. This was simple enough - found a nice font in Word and outlined it in black (one of the options on the font menu if you look for it). After that it was as simple as printing it out on the ink jet at high resolution, letting it dry and then applying according to the instruction on the decal paper water slide stuff. The only tricky bit is geting it in position before the water starts to dry and the sliding stops. No big deal though in the end.
Once that had dried, I just gave it a couple of quick coats of lacquer to protect it and seal it in a bit. I was a bit worried about putting this over the Ronseal, but it worked OK in the end and so I was a bit relieved.
the other thing we did with the decal was find another dragon picture and do a decal of that on the body too. It was 50:50 whether to bother really, but minus the scratchplate I think it was looking a touch underwhelming for the lad and this perked it up a bit. I haven't lacquered that one as of yet, as when the scratchplate shows up we might be wanting to take it off again, but we'll see.
Other than that, the only other thing we were going to do was put the 'Facelift' flames on the back of the guitar. this proved to be a none runner though as it basically didn't work with the cover plate and so we gave up on it. As it didn't fit the only other Strat clone in the house either, it is now pinned to the boy's bedroom wall, and he is happy with that.
Speaking of happy, is the lad?
Sometimes it is hard to tell, but yeah, I think so and overall it was a cool thing to do, even if we didn't quite fit it into the summer holidays. I learned a shed load as well, and will no doubt do myself one sometime soon and not shy away from upgrading and repairs in future. Before that though, I've got a couple of ideas for other projects - which will hopefully be a bit quicker to finish and shorter to describe.
Anyway, if you have followed this mammouth tale, I hope you enjoyed what you read and if you fancy doing a kit yourself, you'll realise that it really isn't beyond you. I think there are very few people who have less technical nous than i do, and eve though it has taken a few weeks, most of that was to do with either waiting for paint to dry or for parts to be delivered from somewhere or other. If we had gone with the kit as it was, and not messed about turning a leftie right, it really wouldn't have taken much time at all, and finish apart you could quite easily put a kit like this together in a day or two.
As for the DIY Guitar kit specifically, I'm not on a retainer or anything, but I would recomend it. I know some other kits apparently don't need you to do any soldering, but it is genuinely easy so don't let that put you off. Overall the quality is good, all the holes were in the right place and the instructions didn't assume too much. The parts were better than I thought they would be, and whilst you might end-up changing some of them over time, intially there really isn't much of a need to. I think that is one of the strengths of these kits. Given the cost of buying even a basic neck or body, you can get a kit with all the parts thrown in often for a cheaper amount. The people at DIY were helpful too, which goes a long way and if I do another kit I'd certainly be paying them a visit.
As for getting replacement or upgraded parts, well Axerus and Axetec have provided most everything that was worth having, and I'll do a list further down of what came from where and how I rated it.
Other than that, I hope you enjoyed reading about this, and maybe you'll pop back in sometime and see what this dunce tries to do next.
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