Build your own custom guitar- day 7

The last day! (nearly)

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6

Day 7

10am till 8:15pm

Billy did a great job spraying Nick’s guitar yesterday, so that today Nick could finish assembling it and finally start playing it after all this hard work! He started by fitting the nut and saddle then putting on the outside two strings so we could roughly set the action. The rest of the strings were put on and the guitar was tuned for the first time to set the truss rod. At this point we stopped for dinner and Nick played us the theme tune from the Stella Artois advert. He said it played just great as it was, but we still had work to do on the frets and finish the set up. After lunch we strapped the guitar to the string tension simulator so we could level the frets as if the strings were on and tuned to pitch. The frets were re-crowned and polished and Nick also fitted his pick up so all that was left to do was a final set up and test the guitar by plugging it in. There was a minor niggle with one of the connections on his LR Baggs pick up system but that was soon fixed then it was off to the pub to break it in. Nick broke the workshop record for shortest time from finishing a guitar to playing it in front of a live audience..

Kevin also finished with plenty of time to spare but won’t be taking it away with him today, he will leave it here for us to spray, as he decided to go for a gloss finish. His main goal today was to assemble his guitar and do a rough set up to get it playing just to check everything lined up and fitted ok. There were two small adjustments to make: The standard nut was a fraction too low, so when we assemble it for real after spraying we will need to make a custom nut to suit. Also the neck pick up was slightly askew so after disassembling the guitar Kevin adjusted that and all was well. Having finished early Kevin made his cover plate ready for when he comes back to assemble the guitar. He then spent the afternoon working on his design for the headstock logo. We will apply when the guitar is sprayed. We use traditional nitro-cellulose lacquer for our gloss finishes, it is a very time consuming process which cannot be rushed, but the results are by far the best.Kevin will return to assemble his guitar in a few months.

Extra Time!

Dave, although having a fantastic day, is still a way behind due to the complicated nature of his guitar, but his frets are in and the headstock inlay done. This guitar is going to be really stunning, and he has worked really hard all week,  unfortunately the  neck to body join is yet to be done and the top is still uncarved. It is clear he will not get anywhere near finished today, and will need to come back tomorrow for the allotted tinkering time to get his guitar ready for spraying, so I called extra time and we all headed off to the pub to see Nick play his freshly self made acoustic and have a well earned drink!