ELECTRIC GUITAR PROJECT part 26

Finished! In only 26 easy steps! This guitar project is finally behind me. Pretty much. I have a final decision to make and then it's off the work bench.

In this last episode of ELECTRIC GUITAR PROJECT the hardware was screwed on to the face.

All the wires were fished through worm holes and pulled out the access port in the back.

Using the wiring diagram I skinned wires and twisted them together. I shortened all the wires so they were just long enough to work with, but wouldn't over-pack the compartment.
Before soldering I plugged in the guitar to make sure it got a signal and everything was wired correctly. After feeling satisfied with all the connections it was soldered together, and the solder joints were covered with electrical tape, and then the entire mess of wires was coiled down into the compartment.

The cover plate was screwed on and suddenly Bertha was alive!

The only reason I bought this soldering iron was because it looked like a space pistol. It probably doesn't work as well as others but I'm willing to suffer for it. If it ever breaks I'll probably transform it into a movie prop.

Here's a shot of the face after everything is finished (minus the strings.)

Here it is with Mei just for size comparison.

After I finished it I noticed the fret markers had turned dark gray after sanding the frets. Metal dust had worked itself down into the pores of the dowels I used for fret markers. I decided to redo them. I found some aluminum "common" nails and polished the heads so they were shiny. This picture doesn't show the shininess very well but believe me, they're shiny! Also buffing them gave the heads a convex shape which was a bonus. Now they still hit the light no matter which way the guitar is tilted.

The nails were cut short, about 1/4" long, and then the previous fret marker dowels were drilled out. I epoxied these new fret markers in place and TADA!

Here's a picture of the back of the headstock.

Here's the face. As it is now I have no logo at the top. It seems pretty plain and generic without anything up there. I Made an "S" out of aluminum and was ready to attach it and then I had doubts. Maybe it doesn't look right. I'm back and forth on it. Another idea is to mount a 2011 penny into the head. That would show the date it was finished. I guess too it would mean Made in USA. These days that's pretty rare so maybe I should capitalize on it.

Strings were attached and I plugged it in and was extremely, pleasantly surprised at both the sound and the action.






It's light and comfortable to hold, and it has very low action. Now I need to make a video.