It’s been a few weeks since my last post.
I’m posting about this white guitar I put together as I also had a similar problem as with “the grey”, where the bridge wasn’t placed accurately enough. I chose to re-adjust this one rather than the grey as it was more of a problem on this guitar – playing it was actually pretty difficult.
I was given the body pretty much as it is in the first picture below (minus a few coats of paint) and bought another cheap neck from ebay for less than £30. Here are some pictures of it before I show the bridge re-positioning
I think the body came with a white primer coat already on it, so I just bought some white spray paint and kept it that colour. I initially wanted a white pickguaurd but changed my mind when I saw this tortoise shell one.
To date, this is still my favourite guitar I have done. I love the look and it is getting some scratches and signs of being used which I think makes it look cooler. No where near a relic look yet. I do want it to get there but I don’t want to cheat and relic it myself with some sand paper. I will let the aging process take its natural course.
Anyway, you can see the problem with the guitar in the photos above. The bridge is too far to one side. This is because there were already marks for the bridge and rather than do the wise thing and double check they are accurate, I took the lazy route and chanced it. Well, I’ve learnt the lesson. The low E string was at such an angle that at around the 12th fret it was almost off the neck. I actually left it like this for about a year because I have been too scared to move the bridge and just adapted my playing!
In this photo above you can see the tools I used.
1) I unscrewed the bridge.
2) using a Stanley knife I shaved off the wooden skewers so they fit in the screw holes
3) I marked the depth of the hole on the skewer with the Stanley knife but just slicing a little cut into it, this way I could easily break off the skewer once I had placed it in the screw hole
4) Once narrow enough to fit tight, I dipped the skewer in wood glue and placed the skewer in the hole, then broke it off.
5) This was quite messy but doesn’t matter, because when it dries you can easily sand it down flat.
6) I followed this process with all three.
For smaller holes you can use standard tooth picks dipped in wood glue to fill them, but I needed something thicker for this.
Once this was completed, I measured out where the new position should be. I had to use the router to make the pickup cavity larger as I had to move the bridge and pickup forward a few mms. I therefore had to detach the pickup and solder it back in place after. This gave me the opportunity to make better connections as my soldering is improving.
So, here is a (very blurry) picture of the result:
If anyone is interested, the pickups are Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounders and they are awesome.
So there you have it. I hope anyone with a similar problem reads this and sees how easy it is to fix. The moral of this story is always take time to do it right the first time. Don’t make shortcuts or pick the lazy option!
I will find some footage of me using it to show you how it sounds.
Thanks for reading 🙂