Day One

As I noted in my previous post this post should have taken place two months ago about the end of December. The brief facts are that the container ship on which the kit was en route from China had a fire in the engine room. A temporary repair was made in Southern Spain and the ship limped to Wilhelmshaven where the cargo was transhipped before a complete repair was carried out.

So un-boxing. The company's improved its green credentials by substituting a stout cardboard box for the polystyrene in which the PRS model came. The contents were in excellent condition. If anything I'd say the preparation of the wood is even better than before, it's especially noticeable in the care given to the cleaning up of the routed areas of the body..

Once again Mark Banthorpe at UK Music Supplies agreed to double-check the fit of the neck/body joint of the specific kit he was sending and once again it was first class. The finish of the 'external' surfaces is as good as the PRS guitar and the fact that I've chosen a model without a veneer means that there's little chance of a glue joint that's only visible when the stain is applied occurring.

I plan to prepare the body and neck down to 1200 grit wet and dry paper as before. I was considering using a filler but have decided that the grain effect I wanted when I tried to buy a solid ash body, would still be preferable on the mahogany body. I'll save the filler – which is a stainable filler – for another job. In any case, I don't intend to actually stain this instrument but to seal it with several coats of Boiled Linseed Oil diluted with White Spirit (Mineral Spirit in the USA and Canada) which should give it an amber tint – and taking away some of the redness in the mahogany – then to complete it with a light oak satin finish polyester, building up the strength as before from 4:1 to 1:4 on the body. The neck I'll leave with just one or two very dilute coats to avoid the 'sticky' feel.

Since my first kit, I've invested in some useful tools and propose to dress the neck myself.

I have considered replacing the machine heads but the holes and screw guide holes have been pre-drilled for the supplied units so I think I'll see how badly the supplied heads work. My immediate concern is that the gearing has a lot of 'play' when not under action.

Finally, based on my previous experience of Coban's solder-less connections, and because I know how to solder correctly, I propose to finish the body build, install the electrics then remove the connectors and replace them with soldered joints with heat-shrink covers over all the exposed joints. It'll mean more work but the connectors are the cheapest I've seen and obviously weak points in the kit.






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