Doing Things Wrong

Body - Built (4/4)

Sometimes the only way to get what you want is to build it yourself.

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This is the very first guitar I ever built, a hot-rodded version of the old Silvertone 1457. This guitar uses every passive wiring trick in the book. Four - count 'em - four lipstick pickups, wired in series. Six-way pickup selector, and two phase switches. The neck is from AllParts, I paid way too much for it. The finish is glittery acrylic lacquer from the auto parts store. The knobs are from Radio Shack - remember them?


This started as a vintage neck that I got on eBay. I built a reproduction body and hunted-down old-style parts to rebuild this as authentically as possible. The finish is black nitro, which is accumulating nitro damage just from existing. Someday I should strip that garbage off and re-shoot it in polyurethane.


Body - Built

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A subject so simple you hardly even consider it, yet really very mysterious. Just what is the roughness of sandpaper, and the relation to the number on the package?

Here's a plot of some numbers I found online: sandpaper "grit" versus actual micron size. Interesting to see what size scratches you are taking out ( or putting in. ) The curve starts at 320, which is the coarsest grit that might be considered part of the finishing process. For final finishing like orange-peel removal, I start with 1500 and work up from there, I find that even 1000 leaves scratches that are difficult to remove.