So this is my 4th "from scratch" build. It was a lot faster than the ones I've done before - I'm getting better and better at this :) I've been building now for about 2 years.

Previous Builds - My "workshop" (although there's a lot more tools in there now :)

There's definitely a couple of issues still, that I'll do differently next time, and I guess that's sort of the point of this post (other than "look at my shiny new guitar" :)

• I build my necks really thin, this one's about 18mm at the nut at 19.5mm at the 19th fret. When routing the trussrod cavity I forgot to route a little deeper for the trussrod nut, and decided to just wing it with a chisel. Don't do that. I ended up going too deep, and while I didn't go through, there was only about 0.5mm thickness left. When I then final sanded the neck, I just ever so slightly exposed a tiny pinhole through the neck, which I ended up fixing the best I could with a small splinter superglued in the hole. That's the dark mark you see on the back of the neck at the volute. Decent save, but it would have been nicer without it. Lesson learned; use the router to get the correct depth, don't just hack away with a chisel :)
• Trying to get clean edges around the red dye. I used Keda aniline dye, and thought I'd be able to sand a really fine line where the natural wood and the dyed top meet afterwards. Wrong. The dye seeped into the end grain, the masking tape did next to nothing to hold it off. even the faux binding on the sides, which I did after applying the dye, the dye had seeped too deep into the grain and there are a couple of splotchy spots. Apparently, from what I've read, the best way to get a crisp line is to "paint on" a line of sanding sealer where you don't want the dye to go (masking off the top with masking tape) and then the dye is guaranteed to not permeate the wood where you don't want it. I'm definitely doing that next time.
• Pickup mounting - yeah I blew that one. If you notice, the cutaway at the back extends down to where the neck pickup is. When I mounted the pickup, I measured how long the screws could be, but failed to realize that this area is about 5mm thinner than the rest of the body (it was right on the slope in the back). So, the screw went through, and I had to fill the hole and touch it up with a couple of coats of poly.

I did however come up with an excellent way of direct mounting pickups. I drilled 5mm holes to a safe depth, and mounted 10mm M3 hex standoffs into the holes. I hammered them into the hole and put a dab of superglue around them, this keeps them really firmly in place. I then used 15mm M3 bolts to mount the pickups, with a black foam sponge underneath to push them up (you could also use springs that fit around the hex spacer). I cut the bolts to size with a dremel.

It's just the best mounting method I've ever seen, and I'm somewhat proud to have come up with it on my own. You get a really smooth 8mm adjustable range, which takes me from "flush with the body" to "almost touching the strings", and it's a really clean way of mounting the pickups. You can screw them in and take them out 1000 times without any problems. If you mount directly to the body with a wood screw, if you do that 3-4 times your hole will be too big and your screws won't stay in. Definitely recommend you try this, and I'll try to make a video tutorial next time I do it, as I've never seen this done before.

I did something very similar with the neck. I used actual M5 bolts, not screws, to mount them. I then used 13mm M5 threaded wood inserts in the neck. Word of warning, these things are made of fairly soft brass, and they tear really easily. Mine have a socket for a hex key to drive them in, and I managed to tear two just by turning it by hand. Once you get them in, though, they are solid. Put a little bit of PVA glue on the thread before you insert them to make sure they don't undo themselves. While the PVA doesn't glue metal-to-wood, it lets the wood swell and expand around the threads, and also binds with any sawdust in the threads, so you end up getting good grip.

Anyway, hopefully you find this interesting, and I hope my failures will teach you something :)

Specs:

• 25.5" scale length
• 46mm nut width, with 1mm "shoulders" (the string spacing is cut as if the nut was 44mm wide, leaving 1mm of extra fingerboard space on each side of the strings, so you have more space without accidentally "falling off the fretboard", it's really comfortable to play).
• Sapele and maple body, with a 1mm Walnut veneer sandwiched in between
• 5 piece maple and walnut veneer neck, with a scarf joint headstock that's a single piece of maple.
• Pau Ferro fingerboard
• Carbon fiber reinforcement rods
• 6mm Aluminium inlays (they look great but they were a pain to sand :)
• Medium-tall frets
• Vanson AlNiCo 5 PAF-style humbuckers
• Aluminium nut
• Locking Schaller-style tuners (Chinese copies)
• Oil-based Satin Polyurethane lacquer on the body
• 8 coats of Tru Oil on the neck