Final Touches and Set-up

Today was spend learning how to do all the final set-up stuff on the electric guitar. This included centering the neck, setting the saddle pieces (the adjustable metal pieces that the strings go into and disappear...in the pic) for proper radius and setting the intonation just right. Also finished setting the string spacing and notching the nut. Installed tuners and string tree. All the pieces. (left the electronics in place)

Oh.... and adjusting the neck relief... the truss rod adjustment is absolutely crazy on these... located at the end of the neck that meets the body, you kind of have to 1/2 take off the neck in order to adjust it... then re-attach and re-tune up to pitch in order to figure out if you adjusted too much or too little or just right. Apparently when Fender designed this, they were assuming necks would be disposable, and designed for ease of production, not for ease of maintenance! Anyway, that's what you see in the second pic.

Then when we were done... we were told to disassemble theso that we can do the final buff and polish. So that was for learning and practice, and we get to do it all again... this time putting on the decent strings. We are also cleaning them up thoroughly... making sure all the buffing compound is polished off, and that the polish is polished off. Then re-installing everything and getting it to its final set-up. This will be finished Monday morning .... and our guitars will be graded. They said that they grade really hard, and if we get between a B- and a C-, that's average and normal. I don't really care about the grade... I care about what I'm learning... and I'm very aware of all the ways in which this instrument is not quite perfect... a ding here, the stupid extra strap button hole, overfiled the nut, etc. OTOH... I'm really proud of this instrument, and have learned from each one of those imperfections. So...

Next week we start on our acoustic guitars. I'm very excited about that!