Fettling

Warmoth's business is making guitar and bass kits, virtually any way you can imagine them. Having said that, it must be still necessary to impose limitations based around industry, or generally understood standards. And this is where I faced my first, unexpected hurdle.

The pickup routing option was selected from the list of standard offerings, being a Jazz style for the neck and a Musicman lugless for the bridge, in the "sweet spot" position. It turns out that either the Delano Musicman case has a slightly smaller than standard corner radius, or the corner radius in the routing is oversize. The result being that although the pocket is OK for width and height, the bridge pickup wouldn't drop into the routing. A fitting job was about to begin.

 I didn't get out the router, or even the 80-grit sandpaper. Following the established methodology for the project thus far, excruciatingly slow but steady was the way forward. I found a plastic ball point pen with a close-enough radius, and wrapped it in 400-grit wet & dry sandpaper. The next hour or so was spent wearing away the corners until the pickup fitted the pocket. In the back of my mind is the plan to line the pickup cavities with copper tape, so there needs to be at least a tiny bit of clearance to allow for the foil.


Another job done. It wasn't in the plan but I feel that progress has been made.