Monday 11 February 2013

Orange Overload

 
After the two weeks was up, the lacquer was lightly rubbed down with wet'n'dry paper, rubbing compound and T-cut which gave a pretty good high-gloss finish. There's a few not-so-good areas but from any reasonable distance it looks great. The bright orange is so intense that the camera gets saturated. According to Kia-Ora, it's too orangey for crows, and apparently too orangey for Nikon's too!
 
 
 
The jack socket doubles up as a strap button. An extra hole was drilled to allow the E string bridge to be earthed. As the nut is aluminium, it should earth all of them in a roundabout way.

 
There are no plates over control cavities on this guitar as it would spoil the organic curves. The pickup selector switch is fitted underneath the pickup and accessible from the rear (the bagel!). No other controls are needed - it's very minimalist...

 
The pickup was then fitted to (a) pickup the string vibrations and (b) cover the dodgy woodwork and shoddy soldering.

 
Now for the artistic shots. Chewie got me some orange Neon strings for my birthday, so this was the time to whip'em out. They really are the icing on the cake! 

 
You can't beat a good angle shot...

 
Much better than straight photos...

 
The white strap matches the fretboard.

 
I'm getting the hang of not overloading the camera now. It's a case of standing further away and using the zoom lens. Simple really, s'pose.
 
 
Here it is, hanging together. It still hasn't snapped.

 
After a bit of settling in, the strings seem to stay in tune for at least a few hours. I'm pleased that the stainless steel re-inforcement has worked well as the strings can be tuned quite independently. I'm still getting used to the Delano Xtender pickup as I cannot decide on the best switch position. There is plenty of top end, but without sounding lacking anywhere else. It's a good place to start, and I'll have to give the 4x10 cab full beans with it soon ;-)


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