Sometimes I surprise myself ...

Before I start, another lift (Or elevator for Holly, my confused American friend - Hi Holly!) moan ... When you enter the lift (or elevator) don't press the floor button and then stand directly in front of the panel so blocking the access for everyone else. Common sense really isn't it?

The guitar ...

Couldn't get grade 60 sandpaper so bought grade 80 and hoped it would do the job. It did!

Only took me 20 minutes to complete the job, including the time to remove the pickups. I then decided to take the sander to the bridge, as I had noticed a bit of brass poking through.

Somewhere in my garage I have a bottle of 'Brasso', once I find it I'll give the bridge the once over and see if I can remove some of the grime that's acumulated there over the years. I also plan on taking the bridge to pieces again at some point and reseating the tuning pegs, as the 'A' peg isn't sitting straight - bit of WD40 wouldn't go amiss either!

I reattached the bridge, and reconnected the volume and tone pots, plus the pickup selector. I also took the opportunity to resolder the connections on the pots and selector, plus the input connector. Finally I put the new volume and tone knobs on and reattached the neck - things were looking a bit more guitar like now.

I took the guitar back into the house and proudly showed it off to Maria - she was so excited and delighted with my work, she could hardly speak and chose to watch TV due to being so overcome with emotion.

Last thing to do was restring the guitar, and then plug it in to check it still works ... I only put the bottom 'E' string on, and plugged it into my portable studio. Noise from the guitar, and the 3 pickups work! Continued to restring the guitar and had a little play to see what needs doing. I need to adjust the height of the pickups and bring them closer to the strings, and and also adjust the height of the strings themselves, this I will do tomorrow evening before my first rehersal for Charlotte's drama group. Me, a pianist and a drummer - should be interesting.

I still need to varnish and/or lacquer the guitar, and I'm swaying towards keeping it 'natural' and foregoing the black wash. I also need to get a knob for the pickup selector, but that can wait for a couple of weeks. Overall I'm delighted with how it looks, and have also learnt a lot on how my guitar works. I'm seriously considering changing the pickups in the future, and although I still have some trepidation about soldering irons and my guitar, I'm confident enough to have a go ...