I went ahead an ordered this SG because it finally came in stock and I wanted to get it in case it went away again.
This guitar I plan on a Tung oiled finish with a lacquer satin top coat. This is a solid mahogany guitar, I bet it will look great with a more natural stain.
Mine is not too far from the reference picture. This SG was finished with Tru Oil. If I had used the same Tung Oil as I used on the Strat, it would probably look even more like the reference picture. But, since I already have an natural oiled body guitar (the Strat), I’m going to complete this by over painting with a Heritage Red NC Lacquer followed by clear top coats. (which means I can use my make-shift painting rig (aka, bike maintenance rack, aka the “Sit-n-Spin”).
Once the neck is set, there is no way to attach the guitar to the painting rig. For bolt on neck, I attach the rig to the neck pocket. For the set neck guitars I needed some other way.. so I tried the pickup pocket.
I works, but the spinning of the guitar doesn’t works as well and it’s much more unbalanced than just a simple bolt on body.
This rig to hold components as I am soldering them looked better on paper than the final execution. The idea was I could arrange the spools to roughly align with the controls on the guitar and so make the interconnections nice and neat. I glued short dowels into the spool and use that to set it in the peg-board. The main problem is the thread spools are so light, they don’t want to stay seated as I’m trying to solder. Add to that the components also want to spin in the spool.. It’s like trying to solder on a tilt-a-whirl, lol.
I like these pickups from Guitar Fetish. They are called “Mean-90” and are Humbucker sized P-90s1 so they fit in the cavity in this kit. I’ve seen only a few kits that are routed for the larger Soap Bar P-90s so these are an excellent choice for these kit guitars. These have a nice crunchy sound. Somewhere between a Strat style single coil ad a Humbucker.
They use a connector at the Pickup. So you can exchange pickups without having to resolder anything. They ship fast and the pickups sound nice. They are also in my price range; I’m looking at you Seymour Duncan..
I think the color turned out pretty well. The finish itself is pretty rough, but then this was my first attempt to spray and work with Nitro. These layers are extremely thin and are easily damaged by excessive sanding, But, all in all, I’m happy with the results.