Custom Chibson Experience (Internals vid added)

mudslide73

I go down the shed for 5 mins and miss it. It looks brilliant mate - thanks for taking the punt on our behalf

underdog

That is looking outstanding value at little over £300

impmann

That is pretty. 

Glad it seems to be a nice guitar.

ChrisMusic

Looks a beauty, love the serial number, love the colour and sparkle, loved this thread too, well done, very happy NGD to you  

iseverynamegone

Everything positive enough for me to crack on and order my Lerxst 355 wall hanger I reckon. Hope they have the Maestro:-) Thanks for the thread

Panama_Jack666

This is the longest NGD thread ever!

Happy new guitar day though, she looks fine!

guitargeek62

So I've just opened up the back, fitted the new tailpiece, and restrung it. 

Taking the control cover off was a bit disappointing - the routing depth of the ledge that the cover sits on wasn't well executed but it's invisible with the cover in place. Five minutes work with a scalpel cleaned it up much better, so at some point I'll take the time to finish off the job in detail.

The cavity looks pretty clean. The usual mini pots are there, plus a "proper" toggle switch rather than one of the boxed units - they're all coming out though so it doesn't really matter. The bridge tone pot is missing one wire, hence why it doesn't work currently. 

If you look at the centre-block you'll see that the mating to the top isn't perfect. It seems acceptable to me on a guitar like this, and I can't feel/hear any detrimental effects (yet?). Another thing I noticed was the lack of kerfling around the rims, again it's not too much of a problem at this price, but I imagine it won't take knocks as well as a Gibson might, and the sound is probably affected too in some way.

If anyone has internal pics of an Epiphone/Vintage et al to compare I'd be interested in seeing them.

I was surprised to see that the f-hole "binding" is actual plastic after all! It must be the lack of a clearcoat that hid them, and I now suspect it was there all along but they forgot to mask them off before the finish was applied. It was pretty clear that they'd been scraped back to reveal the plastic, judging by the amount of paint curls of paint inside the cavity! Nothing a hoover didn't fix.

guitargeek62

The truss-rod route is nicely executed, I'm pretty sure I can straighten the cover without showing the existing hole for it too. The tuners are pretty crap; they're stable enough, but I don't think they've been oiled as they're very stiff, and the holes for the strings to sit in aren't drilled deep enough into the post so it was a bit tricky to restring them. I'd planned to put some white-button kluson tonepros on it anyway so now I've got more justification to.

The neck tenon isn't pretty, but I've seen worse. I can't feel any instability at all though, and the angles look and feel "correct" . There's not actually any gaps at the side of the tenon (where it's most critical) which is a good sign, the gap at the end is a shame but who could really expect Collings quality at this price? Not sure if the pickups are Wilkos or not, maybe someone here will recognise the stamping?

Here's another front-on shot with the new tailpiece.

funstuie

Looks good. 

Mine is better  

monoamine

really nice... thanks for taking the punt and documenting as well as you have

congrats and happy NGD to you!

mike257

Awesome stuff, made up it's worked out for you!  Looking forward to hearing your thoughts in a few days/weeks when you've lived with it for a while.  Sounds very promising!

Adolfhipster

This thread is so funny......

JookyChap

Adolfhipster said:

This thread is so funny......

I guess there is a certain irony from your perspective after *that* Chibson thread....

TTony

Just checked the Classifieds.

I couldn't see it for sale anywhere???

C'mon Si, you getting slow in your old age.

guitargeek62

Funny you should mention it, I almost put a post there just to get a laugh from the comments.

daveww

Don't have internet access on our restricted networks at work so I'm catching up at home now.  Brilliant thread and very informative.  Well done and thanks.

Chuffola

Fantastic thread and the guitar looks excellent. Well played.

Si_

looks good, but how does it play?

Adam_MD

Good result dude looking forward to an update in a few weeks after you've handed in.

boogieman

Happy NGD. Looks very decent for the money and the paint job looks great.