i prefer distressed... or FUBARed to reliced - unless its restoration. you will notice i dont do accurate replicas of vintage guitars as quite frankly it bores me to death, doing it... although i will get to play another bravewood fender relic with original 57 v neck next weekend (my forth bravewood experience and they always impress more than i think they should) and i appreciate the art a lot - just not what i am after doing
generally my supply of proper vintage parts comes from people who want proper vintage parts on a guitar, sometimes because they have planned a project around that proper vintage part. although i did do the same thing for myself when i managed to get my 70's wide range humbucker for a bargain price so i understand that philosophy
i am the same type of builder - i aim to order everything up front, still not sure its ever worked out that way... i normally forget things like nut material and jack plates - i keep loads in but never have the right type :?
Yep, I can understand that, I think there is a lot of art and skill in making a reproduction, and I really enjoy seeing other people do it, but I think I'll leave that to the experts, I like starting without knowing exactly what the end product is going to look like too much. A project I have always thought about is finding a really cool rescued part with history, something like an old Bigsby trem and using that to build a project guitar around. My second guitar project fantasy is to find a beautiful piece of wood at a second hand shop, so it was great to live that vicariously through Our Souls inc's Shaka Zulu project.
Thought I would chuck out a few more thoughts on fretboard clamping, and hope more people realise not to put clamps directly on the fretboard when they are gluing and use a clamping board to evenly distribute the pressure, so they do not make hills and valleys in their fretboard causing lumps that then have to get ground off their frets.
Here is a close up of aerated rubber that takes a few seconds to mold to shape, especially good for radiused fretboards to evenly distribute the pressure. You can get aerated rubber stickers for putting on furniture feet, they work a treat on clamping boards.
And you only need 5-6 clamps down the middle, not 36 all over the place
Put the holes in the scratch plate, I used a hand countersink, clamped the plate onto the guitar and went round drilling the holes and putting the screws in.
A few were out by a fraction of a mm, plugged with hardwood toothpicks, re-drilled, all OK. Marked out pickup routes.