Almost there (he says with a frustrated sigh).
I got the guitar section finished: added strings, volume, tone & switch knobs, set the action, and intonation (which is spot on). I gotta say, the combination of the body wood, different neck and smaller design just makes this thing VIBRATE when I hold it - I mean that in a good way. It sounds WAY better than I imagined. Here's how it looks so far:

[Linked Image]

Tweaking I'd like to do (don't know if it's possible) the output of the "acoustic" bridge is much louder than the vintagey tone from the electronic humbuckers, which are not high-output pickups. Right now, I can role the volume knob for the acoustic pickup back and balance it, but I'd like to see if I can get an overall better tonal balance. There's likely a trim pot on the PC board - just gotta check. I can't bring the humbucker pickups any closer without getting wolf tones.

So here's the frustrating part. All I have is used harp/bass strings. Two of them broke while trying to feed them into the bridge. Frustrating. The third one stabbed me good, and I bled all over the instrument. Frustrating, indeed. For this project, I need to assemble a custom set of strings, and calculated I can do it for about $50.00 plus shipping. Unfortunately, that's $50 more than what I have to spend right now.
Yeah, $50 seems like a lot for 6 bass strings, but it's really the equivalent of three sets, if I buy them in bulk. It really comes to about $17.00 per set, which is reasonable for 6 strings with the exact gauges and length I need.

Guess it's time to sell other things to make money for strings.

Tom Tracy
http://www.soundclick.com/tomtracy