Encouraged by some fellow TalkBass members, I picked up working on the body again. The neck, as well as both pickups, didn’t fit yet, so those routes needed to be retouched. At first, I tried sanding the edges, but that came out to be completely impossible.

I worked out different ways of coping with this task in my mind, but making a perfect setup to re-route didn’t seem easy. But today, I felt lucky and went for the eyeballing and working ‘by feeling’ way of building….

So, I used the shifting-the-original-template-technique twice to reshape the neck pocket in several spots, and to my surprise, it came out spot on… wow!

It doesn’t sit in awfully tight, but I consider that a good thing, because now, there’s still room for the finish. If I add one layer of thin masking tape to the neck, it doesn’t fit anymore at all, so with the finish on, I think it’s just perfect.

Onto the pickup routes.. that got me thinking for a while too, because I cannot use my guided router bits to widen up the corners, as the radius of those bits is too large. Sanding doesn’t work and filing isn’t providing consistent results either. But then, I got an idea: I used my Dremel with its router base and a very small router bit (+/- 2 mm) and let the shaft ride the template. I used the template-shifting-technique to widen up the routes, but also routed a few corners freehand.

And after some nerve racking moments, the neck pickup fitted well in it’s new home:

And after that, so did the bridge pickup. Being happy with the results, I just couldn’t resist….

Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together?