2nd Carvin Kit Project

It has been a long time, (six years), since I built my last Carvin Guitar kit.
I am ready to do a new build. This one will be a little bit different than my last one.

Here are the stats:
Body: Alder - Neck: Maple - Fingerboard: Flamed Maple - Radius:14 inch - Inlays: Diamond shaped Black Acrylic - Frets: Medium/Stainless Steel - Pickups: 3 Twin Blades, (single coil sized Humbuckers) -
Switching: 5 way Switch plus two mini toggles, one for bridge pickup on, when other selector is in any position, and one for coil splitting (single coil operation) 14 total different combinations!

First of all, this one will be more like a "Strat" with 3 pickups mounted to a pick guard.
Second, I am going to be finishing the body with "Nitrocellulose Lacquer", instead of the hand rubbed, tongue oil finish I used on my last build.  Also I am going to attempt a sunburst finish.  I will still use tongue oil on the neck to get that fast silky feel.

Now the fun begins!

   

      

  

 
 

 Time to start spraying the sanding sealer.

          

Now for some color -- antique amber.

         

 After a couple coats of color and then some clear coats,  I started the sunburst process...

 

It looks a little rough.  I had to fine tune with some steel wool. A few spots needed to be taken off to define the edges a little. I re-sprayed more amber in the center out to the edges to blend.  Once I had the colors blended, it was time for clear coats.  I used up all my cans of clear so I would have it thick enough to wet-sand and polish without going through to the color coats. the finished clear coats looked good from a distance, but it was very rough like an orange peel, so it really needed sanding and polishing.

        

Since my wet sandpaper was soaked in mineral spirits I did not want to handle my camera. That is why I don't have pics of the wet-sanding process.
 As soon as I finished wet sanding, I moved on to polishing with 3 different grits of polish to get what was a dull matte finish, to become very glossy.

See the reflection of my overhead kitchen light in the head stock and body below?

I was a little nervous using a hammer here.. I could hear and see the lacquer cracking off the edges of the holes.

Finished up the assembly.  I did a few electronic changes to the switching circuits.

I now have 14 different pickup combinations.

A few set up adjustments, and I now have a new guitar!

I had to go back inside to do a repair/replace one of my pickups, so I also decided to do some additional shielding to see if it would make a difference.  It did make a difference!

I added shielding to the guitar cavity as well as the rest of the backside of the pickguard.

When I select coil split, so I am running in true single coil mode, it is much quieter now.