Hondo H 1015 resto-modding.

[Alanko]

I've been slowly hand-sanding the body. I'm trying to avoid using my Mouse sander as a lot of things I've worked on have the telltale oscillating-particle scratch marks in the surface! I also blew out some of the finer detail on the Epiphone EB-1 body and neck by dwelling too long with the Mouse.

Doing it all by hand is a fairly painstaking process, but I'm hoping the results look better for it. I have a couple of pesky scorch marks in the wood from the head gun I used, so I might have to bleach these out.

I've started work on getting the Dimarzio Model One installed!



This is prep for routing out the cavity. I used a cordless drill and 16 mm forstner bit to hog out the cavity here. I will then tidy up with a router. Being a square 'brick' of a pickup I imagine I will have to shape the very corners of the route with a chisel?


Beyond this, I've replaced the polepieces in both the 'PAF' Model P and Model One with black hex screws so that they match! I tried some stainless screws in the Model P but they didn't carry much magnetic charge to the top of the pickup. I would rather have all the poles matching, so black it is!

[Rob]

Use a bit in the corners that matches the radii on the new pickup.

[Dave W]

This is prep for routing out the cavity. I used a cordless drill and 16 mm forstner bit to hog out the cavity here. I will then tidy up with a router. Being a square 'brick' of a pickup I imagine I will have to shape the very corners of the route with a chisel?

Why would you need to do that? The cover is longer and wider than the brick, it ought to cover the corners of the rout unless you use a large diameter router bit to clean up the corners.

[Alanko]

Why would you need to do that? The cover is longer and wider than the brick, it ought to cover the corners of the rout unless you use a large diameter router bit to clean up the corners.

Surely a smaller diameter bit would get more tightly into corners? The bit of the Model One that needs recessed has sharp, right-angle corners. I can either make a router template that that closely matches the dimensions of the recessed section or I could oversize the template enough to make sure that the recessed section would fit in the hole without needing to make the corners perfect right angles.

I'm mixing metric and imperial, but I reckon the rough measurements of the recessed section of the Model One are 70 mm by 45 mm. I could make the template wider by 1/4 of an inch, as I'm using a 1/4 inch router bit, so need an extra 1/8th of an inch each side so that the radius of the bit isn't an issue in the corners of the route. Or something...

I'm probably overthinking this as I had no issues routing the Mustang bass body.

[Dave W]

https://d2emr0qhzqfj88.cloudfront.net/s3fs-public/diagrams/dp145dp120dim_2.pdf