I made this

Originally a ~$200 kit from Solo Music Gear; I changed a lot of things.

On the alder body, I did an extra heel carve, rib cut, altered the heel to use recessed neck mount ferrules instead of the plate, made it string-through, added a 2x9v battery holder in the back, and changed the neck pickup mounting to use M3 bolts into the body rather than hanging from the pickguard.

You can see a gouge between the control plate and the bridge where I screwed up drilling the channel from the 9v holder to the control cavity. In the marketing brochure this, and the other dings on the body over time, will be described as "relicing".

Body finish is Tung Oil.

The pickguard I made out of leather by tracing around the one from the kit. Changed to 5-screw mouting for the authentic bulging look at the top. I would have gone guard-free except the mounting holes for the guard were pre-drilled and 8 visible spots of wood filler would be ugly.

Bridge I replaced to get string-through; I got proper intonation as a bonus.

Tuners I replaced with locking "ratio" tuners from graphtech.

Nut I replaced plastic => Tusq XL, made a huge difference to the sound.

Frets needed a lot of work, which I did.

Electronics will be replaced with EMG T-52 system. Originals sound pretty good actually, but my house is plagued with EM noise and EMGs have reliably solved that for me on my other guitars.

Overall I'm very pleased with it.

 

Already hit that: rules are one in one out from now on...