I sawed the aluminum first roughly with a jigsaw, and before I sawed it any further, I glued it on with a special epoxy and as many vices as I could find. But first I bent it to shape a little where it needed to be bent.
In most of the guitar there was no need for much else, but at the very front this particular body has these cuts contouring the shape, and those I left initially without any glue, so the aluminum just went straight over. When the body was overall dry, I then first hammered those areas with a plastic-point hammer to fit the curves exactly and glued them. The only issue was the aluminum edge contorted unevenly.
Then I used a series of 3-4 different files, flat and curved, and simply filed off all the excess, starting with a very coarse rasp that ripped out like 2mm with every push. When it was nearly flush, I also hammered all the edges lightly rounded, and then finally filed / sanded the edges very smooth.
I had originally thought I'd leave the back wood-colored, but soon it was apparent that the aluminum stretched differently in different areas, and thus the transition was not a smooth line but wavy at best and in some places quite uneven, with the aluminum 'melting' onto the wood unevenly where it had to have been hammered more etc. Smooth to touch, but clearly seen uneven.
So I painted the rest, and came up with the black FX paint to hide the imperfections in the paint job, rather than go the route of lacquering it all over several times, as I wanted to use as thin a layer of paint & lacquer as possible on the body.
The trem cavity cover wasn't recessed to start with, but the control cover one was, and it still is, despite how it seems in the pic. But it's not sharp-edged, I filed and sanded those edges as well so they don't catch onto anything.
The whole idea was to use some material to instantly cover the front...originally I was looking for a nice maple top to use, but then the idea of aluminum came to mind. I didn't want to use paint because the body had way too many cavities and such on it already, and I had done it with paint before with Davette. On this one, I would have had to smooth out the new bridge's support block flush with the surface and also come up with some ways to fill in the two single-coil pickup cavities, unnecessary mic switch holes, and also use quite heavy filler anyway because the front had been de-painted with a heavy sander at some point and was quite worn. So I wanted to use some new, flat slab on the front anyway....aluminum was just a sudden idea I got.
Hard to say about the sound yet amplified, but I suppose the aluminum gives it a little extra 'ring' and liveliness at least amplified.
Acoustically it sounds much like Davette; what governs the overall sound is the light but hard woods & thin neck, which likely are what give the both a light style sound as well, clearly brighter than heavier guitars, and the very sturdy construction (really tightly seated necks and hardwood bridge insert blocks and bridge studs very tightly jammed in place) give them a solid sustain and a ringing low end as well. One might say that they sound naturally 'scooped' when compared with the SG or even Strats, much more low and high end than any of them. Only the 1-piece all maple-neck Squier comes close to similar top end, but the tilted headstock and bridge give these guitars a special tightness to the sound, while the Squier retains some of the lax 'twang' of a strat.
The scale; Fender on Davette and Gibson on this one, seems to have surprisingly little effect on sound unamplified. Other than scale, string width and the aluminum instead of paint the two are rather identical in weight, structures and hardware now.
The Fender scale does give a bit snappier feel and sound to picking ballade passages etc. but the difference is not as big as I expected, maybe because the wider string spacing makes picking even with fingers easier.
But, I'm expecting that has more impact on amplified sound...very interested to hear if I can detect any differences I'd guess come from the aluminum top. My guess is, there will be none.
