Putting together the GFV-21 Flying V kit – a complete beginner’s perspective
Our 6-year-old son decided he wanted a Flying V for Christmas. $5,000 seemed a little excessive for Gibson original. So, with some trepidation(having never assembled a guitar before) and after quite a bit of Google/YouTube research (see links to key resources throughout this document) I bought the GFV-21 Flying V kit. It was dispatched within a couple of hours and arrived less than 3 business days later.
3 nights after it arrived, having enjoyed some great bonding time with my son and invested about 8 hours of effort, we had a rocking Flying V! It was a great project, with a few scary moments along the way. Here’s how it played out, which I hope might help and/or encourage other beginners to have a go.
Step One – Check all the parts are there
For me, all the parts were there and appeared to “slot in” obviously and easily where they belonged. There wasn’t a whole lot of wire included for the electronics, but a quick trip to Jaycar fixed that problem and provided additional goodies (see later steps) for under $5. My kit came with an extra set of strings (thanks Richard!) and a spare capacitor for the tone, thankfully not required in my case.
Step Two – copper shielding tape around the cavities for the electronics and the pickups
The copper shielding tape isn’t in the photo above. It’s easy to identify though. Having looked at Google images for “guitar copper shielding” I decided to use the leftover tape on the underside of the pickguard and the circular cover for the output jack also. I’m not sure whether or not that is necessary but having had a “buzzy guitar” as a kid, I didn’t want to take any chances and there was plenty of left over copper tape to use. No real “tricks or tips” for this pretty simple step. This took less than 30 minutes.
Step Three – Paint the guitar body
I bought black stain from DIY guitars and, true to the instructions there was plenty in the seemingly small bottle to apply two generous coats to the entire guitar body. I did one coat at night in less than 30 minutes, used a clamp where the body connects to the fret board (no paint needed as it is covered up by the plate with the screws through) and microphone stand to hang it whilst it dried (see photo below) so that I could coat back and front without laying it down. The first coat didn’t look “pitch-black” - it looked grey in patches and even purple in some parts. I put the second coat on in the morning and went to work for the day. It was pitch-black, perfectly dry and ready for “clear coat” by the time I got home from work.
Step Four – Clear coat the guitar body, back of the fret board and the head
Nitrocellulose is the recommended coating for guitars, for a beautiful smooth finish. However, it is best sprayed on (which requires a lot of care and a spray booth), is highly flammable and it takes a long time to dry between coats- our 6-year-old doesn’t have that level of patience. So we used the stain that we bought with the guitar (previous step) and a 250ml tin of Cabot’s polyurethane clear coat ($16) with a brush. The finish is not perfect, it has some “texture” to it which you don’t get with a “bought guitar” but it is durable, took only 2 hours between coats and our 6-year-old isn’t too fussy about the finish on the guitar. The 2 hour drying time between coats allowed us to put 4 coats on - 3 coats during evening number 2 and 1 coat the next morning before I went to work, to let that last coat really dry thoroughly.
I was too careless about getting too much clear coat in the four small holes where the bridge and tailpiece go, as well as the cavity where the fret board is screwed into the body of the guitar. As a result of rushing that and not taking enough care, I had to hammer the mounts harder than I felt comfortable doing, in order to get them into the body of the guitar. I was very concerned that I might break the body, but fortunately I didn’t. NOT having 4 layers of clear coat in those 4 holes would have been a smarter move. Getting the fret board into the body was even more difficult and scary. Luckily, I didn’t break anything.
Same goes for the head of the guitar – I should have been more careful not to get so much clear coat in the six holes where the tuners/machine heads go.
Step Five – Mounting the bridge and tailpiece
After I was sure that junior and I were happy with the colour and finish on the body of the guitar, I used a hammer to put the four silver mounting brackets for the bridge and tailpiece into the body of the guitar.
Before putting the right-hand tailpiece in, I splayed back a couple of centimetres of hookup wire from a length of wire long enough to connect the right-hand tailpiece mount to the back of the volume control pots, so that the bridge, tailpiece and strings could all be earthed. Again, the “buzzy guitar of my youth” may have made me over-cautious with this step, however most things I read on the internet agree that it is important to earth the bridge, tailpiece and strings carefully so that you don’t get buzz or hum when you touch the strings of the guitar. My positive experience with this Flying V seems to validate caution.
Unfortunately, I was concentrating hard on this stage and didn’t take a photo. However, the basic idea is to thread the wire between the hole that runs about one centimetre from inside the right-hand tailpiece cavity into the cavity where the main guitar electronics go (the volume, switch and tone) and then I ran the splayed (exposed and spread out) end of the wire up through the mounting bracket BEFORE I used the hammer to hit the mounting bracket into the guitar body. This resulted in a pretty solid connection between the splayed wire and the mounting bracket, which in turn connects to the tailpiece and through to the strings, into the bridge etc. I read a few articles on the internet about not being able to solder that earth wire to the mounting bracket because the heat required to get the mounting bracket hot enough to take the solder may also burn the wood in the guitar body. I’m not experiencing any buzz or hum, so this “dry connection” (solder-less) technique seems to work.
With the mounting brackets safely embedded in the body of the guitar, I mounted the tailpiece (grooves for strings facing away from the pickups, towards the bottom of the guitar body) and bridge. I copied the setting from my Les Paul by positioning the bridge so that the screws on the saddles face towards the pickups. Some people face these screws away from the pickups, towards the tailpiece. As long as you can access the screws easily for intonation (later step) I don’t think it matters much.
Step Six – Placing the tuners/machine heads into the guitar head
The step was relatively straightforward, apart from me having let too much clear coat get in the six holes in the head. Once the tuners/machine heads were in place, my only challenge was that I broke one of the three screws that connect the little black cover plate over the top of the truss-rod behind the nut. I could drill it out one day, but the two remaining screws in the cover hold it all in place and it was a timely reminder to me to be very careful with all of the other screws (on the pickguard, pickups etc) none of which broke subsequently. As you can see, our 6-year-old was pretty happy at this stage of the project.
Step Seven – Connecting the guitar body to the fret board
I left this step as late as possible (night 3) because I didn’t want to damage the head whilst getting the mounting brackets for the tailpiece and bridge into the guitar body. This step was surprisingly easy, apart from me making this step slightly more difficult for myself by letting clear coat get into the cavity and unnecessarily putting four coats of clear coat on the back of the guitar neck where it was going into the cavity anyway. In my case, with all of that extra clear coat in the way, the parts of the guitar body on the sides of the neck had to “flex” to accommodate the neck. But you won’t make that mistake will you? In hindsight, I probably should have sanded back the neck a little to reduce the risk of breaking anything whilst inserting the neck into the body. I was lucky. You can learn from my carelessness!
Step Eight –Mounting the pickups
Hopefully it wasn’t a coincidence, but my neck pickup (closer to the fret board) had a slightly longer cable coming from it than my bridge pickup (closer to the bottom of the guitar body). The angle of the plastic mounting brackets was also a bit more pronounced on the bridge pickup (thicker sides) which seemed the same as my Les Paul guitar, providing me with confidence that I put the neck and bridge pickups in the right cavities. Apparently, there is a slight difference between neck and bridge pickups (the bridge pickup gets less amplitude difference in the strings and is supposed to be “brighter”).
Anyway, putting the pickups in was easy enough. I did the neck pickup first, so that I could run the cable (yellow in my case, I don’t know whether or not this is “standard”) through the hole into the cavity for the bridge pickup and then through the next hole between the bridge pickup cavity and the main electronics cavity (under the pickguard eventually).
Then the bridge pickup went in, with the red cable (again, not sure if this is a standard or not) slotting comfortably in the hole next to the yellow cable, running into the main electronics cavity.
Step Nine – Stringing the guitar
I chose to string the guitar next because I wanted to test the pickups before I started on the electronics. Some people may choose to do the electronics before stringing the guitar, so as to have less clutter in the way (strings) whilst doing the electronics, hence less chance of damaging anything with the solder.
I threaded the strings through the tailpiece, with the little metal circles (“balls” according to some YouTube videos) slotting nicely into the grooves in the tailpiece. I read somewhere on the internet that you should string the outside strings (low and high E) first - something to do with tension on the neck. One step that I didn’t know previously (I’m a beginner) is that you are supposed to stretch the strings as you string them on to the guitar. This ensures that the tuning stays in pitch longer. There are plenty of videos on YouTube to help with this fairly easy step.
Step Ten – Testing the pickups (optional)
You may or may not wish to complete this optional step. I was pretty nervous about doing the electronics, having not touched a soldering iron in more than 20 years. I was keen to test out the pickups BEFORE I connected everything up with my inexperienced and out of practice soldering, to isolate potential faults or issues.
So I dry-connected (no solder) the “hot wire” (the wire inside the shielding or braiding) from the neck pickup directly to the “tip” connector of the output jack and I connected the shielding or braiding and the earth wire running from the right-hand side tailpiece bracket directly to the earth connector of the output jack. Then I plugged in a guitar cable and connected it to my amplifier - it worked! No buzz, no hum! I adjusted the pickup height using the two screws on each side of the pickup (not the four screws connecting the pickup to the guitar body) and let our 6-year-old have a play with this “test rig” in place.
I disconnected it all and did the same for the bridge pickup (hot-wire to tip, shield/braid to earth) to assure myself that both pickups were working before starting the soldering.
Step Eleven – Soldering the pickup wires to the switch, volume and tone pots and the output jack
Like I said, I hadn’t picked up a soldering iron for 22 years. I have a friend who makes guitar pedals who came around to supervise me during this step. I found a lot of value in the basic guitar wiring YouTube clips listed in the forum of DIY Guitars:-
Before even purchasing the kit, I had downloaded and printed a wiring diagram from:-
Ialso looked at lots of Google images of “guitar wiring” and watched some YouTube videos:-
I’m confident that this research contributed towards being able to successfully get the guitar going. It also meant that my friend and I spent less than two hours doing this step thoroughly, it worked first time and there is no buzz or hum from the guitar.
We started by mounting the two volume pots, tone pot and 3-way switch on the copper-tape shielded inside of the pickguard. Having all the components mounted on the scratch-plate provided an easy way to hold them “in-situ” (where they were supposed to end up inside the guitar) whilst we were soldering. It also meant that most of the soldering done independent of the guitar (before connecting up the wires to the guitar) to reduce the risk of dropping any solder on the guitar surface.
If you look at the photo below of the mounted gear, non-beginners amongst you might ask “why is the 3-way switch oriented sideways instead of the traditional up-and-down orientation?” I figured that for a 6 year old, it was much easier for him to understand that the switch is switching between the neck and bridge pickups if the switch is physically oriented in the same way as the pickups i.e. when the switch is pointed towards the neck, the neck pickup is active, same for the bridge. Some people may prefer the traditional orientation, whereby the switch is “up” (with the guitar in horizontal playing position) when the switch is playing the neck pickup and “down” for the bridge pickup.
You can also see the cables from the pickups, earth from the tailpiece mount and both the active (I chose red) and earth (black) from the output jack coiled in the main electronics cavity. They are all ready to connect and solder after completing all the soldering of the components mounted on the pickguard.
Like the YouTube videos say, get the soldering iron (40w) nice and hot (at least 15-20 minute warm-up) prior to starting. We chose to solder small wires between the earth connector (right hand side) of each volume pot and the case of the volume pot, rather than risk breaking the earth connector by bending it back towards the volume pot. The small wires came from a spare capacitor but any hookup wire will do.
Again, following what I’d learned in all the videos, we used stranded hook-up wire (red for active, black for earth – it doesn’t matter but makes it easier for someone else to understand if the wiring is ever going to be changed or fixed) for most of the connections. The exception, as you can see in the photo below, are the two white solid-core wires running between the cases of each volume pot and between the bridge volume pot and the tone pot. We used solid-core for this to push those cables nice and flat against the pickguard to keep them away from all the other cables – that’s completely optional.
Notice the blob of blue-tack holding the red cable down between the switch and the tone pot on the photo below. Again, this “trick” is not necessary, but it made it easier to keep wires out of the way whilst working with hot solder. We replaced the blue-tack with hot-glue after we’d tested everything and we were sure we were ready to close up the cavity. Again, this step is optional, but neat.