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I couldn't help but get a little festive. Been practicing stuff that should well & truly annoy my family when performed in mum's living room in a couple weeks time.

I believe the vintage v100's are solid body's, whereas the HB ones are weight-relieved. I've gone with the HB, but the vintage ones do look very nice!

This weekend was mostly squandered on sorting out last weekend's screw ups. I was at a loss to know how to remove thick layers of partially set acrylic paint without resorting to gallons of acetone. I thought about a heat gun but there was too much risk of singeing the wood. I tried sanding but the paint gummed up the sanding disks and then I had a moment of inspiration. Given acrylic was pretty much a thermoplastic, and a heat gun was too uncontrollable, why not heat up the paint with an iron to soften it and then see if I can scrape it off? I got out the iron and set to with some paper towels to protect the iron against the paint. It softened the paint nicely but the paint cooled before I could get a plastic scraper under it. So I thought about heating up the paint under paper towels and seeing if I could wipe it off. When the towel was strong enough, I had some limited success but the paper tore too easily and basically made things worse but what I noticed was when I pulled on the paper towel while it was under the iron, it took paint with it. I tested again and was stunned at how cleanly it took all three paint layers off down to the undercoat. If only the towels didn't tear. Then I had another idea and decided to try out an old t shirt and it worked even better. The fabric actually wicked the paint up as it melted and gave me a near clean result. If only I had discovered this before embedding paper towel in the paint...! Still I managed to clean up the sides quickly and the area around the neck joint. All this heat had the added advantage of curing the paint that was left...which lead to another problem. At 9pm the Mrs came into the bathroom upstairs wanting to know what the smell was and pretty much lost it because she thought I was spraying. The smell of warm plastic had wafted downstairs and she wasn't happy due to concerns it might be carcinogenic. She calmed down a bit after I explained I was removing paint by warming it up but only a bit. But yeah I didn't close the doors because I didn't think the smell would travel so far. So I'm now banned from doing anything with paint inside. Oops. I test sanded a bit in the middle of the week and the paint came off like it was fully cured. Saturday rolled on and I broke out the sanding equipment and managed to burn out the brand new Dremel 4000 after less than 20 min total use since delivery...FFS. Still, 120 then 240 and then 320 grit...and a couple of coats of superglue to reseal the wood and then a couple of coats of undercoat. The edges are starting to look over sanded in a couple of locations now because of the need to grind off thick spots of finish. It's not going to look as good as it could have. With the undercoat on, I'm also still seeing pores showing and I'm at a loss to understand why given they should be filled with glue. Next time I'll switch to a spray sealer and then 2 pack poly resin, it'll save so much time in touching up. Sunday I had a 3m3 crate of personal stuff delivered from the UK including a load of music kit so I got the colour coat in before the truck arrived. No blue this time. There will be stickers and various details drawn in with paint pen and spray stencils as well. It'll get a week to harden off before I finish and assemble, we've got snow forecast for next week.

I haven't had any experience of the HB one, but their guitars are pretty decent (I own one of their basses), especially those with the upgraded hardware. I was in a band with a guy who used a Vintage V100 and it was very decent and the brand gets a fair bit of love on GuitarChat. All that being said, it seems that you've actually made your mind up already and saving £100 isn't to be sniffed at, as you could use this to upgrade the pickups and electronics, if needed. Just remember, when it arrives, we all want to see it!

That's a good point really. At those costs, you can upgrade all the hardware and electronics if you want to, and get some good experience at the same time. I have looked at the HB but don't have one myself. Do you get people turn their noses up when you bring one out or are people a bit more accepting during our times of austerity?

I'm not going to replace my fingers