Neck laminations were cut last week. They were being glued today.
Fretboards are scheduled in nine days, after another company changed specifications on their fretboards. Standard scale fret slots are generally cut with a gang saw: all slots cut in one go, about 3 seconds per fretboard. Ours are cut on Cnc to facilitate a blind fret slot (the channel for the fret slot finishes 2mm short of the fretboard edge, its a channel, not a slot). Blind fret slots on a Cnc take about 11 minutes. This other companies change of specs have pushed back all jobs that go through the fretboard Cnc's, which are reserved purely for inlays that aren't dots (dots are done differently), and blind fret slots.
Body samples were made a few weeks ago to check the Hipshot bridges, confirmed, and feedback given to Hipshot. I used this period to suggest a small design change that speeds up manufacturing, but also ties the headless bridges aesthetically to the hardtail multiscale bridges we do. Bridges are scheduled to arrive as finishing (lacquer) of necks and bodies start.
Gig bags are in production right now. Scheduled to arrive in Korea as bodies and necks are sprayed.
Either late this week or early next week, everyone who chose plan 1, will get their shipping form email. This email instructs you how to confirm your shipping address and any setups requests, merch, etc. We are going to trial a pickup upgrade for plan 1 subscribers, and depending on the volume of people who do choose a pickup upgrade, we will roll this out to plans 2/3/4/spares list. If we do decide the volumes of upgrades are too high, only repeat clients in plans 2/3/4 will be offered the pickup upgrade. What is too much? More than one full day per week. Eg; we are adding saturdays to the QC schedule to allow pickup upgrades, and if more than one in four people choose to upgrade, then we say 'no more'. Setups to your spec of strings are timings will be offered to everyone.
About a week or two after plan 1 clients get their shipping form email, plan 2, then 3+4 people will get theirs. The form you get can be filled in immediately, but you won't be billed for anything until the guitars are ready to ship from Korea to Australia. We will email again prior to billing anyone.
If you ordered via a store in the U.K. or Europe, your guitars are shipping direct from Korea to the local distributors, then to your store. Jett and I are doing final QC in the factory in Korea to save transit times.