HALP ME I BUILD ELACTRIC GUITAR

sorry for tl;dr but: for the first half of this upcoming spring semester i'll be building an electric guitar! and i have to get my shit together, i.e. start making decisions on what this shit's going to be, so i can actually move forward and start buying parts and lumber and and drawing up plans and stuff. i can't seem to make decisions on my own so this is the thread where i talk a buncha jargon at myself and any of you can chime in with ideas (pls!)

here's what i got so far and some of the parameters i have to follow.

PARTS I ALREADY GET:

pickups: set of kleenex box-style p90s off an airline tuxedo (not the deluxe ones you can split or whatever), they look like this.

tuning machines: i have a set of kluson 3-on-a-plate plastic button things so i'm usin those.
i have a few gibson style (iirc) bone nut blanks laying around. what else. some stewmac medium-tall fretwire that will do. i seem to have a accumulated a brood of tele vol/tone knobs so hey. truss rod's taken care of. it's a relatively open slate after that.

body style: starting point's the profile/shape of a rickenbacker 360, then i'm mirroring it (like, reversing the horns), then just taking my french curves to it until it's no longer recognizable.

SOME CONSIDERATIONS/LIMITATIONS:

- bolt on necks only. for time considerations, but it is my first choice. "eh but a thru-body design is blah blah" read this.
- no arch tops or carved tops. can do thinline type semihollow stuff.
- clear finishes only! ffs! there may be an optional summer finishing course where we can do some sort of color or burst etc but that's up in the air. so when i decide on wood i need to remember we're probably going to be looking at that grain.
-more as i remember it

SOOOO:
i need to figure out bridge and/or tailpiece options. trem? body wood? neck wood? headstock design? inlays or binding? convince me to do another body shape? how should i wire it? how and where do i mount v/t controls? tell me something else i should do!?

I will be back with ideas when my brain isn't all post store mush

considering working a trapeze in to the design, it being on both the tuxedo and 360 and all. then again some sort of simple stop-tail is always...simple; time and $$$ considerations will weigh pretty heavily on these first two guitars we build this year, but i can always make those choices with future upgrades in mind.

i have like 3 jazzmaster bridges (for some reason?) and i've pondered throwing one in there just cuz i wanna try one of those mastery bridges out down the road. (idk i just don't really wan't a tune-o-matic tbh).

i can't even get my brain started on wood choices.

they put a 51 on spalted maple so that's the only certain thing i got there

http://outofcontrolguitars.com/myPictures/copy_of_spa12.jpghttp://www.sitepoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/no.jpg

thats good i am all spalted mapled out tbh - plus yknow its uh fucked up rotted wood basically so

yeah shit's ugly + toxic.

considering one o them tonepros adjustable wraparounds. saw/heard a collings p-90d thing with one and dug the sound, plus that's easy enough to install. paranoia about running out of building time in class is dominating my choices here: binding, no; extra routing for trems, no; crazy inlays, no, and so on.

considering a maple body? eh? idk.

jjjjj is the bridge from an asat special like? a part you can order? p sure allparts doesn't carry them.

i just got a bonus check from work. game changer kinda.

fucked up rotted wood basically

breathing fungus into your lungs = o_O

I should be able to order that, but let me check on it for you.

cool! if you can can order one lemme know a price but probably just go ahead and do so.

blaaah. finding wood in appropriate dimensions that are also ready to build with...

ah shit i forgot to check into this - do you have the number at the shop, because i am enough of a flake that it wouldn't hurt to call me during business hours tomorrow.

lol yeah i think i do. i think there might be a few other ends and odds i need, too; today's a big homework day to get shit straightened out so um

it is too early for thinking. yeah.

yeeesh i had no idea tops for electrics were so...impossible to find anything not retardedly figured and one million dollars. no issue tracking down beeswing spalted mango but ummmmmm can i find some nice looking maple without any figure NO

lotta these tops are more expensive than entire body blanks i might as well buy one of those and resaw a few tops out of them christ

i have my main guitar but i also have my old guitar. it's not a fancy guitar but it's unique and means a lot to me sentimentally and used to play and sound pretty cool back in the day. it sustained some water damage in ye olde practice space fire but still worked. then gradually over the period of a few years one pickup stopped working, now the other has stopped working as well. so i have a broken guitar, but i feel bad just totally discarding of it, and if it worked i would probably play it regularly.
i know nothing about electronics or guitar repair. i don't know what is actually wrong with the guitar. all i know is when i reach in the soundhole and touch the base of the pickup switch, it makes a humming sound, so there's still something going on electronically. it could just be bad connections to the pickups and/or the switch, or the pickups could be totally dead. also it's a semihollowbody and i don't even really understand how you get to the electronics to fix them in a semihollowbody. BUT if i try to fix it and fuck up, the worst that happens is i have a broken guitar, which i already have, and i might learn something about guitar repair.
so should i:
1. pay the guitar store to fix it
or
2. try to fix it myself

probably a terrible idea

Most electric guitars have pretty simple electronics. Even if you have to replace both pickups it's fairly straightforward. What's the make/model of the guitar?
However...

some water damage

...if the guitar isn't structurally sound it might not be worth it. Does the guitar hold it's tuning reasonably well? If it's a semi with a set neck, did the water get into the guitar around the neck joint?

it could just be bad connections to the pickups and/or the switch

Sounds like the electronics are still grounded, so maybe it's just a loose wire or a dry solder joint. Also if water got into the switch, it could have gone rusty.

If you have an electrical multimeter, you can check the dc resistance on the pickups to see if they are ok. That would be a good first step, unless there are obvious detached wires.

there is a crack near the base of the neck but i can't tell if it's in the neck itself or just in the varnish. the water damage was more than 5 years ago at this point and i did play the guitar regularly for a while in there and didn't notice any problems with the tuning or the crack getting bigger. but yeah i probably wouldn't want to spend hundreds of dollars on it.

it's a vantage vsh, i think a vsh435 based on this page: http://www.matsumoku.org/models/vantage/vsh/vsh.html. again, nothing fancy but i like it because it has a smaller body and thinner neck than most semi-hollowbodies, it's very "playable" i guess.

ha i just looked at it and clearly says VSH-435 on the headstock and on the label in the soundhole, duh