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I know what you mean about the brushstrokes.  But I have to say that I'm kind of fond of the texture you get with mod podge--I like the unevenness.  Gives it character.  The thing I don't like is that I feel it's not going to hold up over time.  It never really gets hard.  I mean hard hard--like "I feel ok stomping on this thing" hard.  That's my only complaint.  I was thinking about trying some envirotex over the top as a kind of durability layer.

L5.  You know you want to.  Think of the style/boast points when you put that build report up!

Actually, I want to use the loops for recording. The variation thing makes sense now that you say it, but EZdrummer is supposed to have built-in "human-ness" via automated and semi-random changes to timing and velocity. My goal is to lay out the drums somewhat generically to get the foundation guitar down. Then go back and tweak the drum tracks to give more character via different fills and altering some of the loops manually.

Yeah, if you're going to do all your edits manually then I guess there's no need for all those variations.  But I find the subtle differences useful.  Probably because I'm very much not a drummer (I am almost comically inept on the drumkit) I find the variations useful for educational purposes.  They often contain fills and particular avenues of play that would never occur to me if I was left to my own devices.

How does the software work for providing/approximating a human feel, anyway?  I haven't fooled around with ezdrummer for...oh god, it must be 10 years by now.  Back then I didn't think it did much.  Have things improved?
For the last several years I hook up an old TR707 to an old yamaha DR-55 and just bang out the basic feel of what I want into my DAW.  Then I manually edit the MIDI file for feel and replace the drum samples.  It works, but is slow and tedious.

It would be helpful if you'd give a bit more info on what you're trying to accomplish.  Are you using it for play-along or practice?  Or are you using the loops for recording projects?  To me, that makes all the difference.  If I want to use it for recording, then the endless-variations-that-are-almost-all-the-same-thing starts to make a lot of sense--they allow me to approximate a real drummer with greater accuracy.  But if I'm just trying to jam to it, then it's frustrating as hell to audition and select among such limited choices.  (So based on your comments, I guess you want it more for the jam thing?)

I'm trying to decide whether your daughter loves rainbows, is already a screaming hippie, or is regularly taken to Grateful Dead shows.  In any of those cases, I approve!

Congratulations on completing such an involved project.  Really impressive stuff.  And your build looks like it really turned out well.  Nice one.

I'm more of a fan of pristine digital delay and reverb so the new FV-1 projects here would be worth looking into.  There's no shortage at PedalPCB as well.  A chorus is a nice effect to fatten up a passage, especially if you're playing solo.  It gets old quickly but can punch up parts that benefit from a doubling sound.  The Glam has a noticeable delay which may, or may not, be to your liking.  The Pork Barrel might be a bit more lush sounding.

+1 to the FV-1 - that is a great suggestion.  You should look at the FV-1 projects on PedalPCB.  You could make a custom EPROM with several kinds of delay (clean, analog, etc) as well as the basic modulation effects you want like chorus and reverb.  I have not heard the chorus, but the delays and reverbs are excellent.

Congrats on a tidy build.

Sounds like a fun project.

I like the 4:1 and it is probably a good choice if you want simple and transparent.  It also has a clean blend for parallel compression, which seems to me to be a great idea with an acoustic guitar.  But...in the guitar pedal world opto comps do tend to be more transparent than other kinds that is not because optos can't be made on the radical side, or that a VCA or other type can't be made quieter or more transparent.  Something like Merlin Blencowe's Engineer's Thumb is a good example.  It's more tweakable than a 4:1 or a normal/Dynacomp style comp, but is quiet and fairly simple and may just the kind of thing you're looking for in your application.  But it doesn't have a clean blend.  But it's worth checking it out before you commit.

My vote would probably go to the darker delay because I find acoustics sound brittle with anything too bright, and a delay is already quite busy for an acoustic rather than an electric guitar.  So I'd go cave dweller on that front.

Also: not trying to threadjack, but your post reminded me of something I saw at a music store last week.  It was a Yamaha acoustic-electric with a built in effects module.  Okay.  Nothing particularly special or exciting so far.  But the way it went about the effects were unlike anything I'd ever seen before.  The guitar didn't need a conventional amp.  Near as I could tell, it used a (fairly large) resonator disk attached to the back of the guitar from inside the body cavity of the instrument.  There was a 9V battery which powered both an effects unit and I assume the electromagnets to make the disk vibrate.  So you could get chorus and reverb to come out of the guitar while playing without an amp.  From a technological POV it was really cool.  From a practical/sonic perspective, it sounded like #@$!.  Just awful.  AWFUL.  The cheesiest worst stereotypical 80s sounds you've ever heard.  But from a technological perspective, it was kind of awesome.

To take a couple of real world orders of mine, this might mean I can't buy a single part from China for $1.29 + free shipping (which seems unfair to US sellers and the USPS). But I don't think it would affect that one can order $90 of parts from Tayda and have it shipped DHL for $9, which is still inexpensive. Requires planning ahead to consolidate orders and reduce packaging, which isn't a bad thing overall.

For selfish reasons, I hope you're right.  If the rest of world doesn't go along with the Americans and refuses to rip up the multilateral agreement I'm pretty sure that's exactly how it will be.  But if they do go along, then at least from what I've read, Tayda could well lose its ability to ship its orders via Germany in the cheap way we all basically take for granted.  Even though they don't use the packet system, I think those rates are still a part of the international framework that the packet system came out of.  If that's right, then Tayda is no different than the Chinese ePacket sellers in taking advantage of the lowest subsidized rates they can get (I've often wondered what the bottom line of acting as this kind of intermediary looks like from the perspective of the German postal service).  If the system goes away then cheap shipping like that may not survive anywhere. 

I've read a bit more about this in the last day or so and I think the bigger issue I'm trying to understand is this: if America reclassifies China, what are the knock-on effects?  The article I linked to says that the American government is trying to destroy the old multilateral model for determining postal cost sharing, therefore forcing every country to renegotiate new agreements along the lines set out by them.  That suggests that this will reshuffle the deck for every country in the world.  So what is going to happen?  Will every country in the world be obliged to tell their nationalized postal services to jack up the rates for all packages of Chinese origin?  Or will the price hike only impact the cost of goods mailed from China to the United States?  If it's the former, then from a pedal building perspective, we're going to be facing higher costs for a lot of staples.  If it's the latter, then I think companies will adapt quickly to a kind of workaround situation where a third party in a third party country simply uses its preferential shipping rates instead of China's--kind of like Tayda uses Thailand's agreements to sell Chinese goods to the West.  I guess a lot depends on how the rest of world reacts.

Awesome.  I like the graphics--the mountain woodcut thing.  Very cool.

How did mod podge work for you?  I've been experimenting with it on my builds lately, too, but never for a label.  Did it work well?  And what type did you use?  Matte?

Great job! I like the stamped, sanded look. I vote keep the silver knobs. It looks really cool that way.

+1.  Stamps on sanded always looks great.  And I also agree about the silver knobs.  Looks great.

In the news today: the Trump administration was to have China's postal classification altered to reflect its recent growth.  This would potentially raise the now heavily subsidized shipping rates we all rely on for a lot of the parts we use when building.

I'm not really sure what to make of this atm.  From our perspective, the cost of certain parts could go up substantially--footswitches and toggles most especially.  But at the same time, a lot of the stuff isn't being shipped from China, but from other Asian countries like Thailand.  If those countries aren't also reclassified, doesn't that mean there's a ready-made workaround for Asian sellers?

Anyway, here's a link:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/trump-changes-terminal-dues-and-epacket-rates/573337/

Great guitar.

Can you compare the mastery trem to the standard Fender?  In terms of feel and tightness?  Similar?  Different?  Better?  How so?  I'm considering going this way myself.