Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi all. I'm new to this forum and looking forward to engaging with this community and learning from all the expertise here. I'm also a new builder, just beginning my journey and planning on focusing on electric guitars. I've been trying to take in as much info as I can by reading and watching YT videos, etc. But I have a few questions that have come up as I've been doing so that I haven't been able to find answers to. I'm hoping some folks here might be able to help. Here goes!

1. Are there reasons to nip fret tangs when you're not binding your fretboard? I've seen it done when you do bind, and the rationale there makes sense to me. But I'm not sure if it's something I should do generally, or if I only need to worry about it if/once I get to the point of getting into binding.

2. Speaking of binding, when it comes to body binding, I always see builders install it fairly early in the body build, long before finishing. And then when they go to finish the body, they invariably get paint or other finish on the binding and have to scrape it off. So I'm wondering why you can't wait to install the binding until after you've done the portion of the finishing that you'd want to scrape off the binding? You could cut the channel well ahead of time, but what sorts of problems would be caused if you waited until almost the very end to install the binding?

3. It makes sense to me that you wouldn't glue in a truss rod, since it inherently needs to move. But I swear I've seen videos where folks have glued their truss rods in. Am I imagining it, or are these particular folks just doing it wrong? Or are there some instances where glueing a truss rod in makes sense (maybe for a specific kind of truss rod)?

4. When it comes to pickup positioning, obviously where you place the pickup vis-a-vis the neck and the bridge is going to impact the tone (the closer to the bridge, the brighter, etc), but aside from that, are there any things to watch out for when it comes to pickup placement? If you have the neck pickup too close to the bridge pickup, does it cause any problems? Or is the only thing you need to worry about the tonal characteristics of being closer or further from the bridge?

Thanks in advance for all the help!