Tom... Getting back onto topic. before you restring the guitar take the pick gard off one more time if you want to fix the "knobs 5mm of the body" problem.Its actually quite simple. Pull the knob off.loosen the top nut on the pots' thread by the desired amount. 5mm in this case.Tighten the bottom nut up to the new postion. Do up only finger tight at this stage.Replace knob. Repeat above steps to either raise or lower the pot untill you reach the desired height.Now just checking.... have the knobs always been raised off the deck or just since you rewired the guitar?
Looks good Tom. The strings being taken off probably wont have caused any problems incidentally .All guitars, at one point in their "life" had no strings on them.