Guitar Of The Month – December, 2020

Written by: Kevin Strom On: Jan 8th, 2021

Congratulations goes out to John Forrester for his guitar build, to earn him Guitar of the Month for December 2020.

John used our LPK-150 DIY kit as the basis to create his guitar.

“I have been playing guitar for over 30 years and modifying them for at least 10 years. Starting with changing pickups, tuners, upgrading wiring and progressing to stripping and refinishing. The natural progression was to build a guitar. I had been looking at the kits from Solo Guitars for quite some time and purchased the semi-hollow LPK-150 kit, soon after it was available.

The kit was well laid out and all the parts are of good quality.  The nut, tuners and electronics were the only things I wanted to upgrade.  I spent many hours on YouTube learning how to glue the neck and apply stain. I watched various videos but especially liked the videos by Brad Angove.

I used Minwax Red Mahogany stain for both the back of the body and neck. For the front of the body it was a mixture of Black and Walnut. I applied 2 coats of Walnut and 3 coats of Black stain sanding in-between coats with 600 grit sandpaper.  I sanded the black away to show the walnut colour starting with 300 and finishing with 800 grit to get the burst effect. I used a Semi-Gloss Verathane clear coat to finish. 10 coats I believe with light sanding between coats with 600 grit sandpaper. It’s not perfect but I’m happy with it.

I then glued the neck using Elmer pro bond glue and clamped it for 24 hours. Just a tip to those who are learning about gluing a neck. When they say to clean up glue seepage from the neck joint right away, do it! It will not absorb stain if it dries.

I used perforated stainless steel on the headstock and in the F-holes. This inspiration came from Trussart Guitars. At this time I only wanted a single humbucker in the guitar and therefore used a Carvin M22 that I had in a previous guitar. I used a single CTS volume control, coil split switch and kill switch. The tone control is not wired as I’m leaving that for future mods. I installed 8’ of mini-LED’s inside the body of the guitar. The toggle switch on the upper bout controls them and the 9v battery is stored where the neck pickup would be.  The neck pickup cover is stainless steel and it’s glued directly to the pickup ring.  I changed the pickup rings to black because the provided rings were cream coloured which didn’t match the binding on the body edge. The volume and tone knobs are used shotgun shells that I got from a friend. They were filled with hot glue and drilled out.

This was a fun project to do. It took around 3 months to complete and I’m already planning out the next project”

– John Forrester