Guitar Of The Month – February, 2022

Written by: Kevin Strom On: Mar 2nd, 2022

Congratulations goes out to Paul Lindenfelser for his guitar build, to earn him Guitar of the Month for February 2022.

Paul used our GFK-10 DIY kit as the basis to create his guitar.

“I’d been wanting a Falcon style guitar for a long time, and I’d had my eye on the GFK kit. I actually had no idea what I was going to do with it color-wise even as I was unboxing it, but I eventually decided on a wine red.

One of the first things I did was to mock-up the bridge and both E strings to make sure the neck alignment was right. Fortunately, it was spot on.

The wine red color is Wine Rit Dye. The body of this guitar seemed to be heavily poly-coated, so it took a marginal amount of sanding to get it to take dye. I needed to apply around 8 coats of the dye to achieve the level of darkness I wanted out of the color. I worked on the top and back first, with the sides taped.

Once I got the color where I wanted it, I gave it a couple of coats of Bullseye spray shellac. I started off with the spray, as not to pull the dye with a brush. After the spray dried, I brushed on two more coats of shellac, for filling/leveling purposes. Once that was totally dry, I wet sanded with 1000 grit, then 2000 grit sandpaper.

The next step was the sides. These would not take dye at all for some reason, so I went with SamaN wood stain (water-based) in the urban grey color. I was originally going to leave the sides and neck natural, but I thought the grey would look good, so I went for it. Happy I did!

Then came the painstaking process of scraping the binding, because no matter how well you tape, some dye always seems to bleed through, for me at least.

Some more shellac on the sides, and some more sanding before moving on to the neck.

The neck took a bit of sanding as well to get past the poly sealant. Once that was done, the neck and headstock got a couple of coats of the same urban grey stain that the sides got. I cut a V into the headstock to avoid having the same exact headstock as my other Solo builds, and also to give it that Falcon vibe. The headstock got a half dozen coats of Tru-oil over the stain, then a wolf inlay sticker (this is my only guitar without an actual name) and some more tru-oil to seal that in. I let the neck stain dry for a full day before setting the neck with hide glue, along with a double check of alignment.

Once the neck was set and dry, I started coating the body and sides with more Tru-oil. The top and back got around 15 coats each. I followed each of the first 5 coats of Tru-oil with 0000 steel wool, but the last 10 were just straight tru-oil. I found that by applying it with a cloth in the same direction as the grain, you can get a decent gloss without buffing.

The back of the neck got satin wipe-on poly, because I don’t like the neck to be glossy or tacky. I’ve found that the satin poly leaves a smooth, fast neck.

The frets were in good shape and seemed to be pretty level out of the box, which I’ve found is pretty typical of my Solo kits. I went over the frets with a 1000 grit fret eraser and called it a day. The fretboard got my usual treatment of lemon oil, but otherwise felt good to go.

I mocked up the bridge and the pickups a second time to mark my drill holes, and once everything looked right, I mounted the bridge.

The electronics went in much easier than anticipated. I was expecting a fiddly time mounting everything through the F-holes, but fortunately most of the solder work had already been done, so I just had to solder on the switch, then feed everything through the neck pickup hole. Getting the switch in place was easy, and I was able to solder the neck pickup wires straight away, and then pass the bridge pots down to the bridge pickup opening and solder up that pickup. My fingers fit through the lower F hole pretty easily, and I was able to guide the pots and jack into place.

I had a tough time stringing the guitar up with the provided strings, but normally I switch strings anyway, and a set of D’Addario 10-46s went on with no problem, you just have to bend a J at the eye end to get it to play well with the bridge. I was able to get the action pretty low because the neck was so good.

The kit came with a red tortoise pickguard that I elected to leave off because it looked muddy on the red body. If this guitar ever gets a pickguard, it’ll probably be a black one, but I’ll probably just leave it off altogether. It just looks too good without it.

All in all, it was a super fun build with just the right amount of challenge. This is my 3rd Solo kit (and my first set neck kit), and each one seems to be a little better than the last. This baby holds tune and sounds like a proper hollow body. Super fun to play!”

-Paul Lindenfelser