Congratulations goes out to Glen Allen for his guitar build, to earn him Guitar of the Month for January, 2025.

Glen used our STK-1 kit as the basis to create his guitar.

“This is my sixth Solo guitar and is a gift for a friend of mine.  In WW2 his father served on the HMCS Haida, a Tribal-class destroyer which is now a museum ship in Hamilton Ontario.

The Haida is currently painted a uniform grey colour, but for a time during the war colour camouflage patterns were used.  I couldn’t find any colour pictures of the actual ship, but there are model builders that have posted pics with this scheme so I figured this had potential for a cool design.  Using my iPad, I set about creating the design.  Each ship in the Canadian Navy has a badge and designation.  The designation for the Haida has changed over the years, but during WW2 it was G63.  I couldn’t find a font that matched the pictures or models, so I traced the image using vector software to get as close as possible to the look of the “G63”.

Once I had the look, I needed materials – specifically paint.  Eventually I found some paints from LifeColor that replicated the Western Approach pattern that I needed.  I took a bit of artistic license and added a light grey from the Eastern Approach set.

I lightly sanded the body before spraying it with white primer.  Next was to layout the design using a light pencil.  Now for the unknown territory as I’d never used an airbrush before.  I had some issues getting the ratio of paint to thinner right at first, but once that was figured out it went reasonably well.  There were instances where the paint leaked under the tape, so there were several rounds of touch ups.  Once the paint was done I did a single coat of gloss CrystaLac before applying the decals.  The decals are waterslide decals that I printed.  If you try this, remember to seal the decals prior to use with an acrylic spray or the ink will come off when you put them in water.  With the decals done I applied another 4 or 5 coats of the gloss coat then I used auto compound and polish for the final finish.

Using my fret rocker I found there were a few uneven frets, so I leveled them out using my leveling beam that has 220 grit emery paper on it.  After crowning the frets and rounding off the ends, I have a set of rubbers that have different levels of abrasive – once I’ve used them I finish with AutoSol for polish.

The fretboard received applications of a restorative and cleaner/finish, which made the colours of the wood really come to life!

The headstock shows the name of the ship and the ensign (flag flown at the back of the ship) and my initials on the back of the headstock- these are also waterslide decals which were applied after the first coat of gloss or satin.  The top and sides of the headstock are gloss, the back and neck are CrystaLac satin.  The neck has 3 coats of the satin.

The only upgrades on this kit are the nut and Solo locking tuners.  It went together nicely!  The final step was to adjust the neck and bridge to get the action where I wanted.

I’m looking forward to surprising my friend with this one –  until then… I get to play it!”

– Glen Allen