Guitar Of The Month – June, 2023

Written by: Kevin Strom On: Jul 10th, 2023

Congratulations goes out to Jonathan Tieszen for his guitar build, to earn him Guitar of the Month for June 2023.

Jonathan used our ESK-35 kit as the basis to create his guitar.

“While this ESK-35 is my fourth guitar build, it is my first Solo Kit.  My daughter kept telling me I needed to make a purple guitar, and I’ve been wanting a 335-style guitar.  I’ve long been interested in the ESK-35…I like the way the lower cutaway goes further up the neck….so I decided to give it a go.  Overall, I was pretty impressed with the kit, the flame maple on the body looked great and the neck fit was exceptional.

I had been a little nervous about sanding off the poly sealant on the thin laminate, but the process was actually pretty easy and went well.  I used Angelus leather dye to stain the guitar.  First I masked off the binding as much as I could using pin-striping masking tape.  This didn’t completely eliminate the need to scrape the binding, but it did reduce it significantly.  I had never scraped binding before, but it wasn’t bad.  I used a razor blade for most of it, but ended up using an Xacto knife for the finishing touches.   

I opted not to use sanding sealer this time and went straight to the clear coat.  I used Spraymax 2K Glamour for the gloss coat on the body. The nice thing about using this is you can spray multiple coats in a short time…10 minutes in between coats, and you can do three coats that way.  Then 24 hours later you can do 3 more.  The downside is the stuff is highly toxic…I used a respirator mask, a Tyvek paint suit and goggles, and used my shed as a spray booth.  And the downside of not using sanding sealer before spraying the clear coat was that the dye ran a bit when the clear coat was wet, so after it cured I had to scrape the binding again.

Once  the clear coat cured, I flat sanded (wet) using 800, 1200, then 2000 grit sandpaper.  I found one guitar builder on YouTube that suggested using a rectangular rubber eraser when flat sanding and I’ve found it works really well…done that on my last three builds.  However I did end up sanding through in one spot, so I decided to do 6 more coats of the Spraymax.  After that cured, I flat sanded again, being really careful this time.  

Next I polished the finish with Meguiars Mirror Glaze compounds using the Meguiars DA Power System power drill attachment.  I used the Ultra Cut Compound with their Compound Power Pads…the red ones.  I found these stiffer pads worked much better than their standard yellow pads for getting the sanding scratches out. I stuffed cloths in the f-holes to keep the compound from dripping inside of the guitar.  I then followed up with their Ultra Polish Compound, followed by Scratch Out, using the yellow Polishing Power Pads for both of these.  Finally, I finished up with a coat of Johnson Paste Wax. 

For the neck I used a satin wipe on poly, as I wanted a satin finish on the neck…I did about 6 coats, then lightly sanded.  Since I did satin on the neck and gloss on the body, I did not glue the body and neck together until the finish was complete on both.  I was a little nervous about that, but it worked.  

I forgot to mention that I decided to buy some flame maple laminate for the headstock, and that turned out better than I thought it might. The flame pattern is wider than it is on the body, but it still looks nice. 

I used the bridge and tailpiece that came with the kit as well as the pickup rings, but purchased upgrades for the rest of the electronics and hardware.  I used CTS custom taper pots, a switchcraft jack (purchased from Solo), Grover tuning machines, Dimarzio PAF 36th Anniversary neck and bridge pickups that a friend had recently removed from one of his guitars, Wilkinson toggle switch and gold speed knobs, which I thought would look good against the purple finish.

I knew the electronics on a semi-hollow were more challenging, but I had no idea!  Wow!  However, I did eventually get them installed.  The other issue I had was the nut slots were not cut deep enough.  I have never worked on a nut before, so wasn’t sure whether to take it to a shop or try it myself.  In the end, I found a set of Nomad nut files for a reasonable price and decided to give it a shot.  It actually went very well, and once I got the slots at the right depth, I was able to get the action setup very nicely.

All in all, I’m very pleased with the guitar…it looks great, plays great and the price was great.  And my daughter approves of the guitar!”

– Jonathan Tieszen