Guitar Of The Month – March, 2024

Written by: Kevin Strom On: Apr 8th, 2024

Congratulations goes out to Mike Vezzuto for his guitar build, to earn him Guitar of the Month for March 2024.

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

“This was the first time I have ever done anything like this, and this is actually the first electric guitar I have owned! A couple years back, my two brothers got this kit for me for a Christmas gift, however, I was in the Navy at the time and did not have the resources at my disposal at the time to put it together. I got out last year, and finally had the time and everything I needed! 

Like I mentioned earlier, I have never put anything like this together before, however, while I was in college I worked at a shop where we restored and painted classic cars, so I did know how to paint. For the color, I used a red which we used on an old Corvette we did work on years back, and a slightly off white cream color I found laying around as the accent color. I sanded the body down using 320, then sprayed on the color. After that dried, I sanded that down again using 800 and sprayed on a 2nd coat. 

The red was a single stage acrylic enamel automotive paint, and the cream is a single stage urethane enamel automotive paint from Deltron (admittedly, a very unorthodox choice for paints for guitars). When looking for paints to use, I just went down to the shop and dug through a bunch of old paints he had kicking around, and these fit the bill. Fortunately, both paints are durable, sand well, and were able to be cleared over using lacquer. 

For the cream accents, I taped off the neck so the cream would be the back and sides of the headstock and would transition into the stripe running down the back of the neck. I also painted the pickguard, truss rod cover, and pickup mounting rings the same color using the same urethane enamel paint. Fortunately, this type of paint does not require a clear coat, so I did not clear these pieces with the lacquer. 

The man who I worked for down at the shop was a pinstriper for hotrods since the 70s, and I always wanted to own something which he worked on. These days he is older (well into his 80s), can’t see quite as well as he used to, and his hand maybe isn’t as steady as it once was, but he is one of my best friends, and it was important to me to have something I can keep which he did. So I asked him to put the pinstripe on the body, and put a pattern on the head stock, and I love how it turned out. 

I now sanded everything with 800 and then I used a Valspar gloss luster lac to clear coat everything (exception the pieces mentioned before and the fretboard of course). I wet sanded it to 2000 and buffed it out with a little 12v Milwaukee buffer (the perfect tool for this size project).

From here on in it was just assembly, and everything went pretty smooth I think, especially for someone as inexperienced as myself. The wiring was a little tricky to make everything fit in nicely, and I needed to solder in a new three way toggle switch, but I eventually got it all tucked away. I also purchased a few other things to modify the guitar a little further. I got a new toggle switch, as mentioned, with a cream color accent, and white speed knobs to match the color pattern (I originally purchased “cream” color speed knobs, but in comparison to the cream color paint, it looked much too yellow, so I went with white instead). And the piece which I think really ties the whole thing together is the Bigsby B7. 

My one regret is not taking more pictures during the process, but I loved the build and can’t wait to do another! 

Thanks for checking it out!”

-Mike Vezzuto