Congratulations goes out to Rich Setterberg for his guitar build, to earn him Guitar of the Month for May, 2025.

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

“Solo really makes guitar building easy.  Like everything worth doing, it can take time and patience.  I think I took a very leisurely 8-9 months.  But if you invest that time, you can get professional results, and you will learn a lot.

For starters, the only thing I did that was a little out of the ordinary was to install an ebony inlay onto the headstock.  Craig Lavin has an excellent web tutorial on how to do this. You can buy a .090 piece of ebony that is large enough to cover the heads.

I milled the face of the head with a router to make room for the ebony.  (Otherwise, the pegs on the tuners will be too short.) 

Then it was off to the paint booth.  Like most amateurs, I don’t have a dedicated room for spraying, so I got an inexpensive Wagner spray tent.  If you have a lot of nice windless days, spraying outside is an option, but bugs and dust can still be a problem.  Use a good respirator either way.

I laid down two or three coats of vinyl sealer.  Then I did my burst, also with spray cans.  Brad Angove did a 335 on his channel, and I used his technique.  First, I sprayed tobacco brown around the edges and slightly into the front and back.  I followed with cherry red, over the brown and a little further into the front and back faces of the guitar.  Finally, I coated the whole guitar with vintage amber.  The key to a good burst fade is to face the spray inward toward the center of the guitar, not outward.

I used a piece of abalam (laminated abalone) for my inlay material. If you follow the Lavin tutorial, you can get stunning results.

After the inlay work, I taped the fretboard and checked the alignment of the neck in the neck pocket.  This is really important before gluing a neck in place.  To do this, I temporarily installed the bridge and both E tuning machines and put both E strings in place to check both right-left alignment as well as nut-to-bridge alignment.  Solo did a great job with a good snug, accurate fit.  I think I may have nudged the neck a couple thousands of an inch to the right to get perfection before clamping and gluing.

Next came finishing, and this is where I spent most of my time.  If you rush or skip steps here, you will not likely be happy.  There is a great three-part tutorial by Driftwood Guitars on guitar finishing from sanding through final clear coating.  I followed their suggestions pretty closely.

The maple used in a Solo kit is fairly tight grained, so pore filling is probably optional, but I still used a couple coats of Z-Poxy.

I taped the binding next, including the F-holes.  This can be slow work, but it will take more time to scrape the binding later.

After a few days of drying, remove the binding tape and scrape off any overspray.  I then applied the clearcoats.  A common rule I kept hearing is three coats spaced three hours apart for three consecutive days.  The other tip that helped was preheating the spray cans in hot water.  I used about 130 -degree water.  The lacquer flows much more evenly.

The hardest part is now waiting until the lacquer cures enough to polish.  I’ve heard times from 2 weeks to a couple months.  I leaned toward the latter.

Everybody has a favorite regimen for polishing.  My method is to start with 800 grit sandpaper and take down all of the gloss just enough to eliminate all spraying irregularities. I then progress up through 1500, then move to polishing compounds.  I used Medium, Fine and Swirl remover.  If you are proficient with an orbital sander/polisher, go for it, but be careful not to linger in one place.  I finished the process with Diamond Ultra fine finishing compound.

The fun part was putting it all together.  I did upgrade a lot of the items that came with the kit.  I’m sure the parts supplied would have been just fine, but I was going for a particular look, sound and functionality.

I used and installed a Bigsby tailpiece.  I also used Klaxon Gibson style locking tuners at the other end.  In between, I elected a TonePros Tune-O-Matic roller bridge for better string wear using the Bigsby.  I also cut and shaped a Graph Tech black Tusq nut, again for string longevity.

I opted for Seymore Duncan Seth Lover pickups.  I also used a 920D prewired 335 harness.  All I had to do was wire the pickups to the harness and the harness was ready to install. 

There are a lot of frustrated folks on the web complaining about the difficulty of getting the harness through the F-holes.  I learned three tricks.  First, tape off the surrounding area to avoid scratching your newly polished surfaces.  Second, use two people.  It was game changing how four hands helps. One person carefully pulls the pots toward the hole with strings attached to the pot shaft while the other guides the pots and harness in with this tool.  Whole thing took about 15 minutes.

Then I finished up with Schaller strap locks and the provided pickguard.  Finally, I added a custom truss rod cover.

Did I make mistakes? Many you can’t see and one or two only if you look carefully.  The whole thing dropped out of the vice, and I had to refinish where it hit the floor.  In installing the truss rod plate, I accidentally drilled through the back of the neck and had to use a furniture repair stick.

But Solo makes the whole process easy.  The web has millions of guides to help you along.  The key is not to rush it.  Enjoy the journey as much as the destination!”

-Rich Setterberg