Guitar Of The Month – November, 2022

Written by: Kevin Strom On: Dec 5th, 2022

Congratulations goes out to Michael Morris for his guitar build, to earn him Guitar of the Month for November 2022.

Michael used our MBK-1 kit as the basis to create his guitar.

“Trinity is a true “Swiss Army Knife” guitar that can do it all. 

I started with the MBK-1 kit because I wanted something different. The shape of the Mockingbird is unique and hasn’t been used too much. 

The kit came with a couple of humbuckers that I set aside (before I even got the kit!) because I wanted to upgrade the pickups to the Seymour Duncan P-Rails with Triple shots, to allow for all sorts of different sounds. The triple shot system allows me to have a single coil sound, a humbucker sound, a P90 sound from each pickup. You can also use the system to switch the polarity to get all sorts of unique sounds. 

The wiring of the pickups is so simple with the triple shot rings. There are five wires coming off of the pickups and they solder right to the ring. Off of the ring there are just the typical three wires to hook up to your volume/tone controls. I used the stacked controls to eliminate having too many knobs on the front of the guitar. 

To truly make it an all around guitar I added the Ghost pickup system. This allows for a piezo system to get some great acoustic sounds from this guitar by using a TRS output, that means that I can blend the sounds to use acoustic tones and electric tones. The wiring of this did create some fun issues with the ground having to be moved from the bridge to the tail piece. I had to add a 9volt battery housing in the rear of the guitar to power the Ghost system. 

Power wood carving is a new hobby thanks to the design I decided to add to the body of the guitar. It also gives the guitar it’s name of Trinity. I did about 5 hours of practicing on some old 2x4s to ensure that I could cut all the angles of the design. It certainly made sure that I wasn’t too nervous when I put it to the guitar body. I also added a small cut to the headstock to add some silver to the paint design. One thing that I wanted to do was to have a small but important detail of the control knobs being sunken into the body. Using the power carving tools it made it a breeze to do.

For the painting of the guitar I started with Solarez grain filler. It works amazingly well to smooth out the grains of the wood. I would recommend the use of it to make your base layer perfectly smooth. It works by coating it on then taking it into the sun for a few minutes to harden. You can sand it immediately after this hardening, so you can be ready for a priming coat within an hour! I sanded the Solarez coating to a nice smooth finish, which allowed me to prime it. My lovely bride got me to use the silver paint for the accents and I think it is a great contrast. Three layers of the glitter paint gave a good thick coating. This took about five days to complete, with all the drying time. Three coats of clear coat with lots of sanding to make it smooth, then some good old buffing to get a shine. For the neck I used a brown stain to get the grains to pop, and Tung oil for the finish. I love the satin feel on the neck for playability. Locking gear ratio tuners from Graphtech finish off the chrome hardware and also make tuning really easy. 

The versatile sounds that I get from this beast are amazing. I highly recommend both the P-Rails and the Ghost system. 

I’m looking forward to a few more kits in the future!”

-Michael Morris