Guitar Of The Month – October, 2022

Written by: Kevin Strom On: Nov 7th, 2022

Congratulations goes out to Steve Mastoris for his guitar build, to earn him Guitar of the Month for October 2022.

Steve used our TCKA-110 kit as the basis to create his guitar.

“One of my guitar buddies asked me if I could build him a Telecaster style guitar after seeing the two LP guitars I built from Solo kits.  I talked him into the Thinline style Tele since they are much lighter and that the butterscotch blonde custom shop ones go for big bucks.  We agreed to do the Thinline and go for the butterscotch nitrocellulose finish.

After receiving the kit from Solo I noticed the center piece of wood was much darker than the side two pieces. The back was perfectly matched.  Since we were going for butterscotch blonde that is semi-transparent, I was afraid that this would pose a problem but I had a backup plan of sea foam green if I didn’t like the finish.

When I did the fit check before starting the finish work, I notice that the truss rod in the neck was not functional.  I called Solo and they immediately shipped me a 22 fret Tele neck so I could keep on track.  The neck that came with the kit had a great profile so I used my cheap profile gage to copy the supplied neck dimension onto the replacement neck.  I also sanded the headstock to match an original Tele shape that I own. The 22 fret neck also needed to have about a tenth of an inch sanded off the heal to keep the correct fretboard height to the saddles.  Lastly the pickguard needed to be sanded to accept the new neck.  It was later painted black.

Most of my time was spent on getting the butterscotch blonde color to match all those old original Tele’s pictures on the internet.  I used one can of the Oxford butterscotch paint and aged clear coat for the body.  For the neck I used the Oxford neck amber with satin clear coat once I got the shade of amber I liked on the neck.  I can’t stress enough to have a piece of alder wood and maple to do some trials on to get the level of transparency that you want.  I had to make the top more opaque to even out the center section.  The back shows the beautiful grain and contrary to what I read, you can get a beautiful butterscotch blonde finish on alder.  I think the Oxford paint is spot on with their butterscotch color.

Paint Notes:
Neck: Sanded with 400 grit.  Applied (5) coats of Oxford neck amber then (2) coats of Oxford clear satin.  The head stock had (6) additional coats of clear satin lightly sanding the decal in between coats.

Body: Sanded with 400 grit.  Applied (2) coats sanding sealer.  Re-sanded with 400 grit.   Applied (6) coats of Oxford butterscotch blonde to back side and (8) coats to top side.  Then applied (2) coats of Oxford aged clear and (4) coats of clear.  I waited two weeks before lightly sanding with 1000 grit then by hand used rubbing compound, then polishing compound and finishing up with Mequire’s Ultimate Compound to remove the compound residue.

My friend insisted that I put my name on the headstock.  Later he asked if I could add his wife’s name on the back. I made some waterslide decals on my printer with some waterslide stock from the local crafts store.

Half way through the finishing process my friend asked if we could put on a B/G palm bender on the Tele.  I said I was game but that I have never installed one before.  So he order a B/G palm bender from “Peters” and had it shipped to my house directly.  I had to use a hack saw blade to create a notch for the B and G strings then drill four holes and mount two bushings for the bender adjustment.

I did build the guitar before adding the B/G bender to make sure it played correctly before doing the install.   As mentioned by all the others that built this kit you will need to file the fret ends and open up the cavity to accommodate US spec pots and switches.

Lastly, I knew my friend’s dad was a lap steel guitar player back in the 50’s so I order a tweed case from Solo and stenciled their last name and the city they were from on the outside as a tribute to his dad. I only kept the guitar for about a week before I drove it up to him (600 miles).  It was just starting to open up and sounded great when I turned it over to him.

Here are the upgrades I used on the guitar: Gotoh compensated saddles, Gotoh tuners, Solo tuner bushings, CTS pots, Orange drop cap, Fender original 52 Telecaster pickups, Peter’s B/G palm bender, Switchcraft jack, Switchcraft switch, Solo 22 fret Tele neck & Solo tweed case.”

-Steve