Guitar Of The Month – October, 2024

Congratulations goes out to Mario T. for his guitar build, to earn him Guitar of the Month for October 2024.

Mark used our LPK-200 kit as the basis to create his guitar.

“My aim this time was to build a “Modern LP”. For this I decided to use the LPK-200 kit from Solo Guitars.

I have already gained some experience in guitar building. For example, I built a 59 Les Paul replica with a Dirty Lemon Burst or a semi-hollow with Gretsch Filtertron’s. Basically, however, I usually only use the wooden parts and a few special parts such as impact sleeves. However, most of the parts are replaced by higher quality components.

The solid maple top without veneer was important to me. Some details had also already been decided beforehand. I wanted to realize many sound possibilities with the guitar, a tonal “Swiss army knife” so to speak. The locking tuners and bridge are from Gotoh, which I had already purchased beforehand. Nitrocellulose lacquer was also already set, but more on that later.

Apart from the neck and body, I used almost none of the kit’s accessories this time either. In the end, only the tailpiece, the impact sleeves and the jack can be found on the finished guitar.

The delivery time was absolutely incredible: ordered on Tuesday night, delivered on Thursday morning – in the same week!  Two days, from Canada to Europe, door to door !!! Unbelievable. Here it doesn’t even go from village to village …

After delivery, I first unpacked and looked at everything. The body was very well made, I only had to sand the base of the neck more intensively. Fortunately, the wooden parts are not primed. I’ve never understood what the primer is for, nobody would want to screw a guitar like this together straight away… The neck and body fit together perfectly, no rattling when lightly pressed – perfect.

Because of the ergonomics, I wanted to have a “beer belly sink” in the body. I took the contour from a PRS copy and drew it on the body with a pencil. I used a fretsaw and wood rasps to roughly cut it in, then sanded it out properly and shaped it.

But as always, coloring and finish take the longest when building a guitar.  The solid top made of flamed maple promised a lot, so I took a lot of time to try it out. I was initially undecided about the color. My favorites were “Yellow Tiger” or “Orange Tiger”. After a few attempts, however, I decided on a “simple” Charcoal – and I haven’t regretted it.

After soaking twice and sanding with 400 or 800 grit sandpaper, the body was masked. Then I stained the entire top with black alcohol stain (Italian powder-based product). After drying, I dry-sanded it with 400/800/1200 grit sandpaper. This is actually relatively easy, you sand down until the desired effect is visible. In my case, this was a relatively dark sunburst. I then stained it a little with light gray water stain to support a silvery reflection later on.

With the decision “Charcoal”, the rest of the color scheme was also decided for me: The guitar should look like an old piece of furniture from 200 years ago 😉 …

And now came the ” lacquer “…  I then decided not to use nitrocellulose lacquer at all, but TruOil and hard wax oil. I sealed the top with TruOil and the result is really excellent. TruOil not only seals and shines, but also enhances the flaming and grain of the wood. I was impressed by the result on the maple top. The application is relatively simple, the important thing is a clean and lint-free cloth. I applied about 12 coats. If necessary, you can lightly sand with fine sandpaper in between.

I changed the contour of the headstock on the neck and worked “my” shape into it. For visual reasons and as a small reminiscence of PRS, I glued a veneer of Central American mahogany to the headstock and applied a kind of burst.  The maple top was first completely blackened with alcohol stain and then sanded down to the desired burst.  The mahogany parts of the body and neck were also completely blackened and sanded down again. The result: darker pores in the mahogany wood. I then mixed 3 colors of water stain and applied the right one. The whole thing should look like old seasoned wood.

After gluing in the neck (with Titebond III Waterproof), it was time to seal the neck and body. Again, no nitrocellulose lacquer, but 3 coats of hard wax oil. The feel is simply great.

I built the covers for the 3-way switch and the electronics compartment, as well as the truss rod cover myself from plywood and mahogany veneer.

Although the remaining steps are extensive, they are done “relatively quickly”.  I treated the humbucker and electronics compartments with graphite lacquer and covered the 2 covers with aluminum foil.

For my sonic “Swiss army knife”, Jimmy Page wiring was almost without alternative. The SH-2N and SH-4B pickups from Seymour Duncan (available as the “Hot Rodded” humbucker set) are the obvious choice here. In the Seymour Duncan forum I also found a circuit diagram adapted for the 50’s version and added the trebble-bleed circuit for the 2 volume tuners.
The electronics must be soldered very carefully to avoid errors. The parts I used were: 4x logarithmic CTS push-pull potentiometers 500 kOhm, 2x 47nF Yellow Mustard capacitors, 2x 200 kOhm resistors and 1nF capacitors for trebble bleed. I realized some important connections with plugs, keyword maintenance. Fortunately, I didn’t make any mistakes and planned the space well.

Unfortunately, a lot of chips had to be produced when dressing the fingerboard, which was not so nice. I had to work down by up to 0.5mm in several places.  The notching of the nut, on the other hand, worked well, there was enough material available.

I replaced the cream-colored humbucker frames with black ones.  Then I added the potentiometer knobs, here “lamp shades” as a second small PRS reminiscence ;-). After putting on the strings (Daddario 10/46), all that remained was to adjust everything (neck curvature, bridge, string height, humbucker, octave adjustment).

The guitar has a fantastic sound. Rich and round, but extremely variable thanks to the circuitry. Even unplugged it has a broad, dark sound and great sustain up to the 22nd fret!
But there’s one thing it can’t do very well, despite all its efforts: sound like a Stratocaster 😉 😉 .

All in all, I am very happy with the result. A real global treasure : Made in Canada – Born In Europe – 😉 …

Thanks Solo Guitars, for the great kit !!!

… one more thing :  The guitar has been named “Carlos”. But not after Carlos Santana, because I’m not that presumptuous.
No, the namesake is our neighbor’s cat Carlos-Willi. The maple top of the guitar has the same “design” as his fur 😉 …

-Mario T.