Greg's #3 ES-1F

No caravanning this winter so I decided to bring forward my next planned build - ES-1F
The only upgrades are Grover Vintage 135N and a bone nut.

I had origina1ly planned pup and electrics upgrades but decided to just do the stock build and then upgrade later if necessary.

I have read the warnings about having to wire and rewire an ES but Gavin's tricks make it look so easy. Let you know in the next month or two.

I also ordered bone nuts for my LP and ST. I just did a practice nut reset on the old plastic one on the LP. I could not believe how much more playable the LP was with only 3/4 of a mm off the bottom of the nut. The tuneup settings were perfect.

Guess what colour? Yep! Red again. Cherry red this time with reliable old Tru-Oil.

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Completed the mock build and eveything fits and measures.
Did have to do some sanding to fit the neck.
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Link to questions for the build

https://www.buildyourownguitar.com.a...ad.php?t=10608

The saga below

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Grain filled with glue - early in the process

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Black just before the UUGGHH! moment

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Where I am now





My last post on this project was in mid-June and I have been working on it constantly since then. I did not do progress reports as I was getting only small issues arising, not worth reporting. But slowly those small issues began accumulating until finally I stuffed it. I have had my first real disaster and have had to sand off the finish from the cap

It’s a long story but I learned so much more about Tru-Oil and finishing. I thought I already knew it all after two kits. hihi.

It all started when my wife asked what colour I was going for. “Red” I said “You know all guitars should be red.”
She advised black and as she is the family artist, who am I to argue. Black it is.

I searched and searched for glue on the cap and with lots of light sanding, GooOff and Turps on the cap even though I could not see much glue.

I wanted to do a thick coat of stain and wipe it off to expose the flame but that also exposed what looked like the cap had been sprayed with glue. The fine grain was full of it.
After more sanding , GooOff etc I got it reasonable and decided I would just have to have the cap a lot darker to cover the gluey grain. But the flame would not be as visible.

I found that a fine black permanent Sharpie run down the centre glue line covered well so I even dotted some of the worst grain areas.

Next problem was that after eight coats of TO I used 1200 wet and dry with water (I had shied away from it in the past) which left scratches. I seemed to get them out with 1200 and turps and a Scotchbrite pad.

Next coat of TO exposed fine scratches. I decided to do another 6 coats of TO hoping to bury the scratches. No luck. I also had very fine lines like a ploughed paddock in the TO. I think they were from the old T-shirt material I was using.

I went through this process twice trying to eradicate the scratches.

This was not a happy situation. I wonder if is it that black that shows every mark.

Luckily, I found an article on the web saying that steel wool and Scotchbrite do not flatten finishes. You should use 1200 wet and dry or finer or microfibe pads.

I shied off the 1200 so got out the microfibre pads. Being careful I started with a finer one but slowly got braver with courser ones. They worked well and as I rubbed I was going down through the scratch layers. One would appear and then disappear, and another would appear from an earlier coat. The ploughed paddock also went away.

I must have got almost to the first couple of layers, but all the scratches had gone
In the meantime, I had seen Youtube videos where guitar builders used and swore by the blue paper towelling shop cloth which apparently did not leave lines like the cloth. So, I got some to try. I worked.

Eight more coats of TO with a little rub of the MF on small scratches, 2 coats of 50/50 TO and FINISHED.

Next I began scraping the binding and got to the last F hole and SCRATCH SCRATCH. TWO ONE INCH SCRATCHES ON THE CAP NEAR THE F HOLE. Silly old b d.

I tried for a week to patch the scratches but to no avail. Got the s.. s and got the sander out. NO NO not the cap. YES YES the cap.

To cut a long story a bit shorter. The sander and 260 grit started cutting into the TO and as it did flame started to show through as I got to the initial stains. Now carefully I worked on the scratched area which luckily they had not got to the maple and so disappeared as I got back to the maple. Now I had the textbook (by my amateur standards) sanded off finish for flame maple and I did not go through the cap anywhere. And not a scratch to be seen. I also seemed to get rid of a bit more of the glue in the grain.

One bottle of TruOil had gone to dust.

One light coat of black and I now have a dark grey flame sort of like I drooled over when I was seeking inspiration on the internet for black ES335s.

That's quite a journey (one I'm fairly familiar with this year) but that third photo absolutely looks the business!

Talk about a happy mistake. Nice result .

Me and about a squillion other builders know your pain.

Thanks for the link Greg. Wow..what a read!
I’ll be taking mine slow after the tips you gave me..😳

This guitar should have been finished last month but due to poor planning of the quantity survey and a faulty pot I have been delayed.

My poor planning caused a couple of weeks delay waiting for the postman as I was just about to put the screws into the kit cream pup surrounds when a little birdy whispered in my ear that they should be black. Err! Why didn't I think of it before.

While I waited for the postman I rechecked my wiring which had had a problem with one pickup not working occasionally but appeared to go away. But it came back. After about 3 hours I gave up. Every component tested OK. Decided I would have to totally rewire the circuit. But one more desperate test and I seemed to narrow down the intermittent problem to a pot. I removed it, it tested OK. Put in a different pot and the circuited worked but is was only a 250 ohm pot. So I put the original one back. Didn't work. Finally found the right size in the spare parts box. The bad one still tested OK with multimeter but went into the bin. Any ideas?? It was a kit pot.

The I saw guitar on youtube with black knobs. Duh! Wait for the postman again.

I am very happy with finished guitar. The neck glued on without any filler and all the fittings are in the right place. I plays well and has intonated easily.


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Link to GOTM photos https://www.buildyourownguitar.com.a...ad.php?t=11006

After using the ES-1F for a while I realized the action was too high and was unable to adjust the neck etc. to get it low enough.
I eventually found this Goldo Lowrider bridge. I needed adapters shown for the smaller bridge pins.
Fitted it yesterday and got action down to the Gibson ES specs.
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That bridge looks good quality - where did you buy yours from?
I had similar problems with a 1974 Greco ES style, and ended up filing down the underside of the bridge, which isn't the ideal...

Hi H
The brand is Goldo from Germany and I believe they have the good reputation for quality. (www.goeldo.de)
The bridge is great. I wanted a tail piece as well but they were out of stock. Using the Pitbull standard still. No problems though.
You cannot go direct to the company. The Australian dealer is The Rock Inn in WA. (therockinn.com)
They were very helpful as they had to import the order as they did not carry the stock.
They knew about PitBull so if you buy something tell them you build stuff with PitBull kits and maybe even mention that I put the bits on the site. If we get enough people mentioning Pit Bull, Adam may be able to do a deal.
Greg

Can you measure the height from the base to toe top of the highest saddle? I need to try and find a lower bridge to make my ES3 playable. I did the bridge base filing thing for my ES-1 (yes the neck angle is really too shallow on that as well) but that's not good enough for the ES3. If it's less than 12mm then that's better than what I've got. 10mm would be nice!

@GregLane
Good to know - I guess it was likely to be metric, i.e. compatible with Chinese made...

@Simon Barden
I recall seeing you had a problem with bridge height, and mentioning you should have angled the neck heel, or pocket to allow more height....
I'm going to angle mine on the GR-1, as I think I'll use a floating wooden bridge (like the original Harmony H62), either with or without adjustable bridge saddles. I like the idea of intonation being spot on, and got the kit made with post holes, but I might just make a wooden base, with small posts to sit into those holes. I have a Schaller roller bridge, with 3 way adjustment, but I want to use a B6, instead of B70 style, (and haven't sussed out yet), but there may not be enough down pressure to justify the roller bridge.

I know I should have angled the heel more, but it looked OK at first glance, and angling a big neck block like that so that everything mates up nice and flat wasn't going to be an easy job at all. So many things to go wrong and I'd probably have needed more tools than I have and a proper workshop (which I don't have). It was just a badly made kit.

The Goldo bridge has the standard Gibson US post hole size with 4mm threads on the bottom to screw into the inserts. It's easy enough to get the converters that have an 8mm lower thread for use with most Asian-made guitars and the Pit Bull kits.

I've bought a bit of ebony so I may well make myself a low floating bridge if this Goldo low-profile bridge is too tall to work properly. I've looked on the Goldo website but they haven't got any dimension drawings. Just saying 9.7mm height is very vague and could just be the main body height. But saying that, as Gregs pic has the 8mm wide posts in view, it does look to be around 10mm in overall height, which is promising. I need to go and do some more measuring on the ES-3 and see if that' good enough. I haven't been able to look at it since last year as I was so disappointed with it.

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Simon - I have done the measurements and agree with Goldo that the height of the bridge is 9.7mm. That is if the bridge is sitting on a flat surface and measuring the height to the highest saddles (middle two). I also got a measurement of 10.7 from the top of the knurled adjuster to the top of the string on the 4th saddle.

You could also save 1 to 2 mm by using bushes without the rim. But I guess you would need to be real careful not the scratch the finish when doing adjustments.

Maybe you could slip across the channel and get half a dpzen for us. hihi

XP - You will notice in the photos that the break angle from the bridge to the tail piece is fairly shallow. From my limited knowledge I would think that that looks close to as shallow as recommended by the experts. I have no string buzz so that angle is fine.
I am extremely happy with the tone and playability of the ES now. Even with the standard kit pups for the moment.

Goldo does have matching tail pieces but they look pretty standard in size and shape. Not "low profile". I did order one but they didn't have any in stock. It was replaced with a Gotoh GE101Z . Holes in the ES kit were very tight (distance apart) The PB stock tailpiiece originally fitted with a bit of effort but he Gotoh was a fraction wider and I chickened out halfway through really having to force screwing it down. So now have the PB tailpiece back in.

Thanks fr that Greg. Worth a try. Probably have to import from Germany as I can't see any UK retailers at the moment.

I'm going to have to inset the inserts as they are rimmed types, sitting on top of the body and so could be lower. Can't really go with non-rimmed types as the ES-3 is a hollow guitar, and there is only a small wood block under the bridge area and the insert hole goes all the way through, so the rim stops the insert being pushed all the way into the body. Will probably have to touch-up the paintwork around them.

If you wanted the strings lower, you could probably do a reverse 'Bonamassa' stringing, turn the tailpiece upside down and run the strings under the bottom of the tailpiece. It wouldn't look pretty, but it would work. A tailpiece with an unstamped base would look best aesthetically, IMO. If you just ran the strings under the base as it was, you've got a couple of sharp angles for the strings to run over, which may lead to breakage issues as they age and fatigue with use.

Sounds like you agree with me that that string break is at its minimum. But entirely satisfactory as I gave it a workout this afternoon with no problems.
I’ll be interested if you do give the Goldo a go. I’ll watch the forum for progress.

Need to find a gold one!

No gold ones. Aaaaggggghhhh!