My first build ES-1GT

Hi Everyone,
This is my first build. I have had guitars for over 40 years. My first was a cheap second hand 12 string which I eventualy replaced with a Maton 12 string with pickup and cutaway neck. This had been my go to guitar for decades. Along the way I picked up a 1982/3 JV Squire Strat (Japanese) which has mostly gathered dust. I was so used to the 12 string that the Strat felt weird to play. Recently I got a Gretsch Electromatic (2020 model). Single cut with Bigsby in Fairlane blue which was my introduction to hollowbody guitars and is now my go to. I am mostly a sax player though and was talking to the Bass player in our wind ensemble about guitars. He makes his own and this ignited a spark in me to do the same. He suggested I start with a kit so here I am.

If I take my start date as the day the kit arrived, my diary should be a month old but writing it up never quite happened until now so I'm playing catch up. Here is the first installment..

I've been looking for a 335 style semi hollow in cherry red for months now so I thought I'd start with an ES-1GT.
It was ordered on 31st March and it arrived on 11th April.
Considering that the 31st was the Friday before Easter, the postage time was impressive (thanks Pitbull).

In the mean time, while I was waiting for the package I decided I needed some tools.
I have most of what I need for woodworking, electronics and Sax repair and overhaul but nothing specific to the Luthier trade.

First up, a neck rest made from some scrap timber, and felt:

Attachment 44251

Here is the kit being unboxed:

Attachment 44250

And here it is with a dry fit of the neck:

Attachment 44252

More to follow.

Hi and welcome davidhart.

Nice work on the neck rest!

Cherry red finish should look great.

Thanks Trevor.

Ok, so getting back to the build diary after more waiting for purchases to arrive.

Made some more tools:

Attachment 44349

This is a leveling beam (timber rather than aluminium), a fret rocker (cut from scrap material) and a straight edge from a 600mm ruler with notches ground with a dremel. Way cheaper than purchasing.
I aslo bought a crowning file and Fret erasers.

Good one mate. The way you are going, you wont have to buy any tools. Cheers

Hmmm, 3 months later.....
Its not that I haven't done any work on the kit. Rather, I've been really slack documenting it. I have however taken lot's of photos so getting back to it now.

I bought some cherry red and mahogany red Colortone stains.
After a light sand of the body & neck I stained all over with the mahogany red (which is darker) to hopefully bring out the flame in the maple veneer then lighly sanded it back:

Attachment 44678

I then re-stained with the cherry red:

Attachment 44679

I then piled on more of the cherry red:

Attachment 44680

Then added some mahogany round the edges, just to darken it. I wet it down with a mist of water to get an ide of what it would look like laquered:

Attachment 44681

I also stained the neck and headstock and dry fitted it. Not such a good photo, looks way pinker than it actually is:

Attachment 44682

I bought a tin of Mohawk nitrocelulose laquer but unfortunately it is now Winter and too cold to spray so I will have to wait until it warms up.

I can't say that I was that impressed with leaving the headstock plain red and as I have plenty of time until the weather warms up, back to YouTube and online shopping I went. I've seen videos of how to do mother of pearl inlays. How hard can it be?
Turns out that it is not so much hard as very time consuming.

My surname is Hart and my dad had a keyring with what is probably a family crest that featured a stag. Why not I thought. Many stylised images from the internet later I drew what turned out to be a combination of a few images the transferred it onto some 50x30x1.5mm mother of pearl. I cut this out with a jewelers saw (slowly, going through many blades), then added my surname. I also bought a Blackwood headstock plate which took ages to arrive from China and turned out to be way too thick. I cut it down with my bench saw (tricky that!) then sanded it to 3mm with a belt sander, collecting the dust for later. I also bought a router jig thingy for my dremel.

Attachment 44683 Attachment 44684

I traced around the MoP then routed out a 1mm rout and glued it in with super glue. I used additional superglue mixed with the dust I collected to fill the inevitable gaps then sanded the whole lot back.

Attachment 44685 Attachment 44686

I then glued the Headplate onto the headstock. I put the machine heads on just to see what it would look like. Came out ok.

Attachment 44687

Next time though I will use 5 minute epoxy as I kept losing the fill in the gaps and ended up using epoxy mixed with wood dust to finish it off.

It should look really great with the lacquer on.

And the headstock is better dark IMO. Nice inlay work.

I’d be a bit concerned that 3mm is a bit thick. You’re adding to the overall headstock thickness, so there will be less of the tuner post sticking out. It obviously depends on what tuners you’re fitting, but some have holes lower on the post than others, and with some conventional tuners, you may not be able to get enough turns round the post for stable tuning. Locking tuners won’t have a problem, as there should be less than one turn on them (unless you choose to add more).

Gibson use black fibreboard on their headstock facings these days, (rather than the holly veneer they used to use) which is about 1mm thick.

Ah, You’ve added a photo and you have locking tuners. No problem then.

Thanks Simon,
The headplate started out at 6mm. I sanded back the headstock somewhat to get rid of the slight curve and the final thichness is 15.4mm.
I chose the upgrade to Grover locking tuners and fitted them to make sure it all worked. Plenty sticking out.

Well, back to online shopping. Have nitro, need to spray, need equipment.

Bought a second hand 40 litre, 2.5HP compressor for $40. A further $60 to get it working (I knew in advance that it had issues getting up to pressure). So, new pressure switch, piston and rings, gaskets, valve plates, filter, a bunch of O rings and some oil...phew! it works like new and I've still come out at about half the cost of a new one of the same specs.
Add a hose and some Nitto fittings and I'm set.

Attachment 44688

Now for a spray gun (Voilamart LVLP) and an inline filter - this matched the cubic feet per minute that my compressor will deliver. And of course a respirator:

Attachment 44689 Attachment 44690

Stll waiting for warmer weather....So....

I masked up and marked my frets then leveled them with my sanding beam. Attachment 44691


I then re-crowned them with a triangular file and a crowning file and polished them with fret erasers working up through 180 grit, to 400, to 1000, to 1500 and finally 2000 grit. I then finished them with a polishing disc in my dremel.

Attachment 44692 Attachment 44693

Now that I've finished with the inlay and fretwork its time to glue in the neck.

Did I forget to mention that I scraped the binding after I stained? It cleaned up really nicely and got rid of a few imperections, especialy around the f holes.

I had already dry fit the neck and checked the scale length and angle of the neck by installing both E string tuners and strings, all looked good.

I cut some wooden blocks to use with the clamps and added some cloth just in case, applied the glue - I'm using Titbond original - and clamped it in 2 places.

Attachment 44694

It is starting to look more like a guitar.

Attachment 44695

That was 2 days ago, so now my build diary is up to date.

More to come, the temperature is rising, slowly but surely.

Finally the weather has warmed up enough to get started on the Nitro Lacquer.

I set up a corner of my shed as a spray booth with the large plastic bag that my daughter's matress was delivered in.

Attachment 44843

I ran a cord as a pully with loops so that I could hang my guitar at 3 different levels then started spraying.
I'm using Mohawk Nitrocelulose Lacquer and Diggers Lacquer Thinner with a 50/50 mix.

Attachment 44851

I spent many days over a 2 week period doing 2-3 coats a day on the warmer days.
Here is the progress:

-----------4 Coats-----------------------------------8 Coats----------------------------last Coat
Attachment 44844 Attachment 44845 Attachment 44846

14 coats in all. I was aiming for 12 but as each coat was quite light I decided to add 2 more to use up the nitro that was already in the gun.

It is now hanging in my music room,which is the back half of my shed, to cure.
I've heard times from 2-4 weeks but I'm going to give it a full 4 weeks before I wet sand and polish.

I forgot to mention before that I also added a bone nut. A low cost but worthwhile upgrade I think.

I have decided to upgrade to Tonerider Birmingham pickups and went with a black set with no covers.
I ordered them direct from the Tonerider website in the UK and even though they were on backorder, they still arrived reasonably quickly.
Great customer service, they replied to my questions really quickly.

Attachment 44850

Of course, now that I have pickups with splittable coils, I will have to upgrade the electronics.

I went for Bournes 500k push/pull pots audio taper pots for the volume and full size CTS 500k linear pots for the tone controls.
The CTS PUSH/Pull audio taper pots are full size but unfortuanately the switch is the same diameter (25mm) and there is no way I would get them in through the F hole. The Bournes pots are a smalled diameter.

I also bought a Swithcraft switch and jack and some .022uf Sprague Orange Drop capacitiors as well as some shielded cloth covered wire and some heat shink tube.

Here is my wiring loom.

Attachment 44848

I temporarily attached the pickups to test the wiring - I got the switch back to front the first time - always worth a check!
The electronics are now ready to go.

Getting closer!

Looking great. Love the final look of the red!

I got a set of Birminghams last year for my DSCM build. They are very nice.

Thanks Trevor,
Glad to hear that you like the Birminghams. I have no idea what they will be like, I've seen a few good reviews but there isn't much out there. Theres going to be quite a gap between the pickups and the frames without the covers but I think I can live with that. I can always add the covers.

I had been thinking about getting the Birmingham set for my build. Do let us know how they sound after you finish your gear.

The build looks lovely

Drashkum

Thanks, I'm planning to wet sand and polish on the weekend and can then install the hardware.

Well, Time to get back to my log, it's been a while and I have recently (early December) finished my journey but have lagged behind keeping up with the documentation.

The four week wait passed really slowly so in the mean time, back to ebay to pick up a sander/polisher. Now that I have a compressor there are no end of air tools to explore.

Attachment 45002

I also bought some foam pads and a bunch of sheepskin pads.

I wet sanded the Nitro by hand with 800, 1500, 2000 and finally 3000 grit paper.

I then polished using Meguiar's Polishing compound using my air polisher with 2 different grades of foam.
Attachment 45005 Attachment 45006

Here it is after polishing:
Attachment 45003 Attachment 45004

The pictures don't really show just how shiney this is now.

With the finishing done, I lined the pickup cavities with copper sheilding:

Attachment 45008

I overlapped the edges of the pieces and soldered between them. This was probably unnecessary but easy to do to ensure continuity.

I then installed the Tonerider Birmingham Pickups and a roller bridge that I also picked up while waiting for the Nitro to cure.

Attachment 45012

I found getting the electronics into the cavity a challenge. I started out using plastic tubing to pull the pots through but that turned out to be more trouble than it was worth and ended up using brass wire which was way more flexible.

Attachment 45013

When I tested the wiring, I found that one of the volume pots was very noisy and intermittent so I had to pull the whole lot out again and order a new pot.

In the mean time I researched different wiring diagrams for split coil pick ups and went with a variation the following.

Attachment 45011

This gives me a master coil split on the Bridge volume (I can have both pickups split or neither) and a phase revese on the Neck Volume.

The Variation is that I ran the hot wire from the pickups to the centre of the volume pots and the pickup selector swith from the lefthand terminal (looking at the back) so that I can blend the pickups without losing both if I turn one all the way down. This is hard for me to explain but here goes. With most wiring diagrams I have seen, the pickup selector switch is wired to the centre of the volume pot. When you turn the volume down to nothing this puts an earth from the pot case onto the centre of the selector switch - ok when using a single pickup. When you set the switch to use middle position (both pickups) and turn one down, that earth is applied to both pickups via the selector switch so if you turn one all the way down, you lose the signal from both.

I also opted for 50's wiring for the tone pots.

I then did a full setup following the TRAIN acronym:
Tune, Releif, Action, Intonation, Nut. I then balanced the Pickup heights to give an even volume bewween them.

So, Here is the finished ES-1GT in Cherry Red with Nitrocelulose Lacquer with a custom Mother of Pearl Headstock inlay.

with the following upgrades:

Tonerider Birmingham Pickups
Locking Tuners
Bone Nut
Push Pull Bournes Volume Pots
CTS Tone Pots
Orange Drop Capacitors
Roller Bridge
Strap Locks (I do not want to drop this instrument)

Attachment 45014 Attachment 45016 Attachment 45015

She plays like a dream with a very low action.
Sounds great through my 5 watt Big White Monkey "Chimp" MK III valve combo.
The pickups are great. Very clear clean tones but not as 'chimey' as my Gretch.

Looks great, well done! The colour combo goes really well.

Thanks Trevor.

Super neat! great work there!!

Cute little polisher. What kind is that? Looks very light and easy to use with one hand.

BTW, it does look fantastic. Especially the custom work on the headstock.