ES-1G

ES-1G Kit

Azure Lagoon and Dark Onyx custom colour
Colourless Neck and Satin Black Headstock

Upgrades to the kit are as follows;

- Tonerider P90 pickups in a Humbucker case
- Nickel surrounds
- Switchcraft 3 way switch and jack
- CTS audio taper pots all round
- Black Bee Oil-in-Paper tone caps
- 3 ply pick guard and ES335 pick guard bracket
- Tusq nut
- Shielded "vintage" wiring
- Set of D'Addario Jazz "Light" strings
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First attempt at applying sunburst colouring. Thought the back came out great.
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Done in sunburst amber to red to mahogany all standard parts except the pots and switch and caps. Pups will be changed out to rocksongs.
Acrylic clear and satin clear on the back,
Thanks for looking

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And some more

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All stock apart from truss rod cover, pots, gold vintage speed knobs, orange drop caps and input jack.

Finish - all Colortone w/Tru Oil.

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Finally finished and setup ES1. Still fiddling with my setup & action hight. But I'm very pleased.intonation is perfect, & it's lovely to play.
My first ever!

Hi guys just finished this , my first Pit Bull build

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The Adopted ES-1.....finished in 10 weeks. http://www.buildyourownguitar.com.au...845#post169845

A big thank you to Tony aka VH2580 for offering this kit up for adoption as I had always wanted to do a semi hollow body guitar.

The kit gave me many challenges along the way. First up was stripping back the green stain which turned out impossible to save the micro thin maple veneer. Surprisingly the ply wood veneer underneath had some interesting grain to work with. Downside was the drop in top deck thickness which required a very delicate application of timbermate filler under the section where fret board overhang joins the body. This meant the body and neck had to be joined just after initial stain coats, with a bit more stain required to colour the natural timbermate filler used.

Timber on the back had the weirdest grain structure and was very stringy along the grain and opened up after applying water based ink & dye stain with a bit of swelling in a few places that also required some timbermate filler to disguise.

Next up was the awesome challenge of finishing a whole guitar, not just a separate body & neck, and to try and keep the finish being applied evenly all over whilst avoiding any dreaded runs. Thankfully these are very lightweight with body & neck joined thus making things a little bit easier to handle.

Initially this was going to be a guitar for myself but part of the way in my wife thought it would be a good birthday present for our eldest son who currently lives in NZ. Not a problem as that is mid August except that he was coming over this week for a business trip which cut the time line back considerably. This required a whole different approach to doing the finish, all experimental but with a fair amount of prior knowledge dialled in.

This is the 7th build where I have used Tru Oil for doing top coats and normally would do a handful of full strength, wet sand, then do some 50;50 diluted with turps, etc..... which takes quite a bit longer to get just right. On this occasion it was full strength up to about coat # 6, then 50;50 applied with 1200 grit W & D paper with surplus wiped off for a couple of coats, followed by a few more full strength then same 50;50 wet sand application with 1500 grit W & D paper. This really helped to level the finish back in on itself with excess gently wiped off....very important step as this preserved the level of thickness that was gradually building up. After doing a couple of robust 2000 grit W & D sessions it was back to full strength TO for a few more coats and then a couple more with just a few drops of turps to slightly thin it out which worked better that 50;50 as that ends up rather watery and prone to runs. In the end this was lucky to have about 36 hours curing time from last coat to first final polish, with a second one done the following night. All up, around 20 - 25 coats of TO.

Standard kit hardware used with Bone Nut, Alpha 500k mini pots, real parts 0.022 mini ceramic caps, switchcraft jack, real parts gotoh style 3 way switch, strap locks, push back vintage wire cloth, traditional bell shaped one ply truss rod cover, custom vinyl headstock front & rear logos, ernie ball 10-46 strings. Tony provided me with PUP's that came with his Korean PRS kit and they sound great.

- Top was plated in copper leaf before the patina was added using a mix of household chemicals.
- Input jack repositioned on the side of the guitar rather than top mount
- Vanson pickups - P90 in neck / 59 special in bridge with coil split option accessed through DPDT tone pot

My first set neck build. Body and headstock hand painted with acrylic paints, including bird, knot and snake patterns. Body edge and neck stained cedar. Finished with multi-layer gunstock oil, satin to body, matt to neck and gloss to headstock face. Pots upgraded to full-size. Fitting these was difficult, using threads to pull shafts through, and extended wiring for easier fitting.