Well, the weather turned too soon last year and I never got it finished.

So it was mid-May this year when I got round to getting a new spray tent (the old one got left out in a storm and ripped to shreds) and fired up the spray gun again. The binding edges were proving impossible to get properly even/straight by scraping, touch-up painting and re-scraping, so I decided that it would have to do as I couldn't face another round of painting the binding white and then re-spraying the blue, so the minor imperfections stayed, as my friend Mark, who I was building it for, much preferred a slightly imperfect guitar rather than one that took another year to build. I must say that since I put the clear on and polished it, I don't notice the slightly wavy edges unless I look for them.

So then it was down fitting the hardware and setting up the guitar. My optimism for the neck angle being right on this ES-1 was unfounded, and the neck angle was too shallow. Had Mark chosen chrome hardware, I would have fitted a Lowrider bridge, which would have got around the problem, but they don't do them in gold, so it was a case of trying to modify the kit bridge to make it work.

I filed the undersides of the bridge ends so that it sat just very slightly off the body, and then used my nut files slot the saddles, by between 2-3mm. As I took over 1mm off the base of the bridge, the bridge would have been over 4mm too high without remedial action. When setting the intonation, it became clear that the bridge position was a couple of mm too far back, as the intonation with the saddles right forward is between 1-3 cents out. Not the end of the world, but still annoying.



I don't like having the saddle slots, but it worked, and the guitar now has a good low action.

I replaced the kit electronics with CTS pots, a PureTone output jack and a lever-style selector switch. Pickups are Tonerider Alnico IVs. The pots went in and out several times as something kept breaking each time, but 4th time lucky (plus replacement tone caps).

So it's now all done and set-up.



It's very bright and jangly, not quite how I expected it to sound, but overall I'm happy with it, if not with some of the details.

It will be a couple of weeks before Mark gets it, but I think he'll be happy too.