koldo2552´s ES-3 (The WorkHorse)

[koldo2552]

Thanks!!
Petrus, i bought sealer and tru oil in Mildot. From Valencia i think. They have both cheaper than Amazon and you can choose between Correos and Nacex for delivery...

I'm still working on the guitar. If you want to know how can you apply those products, take a look to some videos from youtube, in this one, he explains everything nice and clearly.https://youtu.be/VFT9kdJFkaI

[Ian A]

This is looking very nice. I have not seen a hand applied sunburst before, they are usually sprayed, but this certainly looks the part. Well done. Deusenberg headstock looks great too.

[Dedman]

Bravo! I love the colours in this

[koldo2552]

This is looking very nice. I have not seen a hand applied sunburst before, they are usually sprayed, but this certainly looks the part. Well done. Deusenberg headstock looks great too.

Check "BigD Guitars" youtube channel. It's full of guitar finishing videos. He made a lot of burst finishes using hand applied water based stains. Actually, making the burst this way is very easy. And after the finish, laquer or oil, rhe colours become alive.

[koldo2552]

Well, I´ve been busy last days but the guitar is already screaming!
After a little fretwork, installing electronics, Tusq nut and a nice adjustment today i plugged the guitar into one of my amps and all i can say is that it worth all the effort.





So, the guitar is the ES-3 kit with:
- Grover Mini rotomatics
- Tusq XL nut
- Tonerider Alnico II Classics
- Dimarzio Pots and Allparts/CTS pots with push pull for coil split
- Mallory 150´s caps
- Switchcraft connectors
- Piezo disc working as contact mic
- Stock bridge
- 11-48 strings

Nice action, nice tuning, it´s very confortable, very easy to play with.
Played unplugged it is a warm sounding guitar, not a lot of volume but more than expected. Plugging the piezo output gives a nice acoustic sound. I can imagine myself gigging an acoustic set list with it without any problem. It needs a litlle bit of EQ, but i made a preamp for acoustic instruments and i can use it.

But the real deal comes plugging it into a good amp. I´ve been testing it with my last made amp, it´s based on the ´57 5E3 tweed deluxe with some mods. What can I say... I´m impressed. Tone rider pickups are absolutely amazing. They give a fat, warm and full of harmonics sound. Low output, i´ll say that they are between powerful singles and my other gibson´s 498/490 set. Vintage voiced... You can get warm Jazzy sounds (it´s supposed to be a jazz box), bluesy, rockabilly... while playing clean. But if you crank the amp, you immediately get into 60´s and 70´s rock. Think about Led Zeppelin, Free... Well, very close to that vintage Les Paul sound. Less sustain than a Les Paul of course, but it´s surprisingly good with overdriven sounds.

I know that those guitars are for jazz, but i don´t play jazz (i wish i could)... so this one is going to be used for alternative rock, indie, pop-rock and acoustic stuff. That was the original idea, a guitar that can be used for everything from clean to rock and all in-between sounds with the plus of the piezo disk... A workhorse.

I´ll make a video-demo of it, but this week i´ve got a gig with my band... maybe next week.

[FrankenWashie]

Wonderful job Koldo, it looks "The Business" as we say in Australia. Very tasty!

[WeirdBits]

That's a fantastic result. The colours, finish and features all combine into a beautiful classic instrument. Well done.

[koldo2552]

As i said, i´ll make a demo next week, but i recorded a little track of the piezo output of the guitar.

I used a preamp that i made a couple of months ago, it´s made for acoustic instruments and it´s been tested with my acoustic guitars an my bass player´s upright bass.

That´s it... Impedance selection, bass, mids and treble, volume and bright switch. It´s based on Ripthorn´s F2B preamp that actually is a J-fet adaptation of the Alembic tube preamp for bass. I changed some minor resistor and cap values.

Guitar-preamp-M-Audio fast track 2-Garage band. It has no other eq, only a reverb plug-in. It´s short, but you can hear a little strumming with some kind of lead line...

https://soundcloud.com/koldo-fernand...horse-acoustic

See you!!

[wokkaboy]

sounds and looks great Koldo well done !

[Zandit75]

Mate, well done!! That Piezo sound is awesome! Great playing too. Can't wait to hear what it's like through the pickups!