Simon B's ES-3 build

[Simon Barden]

As I bought the TonePros bridge some years ago, and it wasn't cheap (about £90), I think I'll stick with it rather than spend £60 on the Hosco/Gotoh bridge I was considering. If it wasn't gold, I could use the TonePros on another build, but it is gold, and the ES-3 is my only build with gold parts on.

[Simon Barden]

Spending my time split over five different guitars, but have made some progress with the ES-3. I've now done the red/black sunburst on the back and front of the body, and also a bit of the same on the neck.



The sides have had one coat of black, and have just been sanded down. Regardless of how much filling and sanding I've done, I've still had a lot of sink lines in the paint that have needed attention.

I had to use Dakota Red from a spray can, as the darkest red nitro I could get. All the paint in bottles/tins had sold out, so I couldn't mix anything a bit darker. I initially had a smaller black burst round the edge, but the big mass of red in the middle didn't look right, especially as it was a solid colour, not a translucent red with grain showing through it for interest. So I brought the burst in a bit, and let as much of the overspray settle on the top in order to darken the red as I could.

That helped, but I still wasn't that happy, so I decided to spray a few coats of amber tinted clear over the top, which has mellowed things and helped bring it all together. It's not as nice as the 3-colour burst was, but I can certainly live with it.

I'm letting it dry for another day before I mask off the back and front and finish spraying the sides black. Don't want the tape to damage the finish because it's too soft. It's back up around 30°C again so a bit too warm for spraying except first thing and early evening, but good paint drying weather.

It's got a fair bit of of orange peel at the moment (highlighted and slightly exaggerated by reflections), but I can't sand the top/back yet otherwise I'll sand through the amber and possibly some burst, so that will wait until I can put the clear coats on.

[fender3x]

I read back through some of the build pages, and it made me think of the old military saying that "the enemy always gets a vote." It's a bad metaphor in that the guitar is not the "enemy." But I thought of it because the guitar always seems to get a vote in some builds...all of mine for example. There seems to be a cycle where I find a problem, come up with a solution, try the solution, discover a new problem caused by the "solution", come up with a solution to that...rinse and repeat. Often finding the solution means changes to the original plan. JimC put it nicely. The instrument is emerging rather than conforming to plan.

More prosaically, I really like the red and black, and will be thinking about that when I re-attack the finish on my ESB-4. So FWIW your ultimate finish choice looks like inspiration to me ;-)

[Simon Barden]

It's a good combination that'll work with the gold hardware. All black would have been OK but a bit dull. And I don't have to be a Steve Howe wananbe any more.

[Adamc]

You've got a great balance there with the black and red. I really like the size of the burst. Can't wait to see more of this build


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[Ricky]

Love that colour scheme, Simon.
It is rich and 'distinguished'. It will look great with the gold.

Cheers
Ricky

[king casey]

Hey that's a professional example of burst.
Well done.

cheers, Mark.

[OliSam]

Hey Simon. After seeing this guitar be rebirthed i have confidence tha tany guitar can be saved.

[Simon Barden]

One step forward, several steps back...

I shouldn't have trusted that my new blue low-tack masking tape was really low tack. Taped off the back and front so I could spray the sides black yesterday, and then put on a coat of the amber tinted clear first thing this morning so that it matched the black of the top and back.

Wanted to get the tape off ASAP so that I could then remove the masking tape on the binding whilst the paint was still relatively soft and didn't chip.



But I didn't expect the masking tape to leave such marks on the finish (the white dots are all dust and dry paint flakes left over from removing the tape and paper).

I knew the binding masking tape had come away in the concave curves a bit, so would have to scrape that, but there were also a few areas where the masking tape went in a touch further than the binding so I'll have to touch those up. In reality the masking tape marks aren't too bad (they just look worse than the regular orange peel marks) and will disappear when I clear coat and then sand back over the top after touching up the edges and scraping the binding. But it is disheartening. It's also 35°C in the back garden work area ATM, and trying to do anything in this weather is an effort. It makes the paint softer too. So the body will now hang up for a few days to let the paint harden more and I wait for this very hot weather to pass.

I've got a lot of clear coating to do on my other builds, but it's too hot to spray outside of the early morning and very late evening, and I can't be bothered to get the spray gun out for just a couple of sprays with all the cleaning up involved.

I know 35°C isn't that hot for a lot of the people here, but it is for the UK, and comes on suddenly with no time to acclimatise. I can't do much without sweat pouring off me, onto what I'm working on and also splatting on the inside of my reading/close-up glasses so I can't see what I'm doing.

So today I am mainly hot and grumpy.

[JimC]

Whereas I'm hot and covered in an exotic mixture of sweat and sapele dust. Its an interesting cosmetic, but not, I fear, destined to catch on...