Florentine: DIY kit semi-hollow LP style

This is my second kit built guitar, and the one that I planned from the very beginning when I started learning to work on and mod guitars. I saw a youtuber talking about building this kit from the Fretwire.com, and immediately fell in love with the Les Paul style semi-hollow body. Every kit and re-finish I’ve done was leading up to building this kit. The total time from start to finish was a little over two months. 

The Fretwire shipped the package in a timely manner, and it arrived two days early with no incident. 

First thing upon opening I checked for shipping damage. My tele kit from ebay came with a pretty big dent, which did not affect that build since it was getting a solid finish, but since this one would be stained it could not have such damage. Luckily this one was fine. Its a basswood body with a maple top and quilt maple veneer. The neck is maple, and the fretboard seems to be some kind of engineered wood. It looks like plywood cut endwise really, but its pretty attractive so I’m not complaining. 

First I prepped the body. This involved a great deal of sanding. You can clearly see some glue spots around the bottom edge of the body in the previous picture, which I sanded as much as I dared in an effort to get rid of them. However, in the end it turned out I never got them out completely. I sanded to 500 grit in preparation for staining. 

I used Rit dye to stain this project. I started with one application of black, which raises and highlights the grain. I then sanded that back with 500 grit. 

I didn’t take pictures of each step, but I applied dark blue around the edges first in several layers. Before beginning to apply aquamarine on the whole body. This blended the darker edges quite nicely. This picture was taken while the stain was still wet, and looked the most brilliant. You can clearly see pale spots now where the glue that was soaked into the wood prevented the stain from having its full effect. 

Next I prepared to do the back sides and neck by masking off the top and the fretboard. 

I used one application of minwax dark walnut stain. I had intended to do more, but it was darker than I expected so I decided against it. 

Throughout this project I was a little inconsistent on taking photos. Prior to gluing the neck in I had to painstakingly scrape all the binding to remove excess stain. Its a long and difficult process to do without damaging the wood. I coated the neck tenon and pocket with titebond, and clamped the neck overnight. Again, forgetting to take any photos, I applied over a dozen coats of Varathane sanding sealer over the course of a week. Sanding back and adding more to try and fill all the pores and grain. 

When I was satisfied with the sanding sealer I carefully taped off the fretboard, filled the sound holes with paper towel, and hung the project up outside for spraying. 

I sprayed a can and a half of Watco Lacquer over the course of a week, then hung the guitar in a storage closet to cure. It stayed there for three weeks. One aspect of lacquer I was unaware of, is that because it dries very fast, moisture can become trapped and cause pale spots called “blushing” if it is sprayed in a humid environment. I was spraying outside in Florida, its humid. Luckily I was able to use micro fiber cloths to rub out the blushing once the lacquer started hardening after each coat. You can see a lot of blushing on the masking tape on the neck, which is what large areas on the body would look like if I hadn’t rubbed the moisture out between the first stage of drying, and final hardening. 

I suppose it would have been better to do the fret level before I joined the neck and body, and before the finish. But I didn’t think about it, so I had to do it after I determined the lacquer was sufficiently hardened. I still use my old sanding beam as a fret level, with 220 grit sandpaper applied with double sided tape. Every fret is marked with marker, and the neck is carefully straightened with a notched straightedge. Then I use the beam till the tops of all the frets are hit, as seen with the marking. 

Once the frets are leveled the tops of many of them are pretty flat, and must be re-crowned. I used to do this by hand with needle files, usually nicking the fretboard in a few places even after protecting it with tape. luckily a youtube channel called Guns and Guitars introduced me to this affordable “Baroque” brand fret crowning tool from amazon. For $25 it makes crowning frets a thousand times easier and quicker, and gives better results. similar process, I marker the top of each fret one by one and use the tool till just a thin line remains on the top. 

I then go up and down the frets with 600, and 1200 to remove the tool marks from the crowning file, then polish each individual fret with 2000 grit, and then 0000 steel wool, leaving shining smooth frets. 

This is also where I dressed the fret ends. the Baroque crowning tool worked well for this too. Turned at an angle it can take the sharp edges off and round over the ends of the fets. Like my previous kit, the frets on this kit were completely untouched from the factory. They were simply pressed into the slots, no leveling or dressing, all that is left to the builder. 

Then I get to start the fun part, wet-sanding and polishing. I used 800 grit with soapy water to level the finish, sanding out the orange peel texture. Then I go up successively to 1200, 2000, and 3000. Its easiest on the flat smooth back of the body. 

Lastly I use Meguires 205 ultra finishing polish with a foam polishing pad and buffing wheel that go in my drill. This is my first time really employing those tools properly, and this is by far the shiniest finish I’ve achieved. Its not perfect however. I burned through a spot in the middle of the back while polishing. I also learned that the sanding sealer alone did not completely fill the deepest pores in the wood grain, leaving tiny dents in the lacquer in a few places, too deep to sand smooth. Those blemishes are luckily not noticeable except under close examination. 

Now the fun part, assembly. First I fished the long wires through, four wires to the switch, and the two pickup wires. I mounted the pickups since no more wires would need to go under them and I didn’t want to just set them on the finished body and possibly scratch it. 

I used a piece of cardboard to hold the electronics while I soldered, and also protect the finish from any dripping hot solder. Nothing came pre assembled, and theres a lot of wiring in a les paul style setup, so soldering was a long and painstaking process. 

One thing I was forewarned about was the challenge of feeding the electronics through the F holes and fishing them into their proper places. Luckily I devised a highly effective way to do this. I tied a small noose on a piece of thread. Pulling the long end of the thread would tighten it, and a small end on the noose knot could be pulled to loosen it. I then taped the end to a length of spare electric wire, and fed it backwards from destination hole to the F hole, where I could take the noose, tighten it on the stem of the pot or switch, and pull the thread backward to easily bring the component into place. Once I got ahold if it I just pulled the other end of the thread to loosen the noose and remove the thread. It only took me a few minutes to do final assembly this way. I forgot when I wired everything up outside the body, that it was upside down. So although I intended for all the wires to be mostly hidden, in the end they had to cross under the hole once I flipped everything to install it, so a lot of wiring is visible through the F-hole, a minor aesthetic flaw. 

The finished product. I learned a lot from this build that I can use in the future. Although I had read that maple tops don’t typically require grain-filling, skipping that resulted in the divots in the finish I mentioned earlier, because even a maple veneer top has some deep pores, and the sanding sealer I used was too thin to fill them. Glue spots are a menace and the only solution may be to request another kit from the supplier if the glue spots are bad. I sanded pretty far into mine and still they showed through. I suspect the glue used to apply the veneer soaked it completely through, and there was no way I could have sanded it out without going through the veneer. 

In this picture you can see the spots where I burned through the lacquer while polishing. I could always spray a quick coat over it, but then I’d have to wait another month to polish, and with the issue being on the back I’d rather play the guitar now. 

The only other issues I found were the bridge and nut. The nut is cheap plastic, and needed some filing to get the action usable. I wanted to replace it but my local stores didn’t have a nut that would work. The bridge rattles, which doesn’t come through the amp. but is noticeable acoustically when playing. 

Apart from those issues, I am pretty happy with my end result. The stock pickups sound pretty good, and after the work I put into the frets and setup, it plays really well. In spite of the flaws in the finish, I still think it looks beautiful, and its the product of my own work. I call it Florentine, because its similar to the Les Paul Florentine model semi-hollow by Epiphone. 

I’ll enjoy this guitar for a long time to come. 

DIY Telecaster: Ebay Guitar kit build

So I had been planning this for a long time. I established a timeline for myself to gradually work my way into building some specific guitars. The first steps were the First Act guitars that I repaired, re-finished, and modded. Those were practice for building kits. There are two kits in particular which I really want to build and make quite nice guitars, but I wanted to practice a full kit build on something cheaper first, which I decided would be a Telecaster. Two reasons for this: one, its a style of guitar that I don’t own, and two, tele kits are the second cheapest on ebay. The cheapest are strat kits, usually for around 70 with free shipping, but I already have multiple strats. I paid 79 for my tele kit with free shipping from a Tomtop ebay seller. Note that the prices on these kits fluctuate based on availability. Two weeks before I purchased there were only a couple sellers with the tele kits, going for about $90. One week before I purchased there were dozens of sellers with the same kits for $69 and up, but I had to wait to get paid. By the time I made my purchase there were fewer sellers and $79 was the cheapest price. 

It arrived a week before the estimated arrival time, which was cool. 

I knew the kit was a no binding slab body with rosewood fretboard and a white pick-guard, so I searched the interwebs for telecasters that matched that description to get an idea what I wanted mine to look like. This picture provided the inspiration for my build. 

There was no visible branding anywhere on the box or the “instructions” that came with it. I think its Ammoon. I was pretty satisfied with the body, it has a nice weight to it, and nice clean routing. Importantly, no screw holes were pre drilled for the pickguard, bridge, neck or control plate. That is all left up to the builder. Mine unfortunately had a couple pretty bad dents on the top, nickel sized, covered by the foam sheet in the picture. Probably happened during shipping. If I had been wanting to stain the top and do a wood grain finish this would have been a deal breaker, but luckily I always intended to paint this project a solid color, so I wasn’t even slightly worried about the dents. 

While I was happy enough with the body, the neck clearly would require a lot more work. The frets were visibly uneven, with sharp edges. 

I mocked everything together to get an idea how everything fit. The pickguard was poorly cut out for the neck, and required a little bit of alteration to go around the neck on one side, while it doesn’t touch the neck on the other side. Thats mostly hidden by the fretboard however. The electronics are the cheap Chinese sort, nothing remarkable. 

As a general rule, this kit may not be the best choice for a first time builder, as it requires drilling all the holes yourself. A mistake here could place the bridge offline with the neck, or in the wrong spot for the scale length, and render the guitar basically unplayable. I measured three times for every mark I made, then double checked before drilling. To get the bridge location I fit the neck in the pocket and measured carefully from the nut slot to the 12th fret, then from the 12th fret to the bridge saddles. I laid a straight edge on either side of the neck and drew lines to center the bridge. Luckily the neck pocket is nice and snug so the neck doesn't have any play that could cause it to be crooked later on. 

I also marked the holes for the neck, and while I was at it, I penciled out my headstock design using the original neck I shaped. That other neck is from a spectrum strat project. I messed up the body on that guitar and it is currently awaiting me finding a good deal on a new body or figure out how to fix the original. 

I went ahead and filled the dents I mentioned with plastic wood. This stuff is fantastic for dents and dings in wood. 

Once the filler dried I sanded it smooth to the body. I then drilled all the holes I had marked out. I was careful to use bits smaller than the shaft of the screws that would be going in the holes, and drilled only as deep as needed. I used only a hand drill. I don’t have easy access to a drill press, but I have plenty of experience drilling by hand, and I was confident that I could be precise enough for the build. 

Once the holes for the neck were drilled in the body, I fitted the neck in, clamped it, double checked the neck alignment and scale length one last time, then marked the screw holes on the neck and drilled them. 

Al that work done, the guitar was fully ready to be assembled, which is exactly what I did. It was important to ensure that all my measurements were correct, and that I would be able to create a working guitar at the end. It would be a shame to go through the finishing process only to find that a mistake or manufacturing error made the end product unplayable. To be honest, it was pretty unplayable at this point. The tuners are not lined up on the nut straight on, so the strings pulled the nut to the side a bit. I wasn’t going to glue the nut in for this mock up, but that would definitely be necessary for the final product. 

Without any setup the action was quite low, too low for the uneven frets, it was completely unplayable due to fret buzz and fret outs. Open chords worked fine though so I could still test the electronics. Knowing I was going to cut them off right away I strung it up with the horrible strings that came with the kit. With crap strings I knew I wasn’t going to get a clear idea of how the pickups will sound, but I did verify that they worked and figured out how the wire the switch properly. For the mockup I had the bridge and neck pickups backwards. 

With the mock up complete I took everything down and got ready to start on the finishing process. 

The first step for the body was to grain fill. I used timbermate water based wood filler, watered down to a thin consistancy. I spread it thinly across the body and worked it into the grain by hand. 

Once the grain filler dried I power sanded it with 220, and hand sanded with 500. 

Because I knew I was painting with a solid finish, I decided to test some watercolor inks and try to get some practice with staining. I want to do a stain on my next project. I wasn’t super happy with the results, so I don’t know if I’ll try to use these inks for said future project. The wet stain raised the grain a bit so I had to grain fill the back again and sand again. I should have taken this as a warning, but I didn't. 

I sprayed primer first, I emptied a can of Rustoleum 2x Primer over about four coats, then left to dry for two days. 

I power sanded the primer with 220, then cleaned off the body and sprayed the color. I sprayed the whole can, again a Rustoleum 2x product. It took six to eight coats I think, over three days. I made a couple mistakes on the first coat and had to wait for it to dry so I could sand it back and ensure I had a smooth surface for the rest of the paint. After the final coat I left to dry for several days to ensure all the solvent evaporated out. I was spraying Polyurethane clear coat so I wanted to make sure there was no chance of an issue with the paint under it. 

For clear I used Minwax fast drying spray polyurethane. Based on the instructions on the can, which stated to re-coat within two hours or wait 72 hours and sand to recoat, I sprayed the entire can over the course of an afternoon, about 8-9 coats I think. This spray can is definitely a higher end product than the rust-oleum clear coats. The spray nozzle works like a spray gun, providing a vertical pattern and very fine mist. Its much easier to control and avoid runs and sags. 

I didn’t really take a lot of pictures of the finishing process. Probably because its one of my least favorite parts of the build. I wet sanded with 1000 grit sandpaper till the poly finish was smooth, then wet sanded with 2000 grit before moving to Meguiars 205 with polishing disc in my power drill. I did sand through the finish just a tiny bit on one corner, but it wasn’t particularly noticeable, so I decided not to re-finish the whole guitar over it, which would be the only way to fix it. Unfortunately, I learned another hard lesson here. The water from my wet-sanding got inside the screw holes, and in a couple places, particularly the neck screw holes on the back, it caused swelling in the wood under the finish, leaving visible bubbling around the screw holes. I had only ever done re-finish paint jobs before, so I didn't anticipate this. Fortunately, the neck plate on the back, and the pick guard on the front mostly cover these imperfections, but not completely. In the future I'll either need to seal the wood thoroughly, or use dry micromesh instead of wet sanding. At any rate, with the polishing disc in my drill I was able to get the finish fairly shiny, not quite mirror shine like a factory guitar, but still passable I think. 

In between days working on the body, I worked on the neck. I cut out the marked headstock shape with a jigsaw, leaving it a little large. Then I finished shaping the headstock with wood files, and sanded the edges smooth. 

I applied four coats of tung oil to the neck and headstock over the course of several days. I also applied one coat to the fretboard. I chose tung oil because I wanted a “bare wood” finish on the neck, and Tung oil is really good for that. It also tints the wood just a little bit, and gives it a bit of shine so it looks great. 

I then leveled, crowned, dressed, and polished the frets. This is a pretty tedious task, particularly because I have no crowning tool, and do all my crowning and dressing by hand with flat needle files. Its painstaking work to get a good crown this way without damaging the fretboard. The needle files can wear through the tape used to protect the fretboard if I am not careful. I do usually wind up with at least a few small scratches. None on this project ended up being too noticeable. 

These frets were a lot of work. All the other fret jobs I have done have been on guitars that had at least some work done at the factory, or had been played enough that the fret ends were smoothed over and not too sharp. These were just slammed in the neck and left to the builder to finish. I put a lot of effort into dressing the edges to play comfortable, as well as making sure the frets got leveled crowned and polished. 

With the body and neck complete, I started assembly. It took very little time to solder up the electronics and assemble the body. The kit came with the pick guard, control plate, and bridge already pre-wired, so the only solder joints are at the switch,ground, and jack. 

I then attached the neck and started working on the nut. Pay no attention to the cat who came to inspect my work. She loves to play with guitar strings so whenever I string a guitar I have to lock her out. 

I had purchased a graph tech tusq nut for this guitar. However, the nut slot was cut way too deep for that nut, so I was forced to glue some thin strips of card into the nut slot as spacers to raise the tusq nut to an acceptable level. 

Despite that added hassle, I was able to string up the guitar, and spot and attach the string trees. I used the other neck to help me identify the right spots for the string trees. The setup work went fairly smoothly, although the large saddles make intonation slightly imperfect, they are really easy to adjust for action and intonation. With my spacer in the slot the nut action was passable. I elected not the file the nut slots for super low nut action just in case it compressed the spacer lower over time.  

With that done I was finally able to play my finished product. This was a fantastic learning experience, and a lot of fun, getting a fun guitar at the end is like icing on the cake. Thanks to my hard work on the frets this guitar feels like much more than it is. The fret ends are smooth and comfortable, and the action is set perfectly low for my tastes with no real fret buzz issues. In terms of playability it does not feel like a $70 instrument, more like something much more expensive. However, the stock pickups do leave something to be desired. They are ok; there are some tones I like, and they definitely have that “tele” sound, but they lack clarity and the bridge picks up a lot of noise. As far as hardware goes, I have not had problems with the tuners yet, they do their job as well as any decent affordable guitar tuners. The bridge has a little bit of a string spacing issue, but it doesn’t have a noticeable affect on playability to me. 

So in conclusion, I certainly feel like I got my money’s worth. It was a great experience building the kit, and the end result is very playable. The finish and sound are not the greatest, but they are quite passable and as-is the tele definitely offers some tones that none of my other guitars have. Plus I could easily replace the pickups down the road and make it sound as great as it plays, which would leave the only not-amazing thing as the finish. The faults in the finish are my own, and can’t be blamed on the kit. I am attempting pretty advanced painting with little experience and only spray cans. Taking that into consideration I think the finish is pretty good. I am still experimenting with the best paints and clear coat for rattle-can finishes. The minwax spray polyurethane was better to work with than the rust-oleum clear coats, but its still a little soft and can be dented by a fingernail with enough pressure. which is part of the reason I think I couldn’t get a mirror gloss. 

This will definitely not be the last guitar kit I build. I have my eye on a couple others, I just need to save up the funds for the next kit and the supplies to build and finish it. 

For anyone interesting in kit building, I highly recommend it. It is a lot of work, but its a lot of fun, and in the end you have a guitar thats entirely your own. There are some skills needed, especially for a kit like this where no holes are pre-drilled. For that situation you need a working understanding how how a guitar functions, and thus how to place the bridge and neck properly. 

You do need to learn some basic soldering, I do all my soldering with a $15 low heat iron from home depot. But I also have training and experience in soldering and I can make that work just fine. If you don't you're better off spending a little more money to get a decent iron that gets a little hotter. Realistically most guitar tinkerers know how to solder. 

A little basic woodworking knowledge is a big help in prep sanding, as well as allowing you to shape the headstock if you get a paddle headstock like this kit. 

Perhaps most important with these kits is knowing how to do work on frets and nuts and setup. The factory just sets the frets in and sends a molded plastic nut. Even a cheap Squier or Epiphone guitar has at least some minimal fretwork and nut setup done at the factory. Kits like this will always need extensive work to become playable guitars. To me doing that work is a large part of the enjoyment because it makes the instrument your own and you can really feel the difference your work makes when you play it. This work doesn't require a lot of expensive tools either, though most videos you watch on you tube will suggest that. All the tools that I use I owned already, or obtained cheaply from regular hardware stores and harbor freight. It does take a little practice to master fret crowning by hand with needle files, but the alternative is a $100 tool from stew mac. For learning about simple DIY fret leveling I highly recommend the "Guns & Guitars" channel on you tube. 

Finishing skill is actually not required, although the appearance of the end product depends on it. You could simply sand everything smooth and throw some tung oil or other finishing oil on. Or you could use a stain. I honestly chose the most difficult finish, doing a good solid color with clear coat is far more difficult than a stain and some oil. This is my fourth solid finish and its still not great. If you want to build a kit but don't want the hassle that comes with paints or spray clear coats its very easy to pick a good looking finish that is much easier to apply with no experience. 

If anybody actually takes the time to read all this, hope you enjoyed reading about my first kit build. Hope it inspires somebody to give it a go. Rock on folks. 

First Act Re-finish and sell

This isn't a complete project recap like the others because it wasn't really a full project. I got this First Act single humbucker strat from letgo for $20. I got it just for practicing re-finish painting. The poor guitar was in horrible shape. The truss rod was completely loosened, and string tension had badly warped the neck forward. The nut came out in three pieces. 

Despite my best efforts, I was unable to straighten the neck completely. I was able to get it to a good playable relief with the truss rod, but not get it straight enough to level the frets. So it had to go without a fret level. The body re-finish went better than my ME301, I used Rustoleum 2X clear coat this time, hoping it would be harder, but it seems to me to be the same stuff as the specialty laquer that never gets fully hard. It scratches and scuffs way to easily even after weeks of drying. Still, it polished up nicely. 

even without a fret level I was still able to set it up with a nicely playable action, not shredder low by a long shot, but good enough to play comfortably. I used the original plastic nut from my spectrum strat project, which is going to get a tusq nut, so that didn't cost me anything. After paint and strings I maybe put $30-35 into it. Honestly, the pickup didn't sound too bad, I kind of liked it. It also held tune just fine, no real issues with the cheap tuners. It was a fun punkish guitar for awhile. 

I say for awhile because I decided to sell it. My other First Act strat is already my punk machine, and its a little better guitar. So I posted this guitar on a couple online marketplaces, and sold it in less than a week to a young lady. I sold it for the total cost to me, $35, which I think is a great price for a guitar which plays as good as this one did after I was done setting it up. The buyer got a chance to try it out and she liked it quite a bit, which makes me happy. I enjoyed being able to offer a unique looking guitar that plays nice, at a very affordable price. 

I may do this in the future if I get my hands on any more extremely cheap starter guitars. Paint them really pretty, set them up and make sure they're easy to play, and sell really cheap to people starting out. If I could get ahold of a few tiny practice amps really cheap that would help so I could offer starter packs. I think a lot of kids try to get started on guitar with cheap starter packs from amazon or First Act, which have stupid high action, and they get frustrated and quit because they have no idea how easy it can be to play a properly set up guitar. I think it would be neat to offer an alternative.