Project dates: March 12 – March 21, 2024

Status: Donated to Terrapin Community Music School @ University of Maryland

This was my first guitar build, purchased as a kit from solomusicgear.com. I didn’t have a dedicated workspace for this project, so I decided to go with the easiest options and bought a pre-finished guitar body with solderless electronics.

My main goals were to see whether I would enjoy building a guitar from a kit, determine what minimum tools and supplies would be needed to do a good job, and learn a few techniques that I could hopefully apply to some of my existing guitars.

I didn’t have a charity lined up when I purchased the kit but I knew that I was most likely going to donate the guitar when I was done, assuming it was in good enough condition to be worth donating.

The Kit

The kit arrived fairly quickly even though it was coming from Canada, and all of the parts were packed well. In addition to the main guitar kit I also purchased a gig bag (surprisingly decent quality for less than $20), an upgraded TUSQ Graph Tech man-made ivory nut, and some Ernie Ball Strings. All in the kit and materials cost just under $200.

Overall I was impressed with the quality of the parts. The pre-finished body looks and feels like a Squier or lower-end Fender you could buy at the store. There were no major dents or dings or issues that I could find. The neck is maple with a rosewood fingerboard. The description said the neck was “finished” but it definitely felt a little rough to me, which was actually preferred because finishing the neck was one of the techniques I wanted to learn. The bridge, tremolo, jack, and tuners were all fine – nothing special, about what you would expect from a sub-$200 kit.

Prior to starting the build I wrote out a list of steps I wanted to take, and only made small modifications to the list as I went along (mostly adding things I hadn’t expected).

The Neck

First on the list was testing the neck size to make sure it fit in the body correctly, and that the holes lined up. Thankfully both of these steps went without issue.

Next I tested the neck tension using a notched straight edge I had purchased on Amazon, and found that it was slightly back-bowed and needed relief. I adjusted the truss rod with a few 1/8″ turns until the neck was flat.

I had read some positive reviews for Solo Guitars that their necks didn’t need much work, where some people had received necks with perfectly level frets with smooth ends, etc. That wasn’t the case for me, however this was also ok because I wanted to test doing a full fret level/recrown/polish. When I tested the frets with a fret rocker roughly half a dozen frets had some issues, so this was enough to decide to do a full level.

For the fret level I taped off the fretboard with painter’s tape (using a trick I learned on this video to run tape along each side first to make it much easier to remove when I was done). I then used a Sharpie to mark each fret so I could keep track of what had been sanded. Using a relatively cheap 8″ fret sander I also bought on Amazon, I got to work leveling the frets. It was a little stressful since I had never tried this before and was worried I would do it wrong and ruin the neck, but following the steps from the video mentioned above and a few others it turned out ok. There was only one fret (the 2nd) that I had to go back to multiple times because each time I would sand the area and then test the fret rocker it still wasn’t level, but it worked out in the end.

After sanding down the frets I used another fairly cheap fret crowning tool to try and round the frets. I also used this time to smooth out the edges since the crowning tool had a safety side that was designed to keep from damaging the fretboard, and it seemed to work ok. I will say the fret crowning is the part I’m still not 100% sure I got right, but in the end the guitar plays and doesn’t feel much different from my other professionally built guitars so I think they are at least serviceable, if not perfect.

After the fret level I removed and replaced the nut, which was more difficult than expected. I didn’t have very good tools to remove it and ended up using pliers to pull out the old nut (after first scoring it with a razor blade) which damaged it a bit – not an issue since it was a cheap plastic nut anyway, but still I need more practice on removing the nut for the future. In the future I will take more care to try nudging it out from the side with a soft hammer vs. using pliers to pull it out vertically.

Installing the new nut was relatively easy, although I did have to sand one side of it for about 5-10 minutes to get it down to the right size where it would fit snugly in the pocket without needing to be forced. Once I had it fit to size, I left it in without gluing the time being because I wanted to make sure it was tall enough after the guitar was strung.

The last step for the neck was finishing. I started with a light sanding (400 up to 1500 grit) until the back and headstock were completely smooth. Next I followed most of the steps from this video, which consisted of applying one layer of Tru Oil, wiping it off, letting it sit for about an hour, then applying one layer of Feed-n-Wax, wiping that off, letting it sit for 20 minutes, and then buffing it out.

Overall I was really happy with the result – I love a satin finish on guitar necks, and this turned out really smooth. I did have a couple of instances where it felt like it was still a little sticky for a few days after I completed the guitar so I’m not sure if I did it perfectly, but each time that happened I used some 0000 steel wool to buff it out a little more and after a few rounds of that it now feels great.

The Body

Next up after the neck was getting the body ready. The first step with this was to add copper shielding tape inside the cavity to try and reduce electric hum. I watched probably 5 or 6 videos on how to do this, and have to say that each of those videos made it seem easier than it is. Getting the tape to fit to the different contours of the inside of the body was not an easy task, and I ended up running out of tape even though I tried to use every last bit of it. I shielded both the bottom of the pickguard and the inside of the cavity, and eventually when I completed the solderless connection later I connected that to the tape inside body as well.

Did I do it right? I’m honestly not sure, but I can say that when plugged in the guitar has roughly the same amount of hum as my American Performer Telecaster, so I’m hopeful that this step at least had some benefit. I have looked at other options including the shielding paint and decided against that for this build since that can take several days to dry over several layers of paint, and I don’t have the space, ventilation, or patience for that yet.

After the shielding came the actual assembly of the guitar. I installed the tremolo claw and bridge, connected all of the solderless connections, and installed the pickguard and jack. One plug for Solo Guitars here – on the solderless connection to the tremolo claw, I unfortunately tried to force the very small and flimsy connector together at the wrong angle and snapped one of the pieces. This was most likely a very easy fix if I had the ability to solder, but I decided to reach out to Solo to see if I could potentially purchase the tremolo claw with pre-soldered wire connection, since it didn’t appear to be available in their parts store. They answered the same day and said they were sorry that I had an issue, and told me that they were FedExing me the new part right away. I will say that they won my repeat business just with that interaction, and with a part that is likely only worth about $8 that I would have been happy to pay for.

Finally came the actual neck to body install (which is nerve wracking but fairly easy since the holes lined up perfectly), then the tuners, strings, string trees, and the back plate.

When I first strung up the guitar I had a moment of sheer terror – every fret was buzzing, to the point where more than half the guitar was unplayable. I couldn’t tell if my fret level was just terrible, or if something else was wrong. Thankfully it turned out to be a combination of tension on the neck (I was testing it with only 1, 2, and 3 strings on at a time) which eased as more strings were added, and the neck needing more relief. Once it was fully strung I let it sit for a few hours, tested the neck tension, and added the relief with a few more truss rod turns. Thankfully after those adjustments, the buzzing went away.

Thankfully the nut did not need any additional adjustments – it does sit a bit low so the action is already lower than I’m used to, but testing the string height it appears to be within the normal range. So far I’m pleased with the TUSQ nut, both the quality of it vs. the plastic nut that came with the guitar, and the fact that the slots were cut almost perfectly right out of the packaging.

The last step was adding a logo. I decided to go with a water slide logo from Guitar Decadence, since they are preformatted to match the font and sizes similar to the Fender Stratocaster, Telecaster, etc. Of course, I messed up the first application after moving the logo around too much trying to get it in the perfect spot, but thankfully I bought a pack of 2, and the second logo went on without issue.

This guitar was donated to the Terrapin Community Music School at the University of Maryland in May 2024. If you know anyone who is interested in any future guitars I might build please visit the contact page to send me a note.