Guitar Of The Month – July, 2024

Congratulations goes out to Michel Roberge for his guitar build, to earn him Guitar of the Month for July 2024.

Michel used our STKZEB-1 kit as the basis to create his guitar.

“This is my 20th kit from Solo. Again it was a crazy fast shipment with great packaging and all parts made the trip safely. After 19 kits I did not know what to build then I did see this new kit. I was curious and interested by the Zebrawood for a while but until then it was available only from ”obscure” internet sellers… so I confirmed my order with Solo on the spot.

The body was great, clean cut, cavities and neck pocket. The neck was fantastic, very straight, very smooth fret ends which were well levelled. The neck joint had a perfect fit and alignment with the bridge – A very good start.

As usual I did not use the electronics and saved only the jack plate and the strap buttons, I had other plans.

Body mods:

Cut the neck pocket to suit the Solo Custom Shape neck plate and shaped the cutaway for better high frets access.

Also filled all the screw holes for the new 2 HB pickups black pickguard and tremolo cover plate. This was expected.

Neck mods:

Cut the headstock to look like a Fender Strat, filled the extra hole at the heel and the string trees holes to locate them further up on the headstock.
Ebonized the fretboard with 4 coats of Higgins India Ink. Installed Wilkinson tuners from Solo.

Electronics:

2 Humbuckers, Alnico 5 with 8.6k neck and 9.5k neck Hot Vintage.
2 independent volume push/push pots A500K with brass bushing and shaft wired to have the screw coil active in coil split mode.
Also added a 1.1 resistor from the coil split lug to ground to keep some signal from the cut coil in coil split mode.
1 master tone B500K with brass bushing and shaft vintage wired.
Pickups are wired to the volume pots then to the 3 way real blade switch to have the separate volumes.

Bridge:

Installed a vintage style tremolo with a full solid steel shorty block to fit the body thickness.

Finishing:

The Zebrawood works like mahogany for cutting, drilling and sanding. On the body I sanded by hand to 220 grit paper the grey 3M pad then applied 1 cost a natural stain just to bring the wood grain and color alive followed by 4 thin coats of Samans water based flat varnish. Buffed with 3M grey pad between each coat.

On the neck I did the same preparation and finish but used a mix of Golden Wheath and Dark Walnut to match the light lines of the Zebrawood. It turned out fantastic, just love it.

The final set up was a breeze again, thanks to good construction tolerances. I only needed to do a light polish of the frets and lower the nut slots a bit. I do have a very low action without fret buzz.

She looks, plays and sounds just fantastic, can’t wait for the next band practice…

I wish I could give this kit a 6 stars review!

Thanks again Solo.

-Michel Roberge