Congratulations goes out to Mark Edmonson for his guitar build, to earn him Guitar of the Month for September 2024.
Mark used our EXK-1 kit as the basis to create his guitar.
“I’ve been a casual guitar player since I was 12 (now 52) and I built this guitar with my 15 year old son, who took up guitar just a few months ago, but like so many teenagers who are looking their “thing” once he started playing, there’s no turning back.
I can say, as this was our first build it was both easier AND more difficult that I had envisioned Everything went together very easily, but as I hadn’t done any soldering in 35 years (since high school electronics class) I did need some guidance from the team to make sure I got all of the connections right. Most of the build is stock without modification, with the exception of, obviously the body, and the pickguard.
My son and I have a mutual love of horror films, and since we were working on this in the fall, seemed like an appropriate theme for our first guitar project together. The guitar was primed in white (and then the sides airbrushed glossy black).
We acquired several fake newspaper clippings based on icon horror film characters and printed them on “aged” paper stock. My wife then cut out a pattern of the guitars front and back and helped my boy design the layout of the clippings.
Once designed these were moved to the body of the guitar, trimmed to shape and using “mod podge” adhere to the surface. Each side got 6 coats of “mod podge” drying for 2 hours between each coat. We then completed 12 coats of clear, high gloss lacquer over the entire body of the guitar. Not thinking this all the way through, this did then require me to drill out some of the holes to get appropriate clearance for electronics.
All in all were very happy with our first foray into design custom guitars. We’re looking to add a custom decal to the headstock and looking forward to our next project!”
-Mark Edmonson
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