Hello Warriors and today I’m going to be discussing my latest project on guitar building!

Please welcome Earl Mk 3!

Okay so before I deluge into this journey there is a reason this guitar is called Earl Mk 3 and the reason to this is that it is the third time this guitar has been modified, it originally started out as an Acoustic Solutions guitar then to a custom paint job guitar now to this.

All parts used on this guitar were purchased off eBay and mainly from (Japan) so this project was time-consuming, to say the least as I was always waiting for the delivery of parts.

Anyway, let’s Begin!

Okay so this is what the guitar’s second transformation looked like it was sanded back, primed and painted with silver white and black (And yes there is 2 pennies glued to the guitar) I thought it looked cool at the time anyway this guitar was sitting in my wardrobe doing nothing for years until recently I was bored on a day off from work and decided to start sanding the guitar but before doing that I needed to strip the guitar.

So I stripped the guitar of all components and took pictures of the pickup layout so help me in the future and then did some research on to get the paint off the guitar, now I decided to strip the guitar back to natural wood and keep it that way as it’s something different plus I’ve never had a guitar like it.

I also decided to try a different pickup format on the guitar (More on that later) as these pickups in the guitar have been used over and over and resoldered over and over plus when plugged into an amp you could hear the feedback coming from them which also brings in to play the Copper Tape (More on that later too)

So going back to get the paint off the guitar I decided to go with some guy’s method on youtube and reddit by using a Heat Gun which cost me £20 from Agros.

And it went well on the first few attempts but eventually, I was burning the wood due to the paint not moving and the scrapper I had just not worked so I had to turn to sand the body to remove the last of the paint which took ages and also cost me another £20 for a Sander.

So with the Sander, I was able to remove most of the paint now came the expensive part and that was buying all the electricals for the guitar and scratchplate to fit them in. (Still, there are paint blemishes on the guitar which I’ve left on to give it a different style plus they just wouldn’t come off and I didn’t want to damage the wood any more than I did)

Okay, so I ordered all the parts for the guitar the pearl white scratchplate was made in the UK and took a day to be delivered same with the Volume and Tone Pots the rest of the parts took 2-3 Weeks due to being delivered from Japan. But the first thing to arrive was the single coil pickup I chose to have at the Neck position of the guitar (Now I wanted this guitar to look and feel completely different to the Norm) So I ordered all different colours and gave them their own names this one was called Green Onions and cost me £5.

A week later the second one arrived which I call the Red Tomatoes which I fitted in the scratchplate and made it stand out that little more.

Another four days later the last pickup arrived which I’ve entitled Purple Grape and as well as the Volume knob for the scratchplate which was a used Shotgun shell which made this look awesome in my eyes.

Now that all the electricals have arrived it was time to finish the body and get this thing installed but from the before and after picture it made the scratchplate more beefy and heavy.

So now all the electronics are here time to finish the body so to fit the humbucker pickup on this guitar body I will have to Chesil the excess wood out of the body so it will fit snug and not catch any of the wires and snag them. Also doing this will help to install other parts later or even changing the guitar again.

So with the excess wood being removed time to Oil the guitar and get the natural look of the guitar stand out, I bought Teak Oil for £5 and applied 6 coats of oil to the guitar it actually gave the burn marks on the guitar a nice finish, my original plan was to blowtorch the guitar to give it that burn effect more but it would have been to much work to do.

So the next and last job to do to the Body before installing the Electronics was to Tape the inside of the guitar with Copper Tape to stop feedback from the pickups and also stop interference this took 2 hours and 2 rolls of tape never thought it would have taken that much!

So my good Girlfriend and Wife to be Emily solder the Pickups for me to save time as well as me not breaking it as I don’t know what I’m doing but this was the last job and the most time consuming but we got there in the end.

And the last job was to install the Bridge system, Jack socket and Neck to finish off this guitar presenting us with Earl Mk 3.

Well, I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog post on my Journey of making a guitar as I know I will definitely be making another guitar very soon.

Any questions on the project or what you think I should do next let me know in the comments below

And

Thanks for Reading!