BUILDING THE Z-28 LP-STYLE

From Mad Man Mike

For Christmas last year I wanted a Saga LP style guitar kit. While searching for it, I came across your site and knew I would send a story in.

Originally I had planned to do the guitar up flat black with diamond plate accessories. But one day I was thinking,” Hey why not do it up like my dad's car”.  So Christmas rolled around and by the end of Christmas day the kit was put together. 

The biggest problem was that the electrical schematic didn’t match up with the wire colors.  That meant that my dad and I had to source everything out witch was a pain in the butt. So after two weeks of breaking it there was only one problem: The neck pickup wasn’t working.  We took it to our neighbor Mr. Mike to take it to work and see if Mr. Fink could fix it.  What he did was ground all the pots together and, sure enough, that fixed it and it sounded better.

Before we took it apart we carved the headstock. The only mistake we made was not removing the tuners because the top two got scratched up. Also before we took it apart we had a machinist friend of ours make all the plastic parts out of billet aluminum.  I played it for about a one more weekend then took her apart. 

My dad had started a job near the shop that painted our car. So one day when I went to work with him I took the guitar with me and dropped it off when we were finished. Because we used actual car paint we went ahead and attached the neck and had it painted as one piece.

After about two weeks I went back to work again and saw it before it had clear coat. Even flat the guitar looked amazing. So when I went back to work I saw it again with clear on it, it really looked AWESOME!!!

I got it back after about three weeks (which is fast figuring that they had to order paint).  Now there’s a reason they call that color sun lit copper. If you take that thing out into the sunlight it lights up. I forgot to mention that while the guitar was being painted I went to Hot Licks and got some chrome knobs instead of the plastic ones.

The weekend after we got it painted we put it back together. Once we had all the shiny stuff back in it looked beyond cool. Although it wasn’t a cheap build, I’m very happy with the way it turned out. Thank you Mox, Mr. Mike, Mr. Fink, HRE, and Dad for all your help. I hope to send in more pictures of the guitar with the car and when we polish the pick guard.



Thanks!

Mike

PS.  My dad has a 1973 Camaro.  We're going to show the guitar for the first time at the Spring Ocean City Show and hopefully I'll be able to send you pictures from that.  We also ordered a guitar cable that looks like spark plugs on the ends.

After sanding with the 500, it’s time to step it up to 1000 grit. Now the higher the grit the harder it will be to reverse cross grain and other mistakes. Follow the same steps until there is a pretty good shine. Now the more time and patience you put into the first stages of sanding the better the result will be.

After the 1000 grit take it up to 1500 then 2000 for the best results. After sanding with the 2000 you’ll really start seeing results, but the wet sanding is only half the process. After you wet sand up to 2000 its time to bust the billet polish. I recommend using Hot Rims Mag Polish. First apply the polish using an inside out sock (trust me it works). Now with this polish it does not take a lot especially on a small surface. Any way rub the polish in till the sock starts to turn black. Then take a micro fiber rag and remove the polish. For the best results I suggest doing this at least 3 times for a chrome like shine. Now to keep it shining bright polish about every other week. Well that’s all for now be sure to keep up on it and keep it clean.

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