The Blue-J Project – Intro


A log for a custom guitar build

For decades, I’d been fascinated by the BC Rich Mockingbird guitar. US audiences may associate this with Slash. For me, however, the style was favored by one of my favorite guitar players, the late Hide (‘HEE-deh‘) of X-Japan:

When I was in Japan in the late ’90s, I wandered into a music shop and saw a replica of Hide’s yellow Mock with the hearts. Despite knowing that it was a consumer-grade copy, I wanted to try it out, to get the feel and balance of the unique shape. It stuck with me since then.

I’m certainly not of Hide’s caliber in guitar playing, and my aesthetic style is nowhere in his stratosphere, so I wanted to build a Mock more to my own style. Typically, I lean toward red guitars, but a sudden flash of inspiration and some trial mock-ups later, I settled on a deep blue, as shown in the lead-in image.

The project is named Blue-J (since my legal first name starts with “J”), but I haven’t decided whether that’s the name of the guitar or not.

I ordered the MBK-1 kit from Solo Guitars (no affiliation links, as I’m not going to blog nearly enough to drive traffic to the company to earn a cent), and five days later, the box was home. Did a test fit of the neck and body and to examine the mahogany:

Upon examination of the grain, I decided that a solid color and sunburst fade would be a disservice to the natural qualities of the wood. So it’s going to be stained instead.

Supplies I bought to accomplish this include:

  • TransTint wood stain/dye – blue
  • Goodfilla ebony grain filler
  • A bunch of PVC to build the finishing rig
  • Collection of sandpaper ranging from 120 – 3000 grit
  • More shop rags than I ever thought I’d ever need

To make the finishing job easier, I bought supplies at Home Depot to make a finishing rig of PVC and a piece of project lumber. While I have scrap wood available, they’re in 8′ deck plank sizes, so cutting them down would’ve just been extra work for the $4-5 cost of the finished project board that I have to cut anyway.

I also want to replace the stock tone/volume knobs that came with this kit, but will make that decision after the finish is complete to make sure that the vision in my head actually matches reality.

Because the mahogany is an open-pore wood, I need grain filler to keep the wood from getting all funky once I lay down color substance. After several days of poring over various Internet forums, blogs, and vendor sites, I decided I wanted a dark-to-black grain filler to help accentuate the grain against the blue stain. This was where I settled on the Goodfilla ebony.

Several YouTube videos on refinishing guitars later, I was as ready as I was going to be.



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