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Francesco’s Roma Extraodinair..ah!

This is one of our kits that ended up in the skilled hands of a doctor in Italy..

 

Hello Phil,

I hope all is well. I would like to thank you again for the amazing kit you provided. The pieces were flawless and beautifully resonating before assembly, and all routes and fits were absolutely perfect. I looked around for several weeks before choosing where to buy the bones for my Les Paul, and the kit I received confirmed your internet fame: you guys provide the best parts available to build a top-quality guitar.

As you can see from the pictures I didn’t want to settle for anything less than an amazing guitar. I went for the best and most beautiful guitar I could think of.

I started from your LP59 kit with a blank ebony fretboard (only slots) and front/back binding routes. Then I did all the rest. The fret markers are hand-cut in mother-of-pearl with a dremel-type tool, and inlayed with carving knives. The 12th fret has my last name engraved in the mother-of-pearl. The body and neck are both bound; doing the body 5-ply binding was pretty tricky. The body is dyed black with ColorTone color. Then on top of that I sprayed one very thin layer of nitrocellulose lacquer to prevent smearing and I did all the decorating stencils (including signature) to lay the 24carat gold-leaf I bought. The finish on top of that is multiple layers of nitrocellulose laquer.

The parts I used were again the best I could think of: grover locking tuners, bone nut, Dunlop jumbo frets, tune-o-matic bridge, aluminum stopbar tailpiece for tone, 500s Gibson pots and bumblebee caps. The pickups are a Gibson ’57 classic at the neck and a Seymour-Duncan antiquity at the bridge. I made sure the electronics very well grounded, isolated and soldered.

The sound is amazing, gonna send you a video soon. It  is rich of harmonics, round and with huge sustain. I went to Guitar World and compared it to multiple-thousand-dollar and my guitar fell short of no others.

Keep up the excellent work, and keep all those guitar-builders out there dreaming!

Ciao!

Francesco.