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Post subject: Re: painting a guitar
Posted: Mon May 27, 2013 11:44 am
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Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2007 6:07 am
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Location: Central WI
tahitijack wrote:
My advice is to ask your local guitar shops to recommend a painter or take your design and guitar to a few custom car paint shops. As if they have ever done guitars and look at the finished product on cars they are working on. If you don't care how your guitar looks, go ahead and do it your self. You can always strip and sand and start over...but trust me, a custom paint shop will do a better job than you.



The key to this whole thread is if you do it yourself, you can always sand it and start over if you screw up. I think before my Fender Musicmaster was done I probably sanded and started over 5 or 6 times. But, one thing I did and not sure if I mentioned it before or anyone else, but I bought another Musicmaster body to paint so if worst case happened and we couldn't get it done I hadn't screwed up the original.

And while I know that this "out there" design isn't for everyone, I love it and that's the key. Knowing my son airbrushed it is icing on the cake for me.

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Post subject: Re: painting a guitar
Posted: Mon May 27, 2013 12:10 pm
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Great looking custom job. :D


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Post subject: Re: painting a guitar
Posted: Mon May 27, 2013 1:48 pm
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GTG wrote:
Great looking custom job. :D


Thanx, I showed him a photo of Clapton's original Crashocaster and he used that as a design to take off of.

And since I was going crazy on this body, I also put a string though body bridge on, something only the Squier Musicmasters had. Now both my musicmasters have near identical hardware, pickups, and strings. Makes it easy to change out during a gig and have the volume /tone the same.

In case you don't want to paint the entire guitar you could always do the pickguard and give it some character.

My Squier Musicmaster.....

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Post subject: Re: painting a guitar
Posted: Mon May 27, 2013 2:33 pm
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Back in the mid 70s I bought a '65 Mustang that played and sounded great-much nicer than the new models-but the previous owner had taken it upon himself to "refinish" it, The so called refinishing job involved sanding off the original finish,which was most likely white or maybe sunburst since it had the tortoise shell pickguard but I'm more inclined to think that it was white.,with a coarse and medium grit sandpaper-my guess-and didn't bother to do a fine or wet sand on it.He then inflicted the ultimate insult to it by taking a brush and doing a very haphazard varnish job on it,since the body was most likely covered originally with a solid colour-white-the 3 pieces of wood used weren't exactly conducive to using a transparent finish.

I stripped off all traces of his inept "refinishing" job and set about doing it in a bright Candy Apple Blue colour.I sanded the body until it was almost as smooth as glass and then applied the silver sparkle base coat-all the paint came in regular store-bought spray cans) followed by the beautiful transparent blue second coat,which had to be applied in 3 or 4 thinner coats.Unfortunately I was in too much of a hurry to get it finished properly and didn't bother to top it off with a thick application of Clearcoat to protect it for a long time but it has held up pretty good for the almost 40 years that I've had it on.In retrospect I should've used a primer coat also because I'm sure the guitar would've really looked spectacular if it had the primer and clearcoat.

If you are opting for a solid colour I'd certainly recommend using a primer coat and most definitely a clear coat to really make the job look professional.

I put pix of my gear collection on the forum a month or two ago and the Mustang is among these pix but I don't know how to access it.I would imagine that anyone who is computer savy would be able to pull it up but I'm a complete Luddite when it comes to computers.Good luck with your project.Cheers!!

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.


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Post subject: Re: painting a guitar
Posted: Thu May 30, 2013 1:35 am
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Joined: Tue Mar 13, 2012 7:29 am
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thanks for the replies.

Quote:
My advice is to ask your local guitar shops to recommend a painter or take your design and guitar to a few custom car paint shops. As if they have ever done guitars and look at the finished product on cars they are working on. If you don't care how your guitar looks, go ahead and do it your self. You can always strip and sand and start over...but trust me, a custom paint shop will do a better job than you.


i definitely wont be taking the guitar to somebody else to do, that sort of isnt the point of doing it myself, and more importantly keeping the costs at a minimum. i dont doubt they could do a better job, but having resprayed my triumph spitfire 3 times, and various panels on my ford capri, im hoping i can achieve at least a half decent first attempt at a guitar.

as mentioned earlier, i may not even paint it, im very intrigued by the water transfer paper ive brought to experiment with. making a decision on which way to go with the finish is hard work, thats even before i start thinking about which colour. i also have to consider which colour hardware, and also the tint of the neck ive brought.


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