heey guys!
i have a question about my guitar. i have got a fender stratocaster but i want to have another colour. it is black with an white pickguard but i want it to be yellow with an black pickguard. now my question: can i paint it myself, does someone with experience have to do that or isnt it good for my strat? and does the sound chances of the paint?

cheers[/i][/b]

Hi davey94, welcome to the Forum.

Is it a Mexican or American Strat? And if American, a modern model or a reissue?

That will tell us what the body is finished with and so what paint you need to use. MIM = polyester; MIA = polyurethane; MIA RI = nitrocellulose.

The first and last are particularly easy because you can buy them in aerosols from car paint suppliers online or in a store. If nitro you will likely need to specify that, though. You can easily get clear polyurethane in a spray can but colors are not so easy. If your guitar is a MIA with urethane I'd default to polyester (in an auto paint shop you will see most modern paints labelled "acrylic" - which is close enough for these purposes).

You could strip the body and start from the wood up. But frankly spraying a solid color over another solid color it probably isn't necessary.

I'd give it a good sand all over with P300 paper to create a "tooth" to help the new paint adhere. Then putting a light color over black it would probably be a good idea to shoot a thin couple of coats of white primer in the same polyester or nitro formulation as the top coat. Follow the manufacturer's instructions for intervals between coats.

Give that another light sand, always cleaning off any dust very thoroughly with a lint free rag soaked in denatured spirit and ideally then naphtha (lighter fluid).

Then spray your color: two or three thin coats should be fine. You could follow that with clear coats if you want to but it is not essential. In the "golden era" Fender sometimes clearcoated, sometimes not. Probably more important with nitro. Polyester I personally wouldn't bother.

Then the hard bit: leave it for many weeks. Minimum of three but more is better. Finally, sand with soaking wet wet-and-dry paper, starting with P1000 grit and proceeding to P1500 and P2000. P2500 if you can find it. Finish by polishing up with metal polish, Brasso - something like that. You should be able to achieve a mirror finish that way.

Many possible variations on the above and everyone has their own twists - but that's essentially it.

Good luck - C

I don't really disagree with Ceri...he's done some lovely refinishes (at least from what I've seen in pictures) but there are some practical issues that I don't think he really addressed that I would like to add.

First and foremost, my question to you is how much experience do you have with painting and refinishing? If for example, you have a good many years of doing something like auto refinishing, then please disregard my comments here...however since you're asking these questions, I'm going to assume that's -not- the case.

If you don't have a lot of experience with painting and refinishing, please do NOT start on your guitar right away...this isn't really as simple as buying a can of Krylon and re-spraying your old bicycle....at least not if you want a fairly professional look. I certainly won't speak for Ceri or anyone else here but personally I screwed up a couple of finishes before I really figured out how to do it "right". Before you even consider starting on the guitar itself, read and learn -all you can- and then do some practice pieces. In fact I'd recommend picking up a cheap Squier or something off Craigslist (you can often find cheap Squiers for well under $100) and use it as a "practice piece". Like playing the guitar, practice makes perfect....practice, practice, practice! A good place to start learning is the internet and particularly http://reranch.com/ ...look up "Guitar Refinishing 101" as a good place to start. I also found "Make Your Own Electric Guitar" by Melvyn Hiscock to be very valuable. Again though, read and learn all you can before you start.

Now that said, don't let me intimidate you either...you -can- do it yourself. Many of us do and have gotten some truly wonderful results. As I said though, it's just not as simple as buying a can of spray paint and going to town on it. I've seen a lot of guys who "thought" they knew what they were doing or simply didn't realize that as with anything else, this is a -skill- and their results have been truly horrible...really ended up butchering the paint job bad.

Ok...now...there are some other things to consider. First, as Ceri mentioned, you didn't say what kind of Strat you had there. This can greatly effect the whole "Should I?" decision. For example, if you have a vintage instrument such as something from the 60's or 70's, refinishing the instrument will hurt the monetary value of the instrument...on a vintage instrument that may be a collector's piece, a beat up original finish is worth more money than even a very well done refinish. Personally this has never been an issue for me...I'm a musician and not a collector per say so if I had something like that and the finish looked awful, personally I would refinish it. That said, opinions on this differ greatly.

If on the other hand, this isn't really a collectors piece...perhaps it's a Squier or even an MIM Standard, then most folks don't really care either way. Further, depending on the condition of the instrument and how much you payed for it, you could actually increase the value if you do a really good job. Earlier this year I purchased a Yamaha bass at a guitar show for $30. In this case, the instrument has survived a fire. It was still structurally sound and playable and the electronics still worked but all of the plastic was melted and the existing finish was really badly bubbled. In this case, I stripped it down to the bare wood, refinished it in black lacquer, replaced the melted parts, clean up the chrome, etc...parts and finish cost me roughly about $50. I recently took it to the fall show...I wanted to show the guy I bought it off of what I had done...at the show, I had -2- people offer me $400 for it! Not bad for an investment of about $80

Now to answer your question of "will it change the sound"...while this is certainly a bit subjective, my own personal opinion is not really. If you search the internet, you'll see this subject is rather debated. In theory a thicker or harder finish such as factory poly's found on most newer Strats will have a (negative) effect on how well the wood resonates...again, in theory. The thing here is that there are so many other things in regards to an electric guitar such as a Strat...things such as pickups, bridge/setup and even your amp, that it's really difficult to tell just how much of the "wood" you're really hearing. In other words, changing your pickups or your amp can have a tremendous effect on how the instrument sounds. Changing the paint? Ehh...it's really debatable.

There's a couple of other small notes I would add. If you don't already know, as you read up on this you will find that you REALLY need to love sanding! LOL!!! Even if you're just shooting over an existing finish, the key to getting a great finish is in the sanding and polishing...and it's -A LOT- of work and does require a great deal of patience! Again here...and I can't over-state this...it's not as simple as just buying a can of spray paint and shooting your favorite color over the body...at least NOT if you want a reasonably professional looking finish. Also on the note of patience, as Ceri said...perhaps the single hardest thing is being prepared to allow the guitar to sit for weeks...if not a month or two...while the finish hardens. Once you shoot that last coat, you need to allow that body to sit for at least 3 weeks or more -before- you can even do the final polish...and this can certainly drive a person MAD! LOL!!! Also, if you should choose to do a full strip and then refinish with lacquer, you need to remember that lacquer takes -months- to really harden up and in fact it will continue to dry over the course of years. With a lacquer finish, once you've done the final polish and have re-assembled the instrument you have to be -VERY- careful with that guitar for several months at least...even leaving it on a guitar stand will leave marks in the finish. Personally, I think lacquer is worth it...I never could get the same results with a poly that I can with lacquer but that's strictly a personal opinion.

In light of everything else I just posted here, I would like to add one other small suggestion for your consideration. After reading what everyone here has said and/or information on how to properly refinish a guitar, should you feel that you're not up to the task remember...you can always hop on Ebay and just order a body in the color you want. Nough said .

In other words, there's quite a bit here for you to consider. So that all said, -if- you feel fairly confident in your skills towards doing a refinish and assuming we're not talking about a vintage instrument here where a significant portion of the instrument's value may be at risk, I'd say go for it. While it can be frustrating, it's also a lot of fun and very rewarding. Again however if you haven't done stuff like this before, learn all you can and do a few practice pieces -before- you start.

These are as always my own personal opinions...I hope they help.
Jim



p.s. One last little tip....after the final polish, 3M Swirl Remover (wink).

Hi again: good stuff - I'd go with every word Jim says (above).

Truth is, we're a couple of the wordiest buggers on this Forum and yet everything we've both written would form the mere preface to a book on the subject - which is what Davey94 really needs if he wants to get serious about this thing.

As well as plenty of practice, as mentioned.

For more excellent info on finishing, that chapter in The Guitar Player Repair Guide will get you a good way down the road:

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Books,_plan ... Guide.html

And for deep study there's nothing better than Guitar Finishing Step-By-Step:

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Books,_plan ... -Step.html

That one is seriously too much for a first timer, though. Too difficult trying to work out which bits you need from all the extraneous stuff you don't.

With a thread like this you're always trying to work out the level of the fella you're talking to, so as to pitch it right. Hopefully we're somewhere near the target!

Good luck - C

PS Swirl Remover is an excellent tip...

And I absolutely agree with Ceri...we are both rather long winded in what we tend to write and it doesn't even scratch the surface really! LOL!!!

That said...go grab yourself a cup of coffee and a fresh pack of smokes...I'm going to get even wordier .

To the OP...despite everything that Ceri and I have both written here (and I agree and stand by every word of it), again I would like to reiterate; don't let all of this discourage you! Very simply, we've all had to start somewhere. With that said, I just want to share a little bit of what I went through learning this stuff. As you read this, do please keep in mind that my own methods aren't really "by the book" and I've figured a few of my own things out a long the way.

The first guitar that I ever tried to refinish was an old Rhthymline Tele copy. Now I have to say here this was a -cheap- guitar...I had gotten it used for $75 sometime back in the mid 80's. It had this godawful pale yellow finish that had lots of cracks...the dirt was into the cracks...made it look really nasty. Now back then, I didn't really know squat about refinishing anything, let alone a guitar so I essentially just took the guitar apart and used some auto spray paint and shot a couple of coats of a metallic blue over the body. The results were...less than spectactular. Now the funny thing here...and I didn't learn this until much later...my biggest mistake was probably that I didn't know anything about "polishing"...I just sprayed the body, put the guitar back together and was done. -If- I had of done the wet sanding with 800 - 2000 grit sandpaper then used some polishing compound and swirl remover, that first finish may have in fact been half way decent. As it was though, I just figured I didn't know what I was doing...decided I wasn't going to screw up a nicer instrument and didn't try again for a number of years.

What really brought me back to it was when I picked up the book I mentioned before, "Make Your Own Electric Guitar" by Melvyn Hiscock. While it's not nearly as detailed, particularly in regards to refinishing, it was enough to get me started again. I ordered 2 pieces of southern swamp ash from a local wood joint and glued it up to make a body blank. This one I also did as a Tele (more or less)...there are basically step-by-step instructions for doing a double fat tele in the book and I -really- liked the way this guitar looked so that's what I tried to copy.

My first mistake here was ordering swamp ash. Yes, it's a wonderful wood for guitars, but the piece I had at least was a serious muther to work with! LOL!!! Of course, it's also worth noting that I really didn't know squat about sanding at that point either. I also had numerous mistakes cutting the body...the first was when the blade on my father's band saw slipped the rollers and gouged sideways in to the body as I was cutting the tele shape. This actually worked out nice believe it or not...I just went ahead and went with the cut, sanded it out and ended up with a "contoured body" on the back like a Strat...I believe that the late painter Bob Ross would have referred to this as a "happy accident". I also ended up really butchering the neck pocket as well...to this day that body still has -a lot- of wood filler in it covering my mistakes.

Anyways as this is about finishes...in this case I tried to do a red metallic finish. I had done some finish sanding after the final coat, but not nearly enough. The results were again, less than impressive and comparable to the Rhthymline. Just no luster at all. I had the right idea, but didn't take it nearly far enough....back to the drawing board.

Then thru another guitar forum, I discovered ReRanch and the "Guitar ReFinishing 101" tutorial...that -really- opened my eyes. Now in this case...having done a couple of really bad finishes before, I decided to do a practice piece first before I really screwed up another guitar. I went back to that old Rhthymline since it was still laying around, stripped the sucker down to the bare wood (plywood...not even a good laminate) and started fresh. -This time- I got it really close. Now here's where I also started experimenting a bit. Between the Hiscock book and ReRanch, I was able to get enough info to come to a few conclusions of my own. This time I decided to try and do a sunburst...bold, ambitious and if I screwed it up, it was still the Rhthymline, LOL! In this case I used an oil based stain that was compatable with the lacquer clear coat I planned to use later. I stained the body...got the color to about what I wanted, then I used my father's air brush to do the actual burst. After this, I shot about 8 coats of clear lacquer and let it dry for a few weeks...going downstairs virtually every day to check it and see if "it was ready yet", LOL! As Tom Petty once said, "The waiting is the hardest part...".

After about 3 weeks, I got to polishing. Now here I pretty much went by the ReRanch instructions...started with 400 grit wet sanding and worked my way up to 1500 grit. After that I followed up with rubbing compound and polishing compound. The results...better...much better. I was most definitely on the right track. Sorry about the poor quality of the pic (this was taken before I really started learning good photography as well) but here's how she looked after I was done...



In this case, since the finish came out half-way decent, I did replace the bridge, bridge pickup and the control plate...kind of added to the "new guitar" look. The biggest problems I ran in to were that I later realized that it wasn't really the color I wanted but more importantly, the plywood had not absorbed the stain very evenly...and I had missed that before I started spraying the clear. Even in this poor picture, you can still see some light spots from the uneven stain. That said, this body was still a serious POS, so I decided to do something a little better.

For the next project, I picked up a Charvel Strat body off Ebay for around $30. I had an old Kramer neck down on the old work bench that had been given to me with a busted headstock. In this case, I stripped the Charvel body down to the wood as well as having stripped the neck and repaired the headstock. The front of the headstock had a visible repair line, so I did a very thin maple laminate over the top front of the headstock to hide the repair. Now this body was poplar (I think) and it was -MUCH- easier to work with than either the ash or the plywood....easier to sand, easier to fill, etc..

Now for this one...at my wife's urging...I decided to try something different still...a blue burst. I experimented on a few pieces of scrap wood trying to find a good color and I ended up using "blue dye" from Sherwin-Williams...the stuff they use to color paints. Now on this one, I decided to take the color and burst all the way up the neck...kind of like what you'd find on a LP or an SG. Again, I started by staining everything and then I did the burst with the air brush. This time though, after reading a lot of stuff on auto refinishing (mostly from the internet), I decided to go with a heavier clear lacquer...in this case I did around 12 heavy coats. I discovered later that this was -way- too much...but I'll explain that in a bit.

Now I should add quickly here that with both of the last two projects, I was also doing wet sanding with 400 grit between clear coats. In fact on this Strat, I ended up doing a sand thru and at one point, ended up stripping the body and starting all over again. You'll learn about sand throughs...it sucks.

Anyways, after doing the finish over again in the same way, I let it dry for a good 3 weeks before starting the final polishing (which considering how thick I had applied the clear, wasn't nearly long enough). The one thing I added here was that I learned about a refinishing product called "swirl remover" (Ceri uses the Brasso...same basic idea). Here's the result (again sorry for the poor image quality)...








As you can see, this one came out quite lovely looking....big improvement over the previous attempts. Using the 3M swirl remover really made a HUGE difference with the final polish...it was really had that pro looking gloss to it. Unfortunately.....as I said before, I had gone WAY to heavy on the clear coat and then didn't allow it nearly enough time to harden. What happened was that after reassembling the guitar, after a while I noticed that the clear coat was starting to "squish" out from under the pickguard and the bridge.....remember...lacquer takes months and years to really dry. Further, as it turned out, I discovered that I -really- didn't like this neck. The finish came out smashing, but it's one of those thick, chunky baseball bats...I just didn't like the feel of this neck at all. Because I had received it with the broken headstock though, I had never actually played on it before I refinished it. Again, live and learn.

Sadly, despite the initial results that looked very good, due to the overly thick lacquer having mushed, as time went by, it just started to look worse and worse. The body has now been stripped again and will...at some point...be refinished again...as a blue burst...once I find the "right" neck for her.

Skip ahead to earlier this year. I picked up an alder Strat body off Craiglist for $25 (I'm sure you can find the details about that elsewhere on the forums here). The body had been very poorly done in a black lacquer....really really bad...by another guy who really had no clue at all. Instead of trying to learn, the guy just decided to dump the body I guess. Anyways, in this case I decided to try and do a more classic looking 2 tone 50's-like sunburst. Again here I used traditional wood stain to color the wood (after having stripped it) and shot the burst with an airbrush. This time however, I only shot 6 light coats of clear.

Now this one had some mistakes too....again the dreaded sand thrus. I -could- have gone back and re-stripped this one and started over but I was sort of doing this one as a "mock vintage"...I wasn't really trying to do a relic, but I decided to let it go and see how it would look...after all, I could always re-strip and refinish later. Despite the couple of "ooppp's", this one came out...well...pretty nice in fact. For this one, I went with a neck from an '04 Indo Squier Standard and an MIM big block trem...I'm still trying to find the "right" pickups for her but all and all, she's quite the player. This is her...





Now other than the sand thru's, there was still one issue here...she looks good, but it still wasn't exactly the color I wanted. Close, but not exact. So I did one more as an "experiment"...I still had the body from the '04 Indo laying around so I did a little (more) reading and found that in the early days, Fender used to stain the bodies yellow before doing a sunburst. I thought to myself "Hhmmmmmm..." and decided to give it a try. Again stripped the body down to the bare wood and then I used a yellow acrylic (hobby paint) as the yellow stain. I let the yellow "stain" dry for about a week...as it was water based and I was going to be using oil based wood stain afterwards, I need to make sure that stuff was good and dried out. Afterwards, I also discovered a new stain color..."Gun Stock" from Minwax...really looked very close to what I wanted. After doing a couple of coats of stain (and letting it dry), I then shot the burst again as previous and again only did about 6 light coats of clear. As with the last Strat, I had a couple of sand thrus but I wasn't really worried about it here...this was again, just an experiment. With this one, I didn't even put much effort in to the final polish. At this point, I didn't even have a neck to put on this beastie and wasn't really planning on building into a guitar.

Of course a couple of months back I happened in to a Korean made Squier...the body was junk but the neck had a nice, natural "aged" look to it, so I went ahead and used the neck and pickups from that guitar on this body...here's the result...




Now in this case, I really didn't have anything other than a little time and effort invested in to this one. The color was exactly what I had been looking for and that was the point of the experiment...I learned what I needed to know. This one I recently ended up trading for an Ovation acoustic/electric at a local show .


Last but not least is the Yamaha Motion B bass that I refinished this summer. In this case, I had gotten the bass at a guitar show in the spring for $30. The bass had been thru a fire (as I mentioned earlier)...it was still structurally sound and the e-tronics worked but the paint was all bubbled up and all the plastic was melted. Again, took this one down to the bare wood...I had -hoped- that I was going to be able to do a natural stain with an oil finish on this one but the wood just had too many flaws, so I decided to do a black lacquer finish on this one. In this case, I actually used "Duplicolor" from my local Advanced Auto Parts...got a quart sized can of the "jet black" which I then sprayed with my air brush. I did 4 coats of black applied the body decal (which took me -2 freakin weeks to figure out) and followed with about 8 thin coats of clear. I also replaced the melted pickup covers (a story in itself) and new control knobs, etc.. Here's a shot of her as she was awaiting final assembly...





This is the bass that I mentioned above...payed $30 for it, put another $50 in to parts and the finish and I've had 2 people recently offer me $400 for her. Not a bad deal if I may say so myself

Now...believe it or not, I've left A LOT of details out in regards to each project. Despite the length of the post here, these really are just rather broad summaries of each project. In fact, each of the later projects took a good month or more to complete and there was a lot of stuff that went on in that time with each project. The whole singular point of all that blathering though is that with each project, I've learned a little more. The first couple really came out like crap, but I kept at it...kept reading and learning and kept experimenting with things. I -have- made mistakes along the way...many of them...but I've tried to learn from those mistakes and that's what's important. So again, while as Ceri and I have both stated, it is -a lot- of work and certainly a lot of info to absorb, don't be discouraged by it either. I've really enjoyed all of these projects and I'm at the point that I'm quite proud of my results and find it very satisfying to be able to refinish my own guitars.

Again, get yourself a cheap instrument to start with....read and learn...practice practice practice and then when you feel confident, go for it!

I sincerely hope this helps you (or someone) and if you have any questions, please feel more than free to ask.

Peace,
Jim

well thanx you all guys! i have learned a lot and my guitar is nearly finnished. the only problem is that i wasn´t as good as i thought with the tape, so a lot went wrong . i have painted it a few times more, then i got better and better and now it still doesn´t look fabulous, but better than before. i have painted it into a ´van halen´style , because i didn´t know what to do with black. i will post photos if im ready.

thx for all!!!