New things I've learnt today...

[kultofkylie]

1) Using watercolour masking fluid to mask off areas that you're going to spray with acrylic car paint is total bollocks. It looks like I'm going to have to do my brother's guitar entirely in blue-tac as it is the only effective masking medium I've found yet. I'm estimating I will need at least 5 packs of the stuff.

Comments

[twistedwrister]

It probably sounds like an intimidating job if you don't know much about guitars, but in the end it's possibly easier and will definitely make for better results if you strip the guitar, paint it, then re-assemble it instead of messing around with masking.

In other words, you need to remove everything - the strings, the scratchplate (which, with many guitars, the volume and tone knobs and the pickups ought to be attached to and hence come off all together), the bridge and maybe even the neck (provided it's a bolt on and not a glue-in or one-piece). It all screws back on with no damage done, although the guitar will need a new set-up afterwards. It's good maintenance to give your guitar a set-up every now and then anyway.

The only difficulty depends on how the internals have been drilled out - sometimes the electric leads running from the volume/tone pots to the input jack go through the wood, in which case you'd have to either make do with having the internal parts hanging a few inches away from the stripped body whilst you paint, or just de-solder (and later re-solder) the input jack connection.

Now I've said all that, it probably looks like masking is way easier, but if it were me, I know which way I'd do it. Do you know what kind of guitar it is or have any pics?

[kultofkylie]

All the electrics, neck, plates etc. have been removed so it's just the wooden body. It's been given several coats of primer and now several coats of blue but I want to do the John Peel banner design on it in white with a blue background (and black in the case of the scratchplate). It's going to be tricky but it should look cool as fuck when it's finished!

[twistedwrister]

Ah, I see. Not the problem I imagined at all. Sounds like a good project though. Will you post pics when it's done?