I wanted to know if It's safe to hand paint an electric guitar. I want to do some funky, bright colors and shapes and stuff on my old Squier (for practice) and if it turns out really well, then on my strat. Is there a specific paint I should use? And anything i SHOULDN"T paint over/on or anything. Any tips would be appreciated.
Veronica
Well Im not sure about hand painting but I am very sure that you should not use latex paint. Ill have to ask my brother about what paint to use (Acrylic or something else). I would recommend using an airbrush to do it since an airbrush is very accurate. You will most likely need to sand the body down too and them use primer (I think that depends on the wood if its open grain or not but dont hold me to it). I have heard that companies like gibson paint their guitars with 3 coats of primer, about 27 coats of paint, and then 3 or so coats of the clear enamel or gloss stuff. I will check back later with more info. good luck. o and BTW it takes gibson about a month to completely finish painting the guitars...
bstguitarist
best wishes
:lol:
No matter what anyone says, these four men were the Innovators! of modern Rock & Roll!
Morse Code... Music on it's own
You'll want to mask the pickups and stuff, or else take everything off the guitar before painting.
You might want to hire a professional artist who can do airbrushing. I'ed start looking through the yellow pages for one.
Or you might even want to ask a graphics company, or a body shop that does graphics painting for cars. Maybe you can think of some other people who could do it.
-Metaellihead
This should have everything you needProject Guitar
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You might want to hire a professional artist who can do airbrushing. I'ed start looking through the yellow pages for one.
Or you might even want to ask a graphics company, or a body shop that does graphics painting for cars. Maybe you can think of some other people who could do it.
That may be a little over the top for this project. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is more like, "Hey, let's see what happens if I put paint on this guitar then show people my painted guitar." Then they'll be like, "Wow, that's a guitar? I thought you'd been playing a Hawaiian shirt for the past week and a half!" That kind of thing. Assuming you're only painting the wooden parts, you can't really go wrong. You just apply paint, and sand it all off again if you don't like it. You continue to try, then cover it in tape if you give up.
Yeah, it's a little extreme, but worth mentioning. :P
-Metaellihead
That actually sounds like a fun project Vee! People just don't do things themselves anymore, or handmake or handwork or...do anything that personalizes their instrument (or anything else for that matter :) ). It's like "take it to a pro, bro." Hehehe.
If that's the case, I'd rather be an amateur!
The advise about undercoating and primer, just so the pigment doesn't get into the grain. Then, just hand paint it anyway you want, in my opinion. No need to get fancy. When you're done, clear coat it so it'll last, and...pretty much there you go.
Wasn't "The Fool" done by hand? I'm not sure now.
Congrats though on wanting to use your own hands to do something!
Take care.
I recomend that you take the pickups and pickguard out, and take the neck off so that you just have the body.
Yep, primer is important, and then just paint what you want. It would be best to apply several thin layers of clear coat/laquer rather than one thick coat.
Just have fun, make something unique!
Peter.
Id say tape the neck up with some painters tape instead of taking it off. Just my advice.
aka Izabella
Think of your guitar ... as a car.
Most car finishes are lacquer and most guitar finishes are lacquer.
The same prep work for a car will work on a guitar finish ... hence primer, filler, clear coat, metalic paints ...
Read up on autobody work?
Also nail polish is lacquer paint? There are crazy nailpolish colours out there to experiment with?
ideas fo the insane ....
... that noise you hear is my Signature Sound ... lovely ain't it?
If you were to just paint over your guitar, it'd probably stifle the guitar's sound a little bit (some people think it does, some think it doesn't). That'd be alright though if you don't want to paint a whole lot. If you want to do something like The Fool, then you should probably go to RERanch.com or something, because then you'll probably have to refinish it. That will make it really professional though, because it will be really shiny and it won't stifle the tone at all.
IIRC, the reason Gibson uses so many layers is because as nitrocellulose lacquer dries, the layers kind of blend in with each other, so it just becomes one thin layer. With all the layers though, it takes a long time. With poly I'm sure you don't have nearly as many coats to put on, but it will be a thicker finish.
Paint isn't going to affect an electric's tone.
It only affects sustain marginally, and I don't know of any people who use the 6 second sustain a plastic-coated Crapocaster has, never mind the whole 25 second sustain a Gibson Les Paul offers.
Use nail polish - easy to remove, easy to experiment with, won't permanently damage your axe, won't come off unless you want it to.
The fool SG was done by hand, but by pro artists I might add (Dutch, but nevertheless professional ;)).
