i've decided to "chop" off the speakers of my wurlitzer 206a. and i've also started a video series about it. these will be super pointless to like 99% of you.

hey someone had the balls to mention 'novi split' in this months issue of esquire magazine. that guy got handed his pink slip after the top brass read the article. but if you don't want to be caught reading esquire at the grocery store, they post their articles for free on the website. see it here.

don't read the article too fast, you might miss it.

yes sir. deets #7. what happened to the last 4? lets not worry about that right now. this is a univox les paul that someone tried to paint black. it was real stupid looking so i sanded the whole thing down. this guitar looks pretty solid and in tact. hopefully this goes quick.

my friend mike b just bought this 1976 mark 1 rhodes a few days ago. i was excited to open it up and work on it because i've never done it and there's always something exciting about knowing you could break the whole thing at any minute. here i am opening this thing up and removing amp.


step two is peeling away the hard exterior to get to the fleshy fruit inside.



i think the most important part of working on a vintage instrument is cleaning out the inside. you always find awesome things in them and you learn about their history. for example, who ever owned this piano before mike liked to get so drunk that he would spill a whole beer into the piano. also someone liked to get so sensual when they played this that they dripped hot wax all in it.


here are the keys all taken out so i could lube up all the posts.


so this is how the keyboard looks on the inside, like the back of a russian man.


and here it is after a good cleaning. much better. these pianos were designed to be worked on by the player. not that kind of player! i mean regular people like you and me that play music. the next step was to tune and then adjust the pickup distance and angle of the tines.


i'd be interested to see what a "licensed professional" would have done with this thing, but i wouldn"t be interested in spending $250 to find out.

so as you know, i really screwed this up last time. it was all my fault. i was being impatient and foolish. i'm starting to learn that the secret is all in the preparation. so check me out.........preparing the paint. warming the gold flakes to a nice 80 degrees so they can be born. it makes it easier for them to slip out. i don't know if you have used flake paint, but it's like spaying out a magical rainbow. and you think i'm kidding but huff enough of this stuff in a closed garage with no mask on, you'll see them.


check me out........... i got some pinstriping tape at the auto zone. they say it's the best for protecting binding from paint.



here's the full protection. i'm not messing around.


check me out...........laying down the plastic is a must. i like to keep the floor of the garage super clean. i pride myself on it. i don't know if you ever have gone to someone's house and their garage floor isn't clean, but gross.

here is our screwed up guitar. notice how ugly it looks. right now it's about a 3. the reason we lay it down for the gold paint is that we want the gold flakes to gently rain on the guitar like apocalyptic ash raining from the night sky.


here it is after like 3 coats. it's looking like a 5 and a half right about now.


here it is after like 20+ coats. a perfect ten. i'd hit that.


now let me tell you about the most terrifying part of painting. after you paint the top of the guitar, you've also buried the bindings with paint. so what you have to do is scrape them off with a razor freehand. you use your thumb as a guide. it's awful. here is a picture i stole from the gibson website. they only employ women to be scrapers because they have a more delicate touch apparently. check out these babes scraping away. i've always been told that i have the hands of a woman so i went for it.


here's the result. it's pretty good. and i feel like it was the most satisfying thing i've done all week.


one more small piece of advice about spray painting with nitrocellulose, wear a mask. because although the high is awesome, the comedown is harsh. i'm nursing a goldflake hangover as i write this. not so fun.