so, while i spend some time correcting my mistakes, i thought we might talk about custom guitars and design choices. if we look at custom guitars we always see the same thing. awful, nasty, tasteless crap. check out this winner. this is the usual stuff. i mean, it's good woodworking but barf city.
close, but no cigar on this next one. my only hope is the guy on the guitar and the guy who built the guitar are the same person. because if i saw him playing this at a show, i would drop to my knees and cry out a cry that could be heard throughout the ages.
now this is more like it! if you're going to pour this much time into something, it better be a winner. look at the pellet inlays. this guy is a winner and would never be in a band with the guy with the severed head guitar.
so the next move is picking out a color. let us not be tempted by stoner dreams. lets think about classic design. simple is best. roots paint.
like i said, i've owned this guitar for a few years now and i still have no idea what it is. but today i found out it's called a teisco! a japanese company that made shitty guitars from the 40's untill 1970. then kawai (the piano company) bought the brand. i'm assuming to prevent the company from making more guitars. apparently people like these things and they are collectible to a certain extent. this guitar i'm working on is from the 1960's and is called the tulip, or the del ray, or the 110. for some reason the didn't put their name on their guitars, and if they did, it was a badge you could screw off. i played this thing for years until i got a credit card. here are a few others.....
this morning i woke and checked on the primer situation. looking good, but i did notice a few grain bumps. and as the day went by it drove me crazy. i couldn't think of anything but those bumps. let it go, they're just a few bumps. but what would dick proenneke say about it. he'd say,"looks as if a boy scout went at it with a dull hatchet." and that dick would be right. so with dick on my mind, and the electric sander in my hand, i sanded off all my primer along with the lacquer.
now i am reborn. filled with the knowledge of the past, i am kicking this shit into the next level. dick proenneke, this ones for you!
"when you got a job to do you got to do it well" - paul mccartney
"that ain't working, that's the way you do it" - dire straits
"everybody's working for the weekend" - loverboy "Too many men work on parts of things; doing a job to completion satisfies me." - dick proenneke
i couldn't wait. i was supposed to do this lacquer and sanding down method for like four days but i'm ready to take it to the next level. i can live with a little bit of grain! plus, i plan to paint another guitar soon. right now i'm exploring.
let's explore the half-assed approach. i bought some white primer from the depot, put the body back on the hanger, shook the can for two minutes like it says on the directions, and i just lose myself in the moment like 8 mile. beautiful fine white liquid starts exploding out of my tip. i'm going for it big time. i'm riding the snake down to the lake. the ancient lake! and just as fast as it had started, it was all over.
i covered that thing so good. i love primer! here's a picture of me and my body post-spray. in this picture, our bond has grown and it's showing. good for us!
i really thought i was going to be on the next step, but spraying the lacquer has made my wood's grain pop up like crazy. the whole surface looks like human skin. it seems like the wood filler i bought is also used to fill these millions of little holes. back to home depot like an idiot. this time i bought the same lacquer, but in a bucket. the plan is to fill the holes as much as i can with wood filler, drown it with lacquer, and sand it down. then repeat like four to seven times until it clears up, like p. diddy's face.
so the last time we were here we filled all my holes. i got a 220 sandpaper and leveled all those spots where i used wood grain filler. out of paranoia i went over the whole thing again 'till it was as smooth as oliver dragojevic. now it's time to seal these puppies. people have a millions of ways to paint a guitar. then the guys at home depot tell you that guys who paint guitars don't know crap about painting and they start giving you advice. and half of the stuff you need to do this has been outlawed because they use it to make meth or whatever. people say use a sealer, well home depot don't have no sealer under like a gallon and for $50. i went with some polyurethane lacquer in a can. it just feels like the right move. then there was the question of oil or water based. how the hell am i supposed to know? no one told me there was a choice. so i went with the can that didn't disclose which one it was because i was losing it at the depot. here is my can and a wire coat hanger i untwisted.
i don't have anywhere to paint so i figured i'd do it outside. i used the old 'coat hanger off the gutter' trick. it's not falling down so i'm off the the next step.
i taped the part where the neck goes on so there will be no troubles getting the neck on later. i'm sure i can get away with not doing this but i'm trying to go pro.
here it it after like four coats. still looks the same but i guess it's sealed.
i'm not a big fan of matching headstocks. for some reason i decided to do one. if i don't like it later i can always change it back. taping this was fun.
so here they are after like 6 coats. i can't believe how much crap can come out of one can. again i didn't want to waste anything so i huffed the last of the lacquer. after my high wore off i cleaned up. and now i wait until this dries for 24 hours.
well what do we have here! a little hole. i drilled this hole because the input jack broke and i just ran a cord through the side. it didn't work as well as i thought it would. just look at that hole. what a pain in the ass this thing is. the internet said i can fill it up with wood putty. ill be the judge of that.
so here we are two minutes into the future i filled that hole so good with my putty. apparently this putty turns into wood? i don't know. it looks like chipmunk log. it's the color of acorns.
i spent about $3 for this and decided i was going to be damned if i didn't use the whole tube. i know their game. you use like a speck and pay for the bottle and by the time you want to use it again it's dry and you have to buy another bottle. look at that healthy spread.
now i got to let this thing dry and then sand all the putty down. sanding is pretty relaxing stuff. the palm sander makes your hand vibrate a lot so by the end of sanding it feels like you put your hand in the jacuzzi for half an hour. after this is sanded we apply the primer. god knows what might happen.
im not sure if i'm an idiot but i've got into my head that i want to learn how to repair guitars. so to do that we have to break a guitar. look at this fine piece of guitar. i think its from the seventies. i have two of these and they both have no markings on them. they look like harmony's but without any i.d. i'm going to call them copies of harmony's which is saying nothing and saying a lot at the same time. as you can see ive taken the neck off and am holding this thing in front of my new usb camera.
i've never done anything like this before. i have no background in wood or painting. i've used a screwdriver and a hammer before, but thats about it. i have no idea about sandpaper or paint or anything. so this most likely will be about learning things the hard way and dealing with disappointment.
so i took off the pickguard and hardware and poured paint remover all over this thing last night and started sanding it today. but my sandpaper broke. so i'm off to home depot to hook it up. i don't know what kind of sandpaper to get. i don't know how much to sand. if anybody knows about sanding or painting please write a comment about it. here's another photo showing the sanding so far.
as you can see. this might not turn out so well. i will post more as i get involved.
if you want to know what twenty seven metal and shitty punk bands sound like if they all played at once, then take a stroll down the halls of my now ex-practice space. last night we cleaned everything out of there. i'm glad because i could never get any work done there anyways. there's something about san pedro that makes everyone here play really shitty metal and ska punk. i blame two bands, korn and sublime. i'd like to blame all the big brothers in the world for that one. it's like this shit gets passed from one generation to the next. stop the madness.
