
StewMac tech guru Erick Coleman on how to give your instrument a sweet new look in five easy steps—sans fancy tools.
You love your guitar. You've been playing it for years, but the time has come to give it a makeover. The color was cool when you bought it (Photo 1), but now you'd like a change.
It's not too difficult to refinish a guitar. More than anything, it's a matter of patience. Taking the time to properly prep the wood and allow appropriate cure times can yield excellent results, even for the first-timer.
There are several types of finish used for guitars. Traditional nitrocellulose finishes are found on many high-end instruments as well as production guitars by Gibson and Martin, just to name a few manufacturers. Harder polyurethane finishes can be found on millions of guitars, including most Fender, Ibanez, and Epiphone models. Some manufacturers are now also using environmentally friendly waterborne finishes that are safer to handle.
For this project, we will be removing an existing polyurethane finish and refinishing the guitar with nitrocellulose lacquer in aerosol cans, for convenience. In addition to changing the appearance, this refin will likely result in a better-sounding instrument as well.
Use warm lacquer, not cold. Pro finishers spray heated lacquer because cold lacquer spatters, requiring extra work to get a level finish.
A guitar with a thin nitro finish will resonate better than one with a hard poly. But nitrocellulose is flammable and hazardous to inhale, so make sure you have a well-ventilated work area and use proper safety precautions, like wearing a respirator mask.
First you'll need to solder together and tape off the north coil finish and south coil finish (this is the series link). Then, here's a list of the items needed along with the StewMac parts numbers and amounts of the products we'll use:
- Hair dryer or heat gun to remove existing finish.
- Putty knife (#4464 and #1287).
- Sandpaper in a variety of grits for wood prep and finish work (#5562).
- Aerosol lacquer (#5886 Sonic Blue x 1, #3881 gloss clear x 3).
- Polishing cloth (#1815 x 2).
- Liquid polishing compounds (#1845 medium, #1846 fine).
- Respirator mask (#5885).
Step 1: Disassemble the guitar
Photo 2
The first step is to take the instrument completely apart, removing all hardware and electronics (Photo 2). Keep all the parts in one place as you remove them so you don't have to hunt them down when you are ready to reassemble the guitar.
Step 2: Strip the existing finish
Photo 3
There are a few different ways to strip a finish. Simply sanding a finish off can be very time-consuming and dirty, and using chemical strippers can be very toxic and messy. I've found the best way to cleanly and easily strip polyurethane finish of this type is to use a hair dryer or heat gun and a flexible putty knife (Photo 3).
Photo 4
Lightly scoring a starting point in the finish with a sharp putty knife will give you a good entry point once the finish is heated. The idea is to soften and lift the finish without burning it, so it is important to keep the gun moving while heating. With the gun set on the lowest setting, start warming up the scored area on the guitar. When you see the finish starting to lift, work the knife underneath it and start removing it (Photo 4).
Photo 5
Once you get under the finish, the rest of the job goes pretty fast. Use care not to damage the wood with the knife or scorch it with your heat source. Remove as much of the finish as possible, including that in the cavities (Photo 5).
Step 3: Prepare the body
When all the finish is removed, it's time to prepare the body for refinishing. Inspect the body and neck for any dings, chips, or other imperfections. Small dents can be steamed out by placing a damp cloth over the dent and applying heat with a soldering iron. (For instructions on steaming out dents, see "Steaming Out Dents in a '71 Medallion Flying V.") Chips will need to be filled.
Photo 6
Once you've inspected the body and checked it for dings and chips, it's time to gather your sandpaper and sanding blocks (Photo 6).
Photo 7
Using a flat backing pad and starting with 120-grit sandpaper, sand the entire body working only in the direction of the grain (Photo 7). Inspect the body to make sure you are removing any traces of finish or sealer left over from the original paint job. After a complete sanding, wipe down the body with a damp cloth to raise the grain. Let it dry, then sand with 220-grit sandpaper. Raise the grain with a damp cloth again and sand a third time, using 320-grit sandpaper. Take your time and do a thorough job during these steps to insure you get a nice flat surface to build your finish on. When you've finished sanding, wipe the body with a naphtha-dampened rag to remove any oils or grease left by your hands. From this point on, wear clean gloves so you won't contaminate the wood.
Step 4: Spraying
Photo 8
It's now time to spray your finish. For this you will need some kind of handle for holding your guitar and a place to hang it to dry. Pieces of scrap wood make good handles for holding the body while you spray (Photo 8). They also give you a way to hang the body while it cures. Here's where being especially patient will pay off. A professional nitrocellulose finishing job takes weeks to complete, but the end result is something you can be proud of!
Photo 9
Tip: Use warm lacquer, not cold. Pro finishers spray heated lacquer because cold lacquer spatters, requiring extra work to get a level finish. For best results, heat your cans in a sink of warm water before spraying (Photo 9).
Day One
Photo 10
Day one. Spray an initial light misting or tack coat (Photo 10), followed several minutes later by a heavier wet coat. The tack coat gives the wet coat better adherence and lessens the chance of a run in the finish. Spray two to three wet coats (but not runny, thick coats) on the body, 90 minutes apart, and let them dry overnight.
Day Two
Using a backing pad on the flat areas, lightly scuff-sand the body with 320-grit sandpaper to knock off the high spots in the finish. Sand just enough to open the finish—don't try to sand out every shiny spot or sunken area in the lacquer at this stage. Clean off all the sanding residue. Spray two to three uniform color coats for complete coverage, allowing 90 minutes between coats.
Day Three
Lightly scuff-sand the finish with 320-grit paper using care not to sand through your color coats, and clean off all the residue. Spray four uniform coats of clear lacquer, one hour between coats. Let the guitar dry overnight.
Tip: If you get a run or drip in the finish, let the surface dry for 24 hours and level-sand the problem area. If you touch wet lacquer, you'll leave a deep impression that will be much more difficult to fix.
Day Four
Lightly scuff-sand the finish with 320-grit paper, leveling out any imperfections in the process, and clean off all the residue. Don't try to sand out all the shiny spots yet. Be particularly careful on the curves of the body. It's easy to sand through the edges. Once again, spray four more coats of clear, 90 minutes apart. The guitar now has six to eight topcoats of clear lacquer. Let the finish dry overnight.
If you get a run or drip in the finish, let the surface dry for 24 hours and level-sand the problem area.
Day Five
Scuff-sand the finish with 320-grit again. This time most of the shiny spots will disappear, leaving a uniformly dull look. Spray four more clear coats, 90 minutes apart, and let dry overnight.
Day Six
Lightly scuff-sand the finish with 600-grit sandpaper, to help the solvent escape. The body should now be left in a warm and dry location for two weeks to let the finish cure.
Step 5: Fine sanding and buffing
Dry-sand the body to a flat, dull sheen with 800-grit sandpaper. Clean the residue from the paper often. Orange-peel texture caused by lacquer shrinkage as the solvents cure out of the finish should be removed, but don't over sand. When all the little shiny low spots in the lacquer have been removed, you're ready to go to the next step, which is wet-sanding.
Photo 11
To bring the finish to a smooth satin surface that's ready for final polishing, wet-sand with 1200-grit micro-finishing paper and water (Photo 11). Excess water and residue should be wiped off the finish with a clean dry soft cloth as you work. Frequently rinse the sandpaper in soapy water to remove hard specks that can scratch the finish.
Tip: Soak the micro-finishing paper in water overnight before use. It will scratch less and last longer. Always keep it wet from then on.
Photo 12
Using soft cloths—a different one for each compound—polish out the fine wet-sanding scratches to a final gloss with medium and then fine liquid polishing compounds (Photo 12).
Photo 13
Once you've polished the body to a high gloss, reassemble your guitar (Photo 13) and get it back in action!
[Updated 9/10/21]
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“Sometimes, I’d like very much for my guitar to sound exactly like a supa cobra.”
Luthier Creston Lea tells us about his favorite dirt pedal—an Athens, Georgia-made stomp that lets his guitar be a hero.
Let’s face it: Nobody can tell what overdrive pedal you’re using. Whether you’re in a carpeted suburban basement accompanying the hired clown at your nephew’s fifth birthday party or standing on the spot-lit monitor at Wembley, not one person knows whether the pedal at your feet cost $17 or $700, has true bypass, or has an internal DIP switch. Nobody leaning against the barn-dance corncrib or staunching a nosebleed up in the stadium’s cheap seats is thinking, “Heavens yes!! THAT is the sound of a silicone diode!”
So, why buy another overdrive pedal? Or six more? Are they different? (I’m asking myself.) Of course they’re different. (I’m telling myself.) A Turbo Rat is not aKlon. ATube Screamer is not a DS-1. Or is it? I can’t keep track. Why? Because it’s fun to see what the talented manufacturers of the world have to offer. And because any reader who picks up a guitar magazine for any reason other than to swat a fly is curious about what’s new and what other players are using to good effect. You can blow your savings on a guitar—I’d be happy to build you one—or an amp (or vacation or college or discount merlot or a regrettable whole-back tattoo), or you can spend $100 to $300 to satisfy your curiosity. Will anybody in the audience notice? Unlikely. Will you feel better for five minutes or the rest of your life? Maybe. Seems worth rolling the dice from time to time. Nobody gets hurt. And sometimes you’ll find a pedal that pulls something good out of your playing simply by responding to the way you play … which makes you play in new ways, etc., etc., in an infinite loop of delight. Or at least infinite till the next pedal comes along. It feels good. In a troubled and imperfect world, is it so wrong to feel good?
I bought my first overdrive pedal, a well-usedMXR Distortion+, for $25 in 1991. Surely, I could have stopped there. But many others have come and gone in the years since. Have I bought a pedal, sold it, bought it again, sold it again? More than once.
I’ve mostly, finally outgrown the desire for new pedals, but I’m not immune to the occasional itch. Sometimes a trusted brand introduces something I just haveto hear for myself. That’s particularly true in the case of smaller-scale builders whose ears I’ve learned to trust. I’m going to like everythingChris Benson of Benson Amps or Brian Mena of Menatone ever makes, for example, so why not hear it all? Sometimes it’s alluring copywriting that makes me reach for my wallet. Sometimes they just look cool.
Maybe in my case, I just can’t resist a name like Supa Cobra. Sometimes, I’d like very much for my guitar to sound exactly like a supa cobra. When Greer Amps first introduced their Supa Cobra six years ago—described as delivering “chewy medium gain overdrive to awesome crunchy grind!”—I was immediately intrigued.
Oh, how I love the Supa Cobra—a woefully underappreciated pedal now only available from Greer by special request. I’m sure there are smart players who have discovered the joys of its lower-gain settings, but for me it’s perfect for punching through sonic mud and letting my guitar be heard. It lets my guitar be a hero.
I like it best with its 3-way clipping switch set to the middle position, which, according to Greer, bypasses the other modes’ clipping diodes and lets the op amp’s natural drive come through. I can’t say I know exactly what that means, but I know it’s loud and clear and compressed in just the right way to let sustained notes really sing out in a natural, power amp-y manner.
The Supa Cobra’s greatest feature may be the body control that dials in low-end presence without adding any murk. At higher body settings, the notes push on my chest in a way that I find thrilling. I like it around 60 percent with the gain knob turned nearly full up. Perhaps excessive, but life is short. When it’s time to sound big, it’s the biggest-sounding pedal I’ve found. Lots of overtones, but not at the expense of clarity. It’s quick to jump into harmonic feedback at the gain-y settings I like best, but in a beautifully controlled way.
As a matter of fact, I think people do notice what overdrive pedal I’m using. Not that they know it’s a Supa Cobra, but it makes my guitar leap out in a way that so many other pedals have not. To borrow a word from Greer’s Lightspeed Organic Overdrive (also fantastic), it sounds organic. Or, very much unlike a wasp in a tuna can. I think it sounds like music. Loud music.A dual-channel tube preamp and overdrive pedal inspired by the Top Boost channel of vintage VOX amps.
ROY is designed to deliver sweet, ringing cleans and the "shattered" upper-mid breakup tones without sounding harsh or brittle. It is built around a 12AX7 tube that operates internally at 260VDC, providing natural tube compression and a slightly "spongy" amp-like response.
ROY features two identical channels, each with separate gain and volume controls. This design allows you to switch from clean to overdrive with the press of a footswitch while maintaining control over the volume level. It's like having two separate preamps dialed in for clean and overdrive tones.
Much like the old amplifier, ROY includes a classic dual-band tone stack. This unique EQ features interactive Treble and Bass controls that inversely affect the Mids. Both channels share the EQ section.
Another notable feature of this circuit is the Tone Cut control: a master treble roll-off after the EQ. You can shape your tone using the EQ and then adjust the Tone Cut to reduce harshness in the top end while keeping your core sound.
ROY works well with other pedals and can serve as a clean tube platform at the end of your signal chain. It’s a simple and effective way to add a vintage British voice to any amp or direct rig setup.
ROY offers external channel switching and the option to turn the pedal on/off via a 3.5mm jack. The preamp comes with a wall-mount power supply and a country-specific plug.
Street price is 299 USD. It is available at select retailers and can also be purchased directly from the Tubesteader online store at www.tubesteader.com.
This hollowbody has been with Jack since the '90s purring and howling onstage for hundreds of shows.
Our columnist’s Greco 912, now out of his hands, but fondly remembered.
A flea-market find gave our Wizard of Odd years of squealing, garage-rock bliss in his university days.
Recently, I was touring college campuses with my daughter because she’s about to take the next step in her journey. Looking back, I’ve been writing this column for close to 10 years! When I started, my kids were both small, and now they’re all in high school, with my oldest about to move out. I’m pretty sure she’s going to choose the same university that I attended, which is really funny because she’s so much like me that the decision would be totally on point.
The campus looks way nicer than it did back in the ’90s, but there are similarities, like bars, shops, and record stores. Man, our visit took me back to when I was there, which was the last time I was active in bands. Many crash-and-burn groups came and went, and it was then that I started to collect cheap guitars, mainly because it was all I could afford at the time, and there were a lot of guitars to find.
In that era, I was using an old Harmony H420 amp (made by Valco), a Univox Super Fuzz, and whatever guitar I was digging at the time. I was so proud to pull out oddball guitars during shows and just have this totally trashy sound. Squealing and squeaking and noisy as heck, my style was reminiscent of Davie Allan, Ron Asheton, and Chuck Berry. Of course, I was way worse than all of them, but I did have a frenetic energy and I covered up my lack of skill with feedback. During the ’90s, there was a great punk revival, and I loved bands like the Mummies, Teengenerate, the Makers, the New Bomb Turks, and a bunch of others. Bands were embracing lo-fi, and I was planted firmly in that vein. Plus, the guitars I liked to use already sounded lo-fi.
“This was about the trashiest-sounding guitar, but in a good way!”
For a short spell I was using this Greco guitar and, man, this was about the trashiest-sounding guitar, but in a good way! See, Fujigen pickups (like the ones here) have this echoey voice that I describe as an “empty beer can” sound. My Super Fuzz would just destroy these pickups, and I wish I had some recordings from that era, because it was a real scene! I believe this Greco was a flea-market find but it was much later that I found out it was called a Greco Model 912. This was actually a copy of a German-made Framus guitar, but with a lot more glitz and a crazier headstock. Four pickup selector switches, volume/tone knobs, and a rhythm/lead switch rounded out the electronics. Again, these pickups are instant spaghetti-Western movie tone. Airy and bright, the bridge area is like instant, gnarly surf music. Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine has a similar guitar and John Barrett of Bass Drum of Death was also fond of these pickups. Interestingly enough, these particular Grecos were made in small numbers, ranging between 500 to 600 in total (including all pickup combinations).
The Greco brand was initially owned by the U.S.-based Goya Corporation, but in the late 1960s, Fujigen bought the brand name (for $1,000) and produced a few truly gonzo guitars, including this Model 912. Originally called the GE-4, the four-pickup version sold for $99.50 in 1967. My particular 912 was sold at Sid Kleiner Guitar Studios in Califon, New Jersey (which I learned thanks to the attached store sticker on the headstock).
Aside from the chrome coolness and the four pickups, this model featured a cute little flip-up bridge mute that was all the rage at the time. The body also had some tasteful German carvings around the edges, and as I write this, I am missing this guitar tremendously! But not even close to the way I’m going to miss my girl in a few months. At least I know that she can shop at the same record stores!