I might be buying this guitar off a friend of a freind. It's a sweet guitar, but the color is terrible. I was thinking i could just take the body to a body shop or something. Anyone ever done that? Are there any places that do that kind of thing? Thanks.

 

Acoustic or Electric?

 

Oops. Electric. An Ibanez RG-570 with emg pickups to be exact.

 

They totaly can be painted.. strip the hardware before you do anything..

Guitars are finished for the most part, much better then furniture.. so its a lot of work.

First you have to strip about 6 coats of varithane off, then the colour, and work it back up in reverse.

If you don't want to do it yourself, I would think a furniture manufacturer would be the best bet.

I stripped a Jem 777 down, which isn't here at the moment, so I can't take a pic, and painted it chrome, the clearcoated the crap out of it, sort of my homage to satriani, it looks amazing, but it took me about a week to finish it.

The only advise I can give you other then taking your time, is make your life easy, and put old screws anywhere they are open, which will save you tapping them after painting.

Also, it will have no effect on the sound of the guitar, unless you put about 10 lbs of paint on it

 

oh, another thought, I can't remember for sure, but I believe the RG-570 is cut from a soild piece of wood ( or it might be the 760 and up ) once its stripped, a nice look is the clean would, with a varythane and it looks real nice, my Washburne is like that, and I dig it, or, one of my Ibanez's is basically stained, so you can see the wood grain through it, it looks pretty classy too I think..

this is the only shot I have in my album right now

 

Thanks, mindcore. That sounds like a lot of work and i have no experience doing any stuff like that. Are there places that do that kind of thing exclusively? If so, any idea what it costs?

That guitar does look nice as hell. Gorgeous. I think I like that finish more than just about any I've ever seen.

 

There are local music shops in Toronto that I would trust doing this, but then again, I'm about as far away from California as I could be..

You have the Guitar Centre over there? they are pretty large in the US, other then that, see where people buy all the hot gear, and see if they can give you a lead.

Any places that do it exclusively, would be custom manufactuers, and I would guess you could by any guitar you want for what they would charge you.

As for mine, the pic doesn't do it justice, it looks soo deep and the grain is just beautiful. When I saw it, I bought it with out touching it, but I have a sickness when it comes to buying guitars

 

We do have guitar centers here. I was planning on going in there soon to check out some other guitars and pick up some new strings anyway. I'll ask them if they can point me towards any places that can do that kind of thing. Thanks for the help.

 

Repainting a guitar isn't too much work...if you're paying someone else, it's around $200-300 for a really nice job. I've owned more than 100 guitars since '79 (when I began playing) and probably 1/2 of them were custom jobs one way or the other. Various graphics, paints, etc. I got away from the Jacksons, Hamers, etc when I discovered locking tuners (no more Floyds) and really got hooked on exotic, woody type guitars. For you guys who play, and even those who don't, perhaps you'll appreciate the work that when into my last creation. Spalted maple, FLAMED koa, south pacific abalone "falling" maple leaf inlays with abalone purfing on the edge of the fingerboard. All frets leveled (like Randy Rhoads liked) and 27-frets.
Took three months to build...had the pickups custom wound by Bill Lawrence himself and have an EMG presence control that acts as a "wah" type filter for the eq.
Locking LSR tuners (same as those found on the Roswell Rhoads)
and the volume/tone knob is one control, push-pull like the George Lynch ESP model. Spalted maple is a tough wood to work with though. Most luthiers won't go near it if bending is involved.

 

a tear actually came to my eye.. just freakin gorgeous..

You gotta send me a high bit MP3 of what that thing sounds like