Manchester Guitar Tech
Below I’ll show how to achieve a Candy Apple Red finish on a Stratocaster body. Candy Apple Red is based on the old custom car technique of spraying clear lacquer over a metallic base coat, and was Fenders only truly “custom” colour, all the others being repurposed car finishes. I have itemised the process in …
I’m often asked to demo spraying a sunburst so here it is. My starting point is a GuitarBuild body. It’s two piece swamp ash and very light at 3lb 4oz (<1.5kg). My first step was to sand the body well to eliminate any scratches then grain fill thoroughly. There is more on grain filling in …
Inspired by a guitar forum challenge to modify a guitar I decided to make my Granddaughter a Firebird based around a Harley Benton mini strat from which I’d use just the neck. I chose a left-handed guitar as the donor so that my guitar would have a reverse headstock. I carved the headstock to have …
I was asked to refinish the top of this 1981 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe which was originally sunburst but had been “goldtopped” using what looked like car spray. The colour was completely wrong and bizarrely, mini-humbuckers and P-90 pickups (which are the same size of course) would not fit in the cavities! For this job …
This Les Paul Junior has had a hard life. When it came to me for a refinish in nice thin nitrocellulose it was coated with a thick layer of yellow paint which on closer inspection revealed a history that the owner was completely unaware of. It seems that at some point in its life it …
The reason for doing this job was that I have not been able to find any other information about recreating this particular finish. I’ve been fortunate to be able to examine a number of mid/late fifties Gibson guitars to see how they were painted and here I’ve attempted to re-create that using aerosols (of course!) …
I’m putting together a Stratocaster for a friend. It’s to match a Telecaster he has so will be painted in a creamy colour. This is the look we are going to achieve: The body, as is usual, is from Guitarbuild and it’s a beauty. Made from alder, it arrived really well sanded so virtually no preparation was …
I often get asked how to spray a TV Yellow finish and have been meaning for a while to demonstrate the process, so here it is. I think it’s unlikely that TV Yellow guitars left the factory as yellow as they are today. As with “butterscotch” Telecasters the colour has become more yellow over the …
Tony is another regular customer who has produced some superb guitars painted using my nitrocellulose lacquer. I think he has excelled himself with this superb tribute to an early Fender Stratocaster using neck and body from Musikraft. Take a look at Tony’s post on TDPRI where he shows how be sprayed the sunburst and aged the …
A regular customer of mine has built this great Jazz Bass replica. The body is alder and finished in Olympic White with a beautiful NOS tortoiseshell pickguard. The bound neck has a matching headstock. You can read the full story on BassChat.