Painting a guitar?

[samuraiBSD]

rattle cans of black paint and lacquer will work just fine

[EdgarC]

Just buy yourself a decent black guitar and forget about painting. You're no pro so it'll be disappointing and you don't need
1) The aggravation
2) To waste good practice time

Tale it from me, unless you're retired or got A LOT of time on your hands, it's not worth it. Spend that time playing, practicing, or with a pretty lady man!

[krish]

I knew nothing about painting guitars, or painting anything in fact when I did mine.

I just sanded off what was there until I got to bare wood (it was actually a black guitar when I got it, ironically), painted on a bog standard wood primer, then spray cans/paint brushes ahoy. I finally sprayed the whole thing with clear paint, and then polyurethane varnish.

It didn't turn out technically perfect (in fact there's loads of marks and blemishes everywhere coz I got lazy), but to me it's damn special. If I knew a bit more about what I was doing as opposed to just guessing, it might have looked a bit smoother.

[alley trash]

great, thanks!!! the question u did not understand is... what kind of finish looks good on candy apple black? poly? laquer? or something else? btw....u've been alot of help Thank u very much alley trash

I just saw this w/ fresh eyes, you're right... I totally missed the point on that question. (too many fumes, sorry!)

Either poly or lacquer can yeild some nice results. I prefer lacquers, but am also set up to run anything, depending on time lines, what the person wants, etc etc.

Since your guitar is poly now & it's your first try at it, I'd say stick with the poly. But if you do your sanding & prep work, there's no reason why you couldn't use either one. Just make sure that if you do decide on lacquer, you get a good sealer/base on there after you've gotten down to the metalic silver. If you don't use something that's designed to go over anything AND provide a good base for the lacquer, you will run into troubles later.

A vinyl lacquer sanding sealer will work fine, if you have gotten the poly top coats off & the silver metalic base is all sanded out & ready to take a decent coat of sealer.

The poly will cure faster for you than lacquers will. (drying time is different than curing time)

You're going to have to research both methods & decide what you think will work out best for you.

Do you have a place to spray & not worry about fumes? If not, then you might want to consider some water based products, rather than solvents.

Do you have spray equipment? If not, then research the rattle can products available. You could also get into a shellac / french polish finish. You can be doing that with brushes, but it takes a lot of elbow grease to get them nice looking in the end.