need recommendation on guitar refinishers...

[guitarcats]

I am thinking of refinishing my SG classic in TV yellow and want to hit up the peeps on here, who has had a guitar or bass refinished, by whom and how was the job? Thanks in advance!

[WRGKMC]

I do refinishing and builds all the time. A refinished guitar drops its value by half in most cases. My best suggestion is leave it alone. Its a ball buster job and you're never going to get it close without major experience doing finishing work. If you insist, get a pro to do it. If its the fact you got dings or scratches. You can buy laquer sticks at Stuart McDonald and burn them in to patch the finish. If its just because you want a different color, get over it. Sell the instrument, and buy one with the color you want.

[mutant_guitar]

you may be able to get a good job done for cheap at a local auto body shop. however, they certainly won't be using nitro, or any kind of lacquer.

[Angry Tele]

tons of people can do it. It may help to know where you are located. I know a few shops in Chicago for instance...Look to pay about $300 for nitro and 2-3 weeks.

[guitarcats]

i live in the Minneapolis area and i am not worried about resale....i was looking at the VOS SG and thought that the yellow looked really good...wish Gibson would offer the classic with a few more color options

[Elias Graves]

Real TV yellow is kind of a funky finish to do. You'd have to sand that thing down to bare wood to do it.

On a faded or something, I wouldn't blink, but a Classic, probably not. Just me though.

 

You probably won't find anyone outside the guitar world who knows how to do tv yellow correctly. Beautiful color though.

 

EG

[mrbrown49]

 

Real TV yellow is kind of a funky finish to do. You'd have to sand that thing down to bare wood to do it. On a faded or something, I wouldn't blink, but a Classic, probably not. Just me though. You probably won't find anyone outside the guitar world who knows how to do tv yellow correctly. Beautiful color though. EG

 

 

What's so different about the TV yellow process?

[Elias Graves]

 

What's so different about the TV yellow process?

 

 

Reranch describes it better than I can.

 

"Unless you are a purist (and can also wait 30 years for the opaque yellow paint to age and perhaps reveal the grain) here is an alternative to achieve a correct appearing TV Yellow finish in a repeatable manner. I do not know if this is the method that Gibson uses to finish the new TV Yellows but I think I may be on the correct trail.

First, the wood must be stripped and sanded. The grain must be completely open and the wood without any trace of finish. Clean wood with open grain is the key. Sand with #220 and finish with #320 dry. Be sure you do not have any scratches in the wood as they will show once the grain is enhanced. Once you have clean and open grained wood blow out any sawdust in the grain with compressed air. Use 80psi to 120psi. I use The Guitar ReRanch TV Yellow in the aerosol spray cans but if you want to mix your own color (be sure to use an acrylic lacquer or better yet, nitrocellulose lacquer) this method will still work for you.

 

Tape the neck and peghead for protection from the spray and spray a light misting coat of opaque yellow color onto the body and neck. After drying shoot another coat and then repeat. Be sure that the coats are misting coats and not wet coats. Just one too wet of a coat will bridge the grain and destroy the effect. The guitar when color coated should appear as opaque yellow in the field with open uncolored grain pits. After approximately four coats let the instrument dry over night.

 

You will notice that the Guitar ReRanch TV Yellow appears very yellow without much of the lime color tint seen on the original TV Yellows. Much of the lime color will come from the mahogany itself and will appear as the color coat dries. There doesn't seem to be much one can do to stop the lime color from appearing. It seems to bleed through the yellow and if you think you have applied too much yellow, let the lacquer dry for a day or two. This bleed through effect (coupled with the deep grain of mahogany) limits the achieving of a true TV Yellow to only mahogany.

 

Your job now is to fill the grain with a tinted filler and then remove the excess filler. You must do this of course without disturbing the yellow lacquer coat. How? To accomplish the task fill the grain with a mahogany tinted filler with a reducing agent that is incompatible with the reducing agent of lacquer. That is; use a water based (I use "Famo Wood" brand Cherry/Dark Mahogany water based filler) or an oil based filler. Going across the grain wipe the filler into the grain. When slightly dry wipe the filler from the field of the wood with the reducer of the filler. For water based fillers use water. For oil based fillers use mineral spirits. You may need to repeat the process a number of time (two or three) to fill the grain to the level of the field of the wood.

 

When dry spray a light coat of the TV yellow color coat to "soften" the color of the grain filler and blend it into the field. The clear coating and finishing is then applied as described in ReRanch 101."

 

It's just pretty particular about process. There are a lot of things that can go wrong.

 

EG

[mrbrown49]

^ thanks for that EG. Interesting stuff.

 

It's gonna be a chore bringing any prefinished guitar down to pure wood without a trace of finish or filler.

[Elias Graves]

 

^ thanks for that EG. Interesting stuff. It's gonna be a chore bringing any prefinished guitar down to pure wood without a trace of finish or filler.

 

 

Not too bad, but anything left behind could screw things up.

 

EG

[mrbrown49]

 

Not too bad, but anything left behind could screw things up. EG

 

 

Yeah that's what I'm saying. i don't know too much about finishing but it seems like you'd need to sand back an open grade wood like mahogany pretty far to get rid of all the stuff in the nooks and crannies. On a guitar with contours like the SG you'd have to be extra careful not to screw up the edges. I'm just speculating though. i've never done anything like that before.

[Elias Graves]

 

Yeah that's what I'm saying. i don't know too much about finishing but it seems like you'd need to sand back an open grade wood like mahogany pretty far to get rid of all the stuff in the nooks and crannies. On a guitar with contours like the SG you'd have to be extra careful not to screw up the edges. I'm just speculating though. i've never done anything like that before.

 

 

And on mahogany, it's kinda soft. Real easy to get carried away with the sandpaper. Everybody makes fun of me for stripping by hand, but you can tear mahogany up with a power sander real fast.

 

Stripping both my sg and Guitar Heel's PRS, it is possible, but time consuming.

 

EG

[WRGKMC]

Most SG's are mahagony which is a dark wood. Most yellows are done on lighter maple woods if they're a natureal yellow. If you're going with a painted then you use a white or light pimer on raw wood and take it from there.

 

Gibson uses laquer so removing it is best with normal paint remover and steel wool. it should come off very easily and littel or no wood damage.

 

Getting a factory look does require a spray gun and using laquer, thinners, and dryers to get it right. Then you need experience. Wishful thinking wont do it. You got to learn how to thin the laquer thinner and thinner till you're spraying mostly laquer thinner for that last coat. Laquer doent apply in layers like poly, oils etc. Each new coat melts into the previous coat so you wind up with one single shell.

 

If you want to try the rattel can thing, you can get fair results. You just want to apply the stuff in extremely light layers of a single pass at least 12" away from the body. Expect to apply 20~30 layers. I do suggest you use laquer only. You can fix screwups as you go and you can hand rub the finish to get a reasonable gloss happening.

 

If you do the duco and poly, well the stuff is thick and rarely looks good when you're done so you get what you get. A crummy looking finish. Then to fix the screwups that always happens on the first attempts, you got to melt the poly off with a heat gun, sand your ass off and then you're down to removing wood in the process. Not good.

 

Before you start. Read, Read, Read. You can try the Reranch site which has alot of good info. Then I'd also look into antique refinishing. Theres alot of hands on sites that will fill you in on the details. There sites that tell you what worked for Fender and what they tried and failed using wrong combinations Like this one http://home.provide.net/~cfh/fenderc.html

 

Heres one on Gibsons http://home.provide.net/~cfh/gibsonc.html