Guitar Retrospective #5: ’52 Blackguard Replica Tele Body

I remember around this time I was thinking it was time to try something a little more “standard”. Maybe I was sick of looking at complicated fabric prints all the time and the thought of doing something more well known, a classic really, was appealing. I also wanted to see if I could do it, a more fundamental paint and finish. Since I had been primarily focusing on honing my material finish skills, I had also been learning some universal finishing techniques that I wanted to put to the test, as well as add a new skill to my repertoire (<– spelled it right the first time, no red line BOOM!), grain filling.

I should also mention this began as a project that I was going to keep for myself. I wanted a classic guitar and as a lefty they’re tough to find, so I was going to make myself one that looked like this Fender ’52 replica.

This particular configuration was known as a “blackguard” because of its black lacquered pick guard, and the finish associated with it is butterscotch blonde. Butterscotch for the color, blonde because it is slightly transparent to show some of the grain of the wood.

So I headed to eBay to see what kind of guitar bodies I could find. I found a seller that made very nice quality bodies and purchased a left handed Tele body made from Ash.

Ash is a more porous wood that would require additional prep before it would take a finish. Earlier I mentioned grain filling. This is exactly what it sounds like. Take a grain filler which is a paste that you rub onto the guitar and pack it into the pores. Along with some sanding sealer coats and block sanding this will give the guitar body a completely flat impenetrable surface with which to lay your paint and clear coats upon. Without this important step, your finish would sink into the wood and look horrible, thereby embarrassing you in front of anybody that saw your guitar. Your grandmother would probably say “good job sweetie!” But under her breath say “I would have grain filled it for sure.” Here are a couple shots after grain filling.

You can see how there’s a nice sheen to it and it’s completely flat and level, ready to accept paint. Prep work is so important to the finished product. Difficult to have the patience sometimes because you’re excited to get to the painting which makes it look like you did something but I promise you that anything that isn’t perfect prior to painting or clear coating will show through and bum you out down the line. Cutting corners = bad times.

I was gonna do this one right with an all lacquer finish so of course headed over to the Guitar Reranch for the paint. They have this color perfectly dialed in. And in easy to use spray cans! After shooting it to my desired grain show through I was left with this.

After finishing with clear coats, waiting for the lacquer to cure (about 30 days), my least favorite part of refinishing wet sanding and finally polishing, I was rewarded with a very acceptable butterscotch blonde ash Telecaster style body made for a lefty.

As it turns out, this is where the project ended for me. I decided not to complete the guitar for whatever reasons, most likely financial or realizing I had too many guitars anyway. So I sold this as a replacement body for someone else’s project, all finished and ready to go! Never saw what came of it though, sadly. Always tough to see them go!
j.

Guitar Retrospective #4: “Samurai Sunset”

Ibanez RG7420 with Black Metallic finish

In December of 2006 I began work on my fourth guitar. I had found another deal on eBay for an Ibanez RG7420, a right handed 7 string electric guitar, born from the factory with a metallic black finish. It was dinged up a bit but that’s never a big deal on a refinish anyway.

Fabric panel I started with.

I already had the next piece of fabric picked out that I wanted to try, a Kona Bay asian kimono print, that I picked up at the local fabric store. They do some of my fabric asian fabrics. It had great color, a cool landscape and the cherry blossoms were beautiful. I figured there was no way this could look bad on a guitar.

I had developed some better methods by this point, and I was just getting better with practice for this one, so it turned out really well. I was also fine tuning the materials that worked better for me, and discovering some new products that worked wonders. I did the fabric on the front and back this time. Since I only had this one panel I had to get it right the first time and make efficient use of my material. (Side note: what makes these guitars especially unique is the fact that fabric prints run for a limited time. Only a certain amount is made. So it can be very difficult to track down a particular print after you’ve boughten it and it runs out at your local store. I had maybe boughten this fabric a year or two prior to actually getting around to using it, so this was all I had.) Luckily the print was laid out in such a way that it was just perfect for the guitar shape. The bottom half of the fabric went to the front, and the top section went to the back, and was just the look I was going for. Made my job really easy. I was also very pleased to no have to worry about a pick guard for this one since the body was rear-routed, a feature I really enjoy when doing these fabric finishes. You get more space for the print without being broken up by the guitar hardware. The guitar came with a black headstock so I didn’t mess with that, just left it as-is. And since it worked so well with the colors of the fabric, I painted the sides of the guitar black and did a black burst. With black hardware and covers on the back as well, it just couldn’t get any better than framing this art in black. And it made the colors on the print just POP.

Black sides and black hardware.

There’s not too much else to say about this one, other than that I’m extremely proud of it and very pleased with how well it turned out. I used this one to get some photos taken and feature it on my business cards and website. And this is one of the few I still have. Without further ado, here are more pictures!

j.

"Samurai Sunset" Ibanez RG7420. Custom fabric finish by Jai Guitars.

Guitar Retrospective #3: “Red Fog”

Not long after finishing the “Black Floral” guitar I set my sites on the next one. I needed a new guitar. So sometime between late 2005 and early 2006 I found myself on eBay and snagged an Ibanez RG250DX. I think it was just white when I got it, I really can’t recall anymore to be honest. Not that it mattered, it was getting stripped immediately. It was right handed, so this was not for me, this was considered “practice” and an “experiment” from the get go. I had some new ideas I wanted to try out on this one.

"Red Fog" - fabric finish featuring matching pick guard.

It started with the print, a black and white oriental print, with a couple red lettered accents. It was earthy, with bamboo, a big tree, some shrubbery and mountains in the background. I had found it at the local fabric store. I positioned it, and laid it down, front and back of the guitar this time. I had boughten enough fabric to do some extras. Since this guitar had a pick guard, I didn’t wanna kill the flow of the fabric across the whole body by using just the solid white pick guard that came with it, so I decided to refinish the pick guard to match the guitar.

Custom fabric finished pick guard for "Red Fog"

I made a template of the pick guard and lined it up over the fabric, eye-balling with the greatest of scrutiny to make it as precise of a match as possible. When it came time to glue down the fabric, it was another long round of eye-balling, a heavy sigh, and a “well, here we go.” When I got to the point where I could test out the placement I was very pleased to find that the alignment was pretty much dead on. The effect of not having to look at, or maybe just not notice as much what I believe to be the most unattractive part of a guitar, the pick guard, I found very satisfying.

"Red Fog" Matching headstock

The other new element to this guitar, albeit not nearly as exciting as matching the pattern of the body to the pick guard, was to create a matching headstock. This was simple, just apply the same process of the body to the headstock, only smaller. One thing I was learning to do with this guitar that I consider crucial to my artistic credit was to choose the placement of the pattern carefully. Since I wasn’t drawing these images, I had to do something to call myself “creative”. But you can really change the overall look by the placement of the print and I take pride in my arrangements.

I had said in the beginning that fabric was glued to the front and back. Well, in the process of painting a burst I had gotten a bit too much overspray, but I liked it! That’s when the guitar got its name. There was a red haze over the landscape print that resembled a bloody fog. I liked it so much I shot a little more red, and then a little more, and sure enough, lost the affect and it was almost completely opaque.

"Red Fog" Solid red back and sides.

That’s what happens when you get too close to something, you don’t notice the subtle changes until all of a sudden you’re staring at something completely different. So I didn’t care to sand it off and go backwards, I was ok with the look of a solid color back. After all, it gave me an excuse to do another one.

I consider this guitar my first big success not only because of the features I implemented for the first time but because I found a resource that gave me essential knowledge in properly finishing an instrument to achieve that smooth, glass-like finish. The Guitar Reranch forum is a wonderful online resource with extremely knowledgeable and helpful individuals who are genuinely super nice people. I owe most of my guitar refinishing and general guitar knowledge to those folks over there and try to pay a little forward by remaining a regular contributing member and try to help others with their projects, usually fabric or material finishes.

Regrettably I ended up putting this one back on eBay, catch and release in the guitar world. Somebody in the UK purchased it so I packed it up and shipped it off overseas, haven’t seen it since. I knew I couldn’t keep em all but still don’t like letting them go. Just part of creating. The time you spend with your creations is always quality time, and when you put your energy into something that’s YOU, and it’s hard letting go of ourselves sometimes. But it’s an essential part of life, sharing yourself with the world.

j.

Guitar Retrospective #2: “Black Floral”

My 2nd guitar project began, unusually, with a quilt! My mother is an amazing quilter, and her first quilt for me was also her first queen-sized quilt, so this was like, special. Though I trusted my Mom completely, I wanted to have a small say in how the quilt might look, at least color or print-wise. So after a mother-son shopping trip to the fabric store, we came up with a cool color scheme, based around a floral print with a black background. It had some greens, white, khaki, and pink accents in the flowers! Needless to say the quilt turned out AMAZING, I completely loved it, and for years hung it on the wall of my bedroom so it was always on display, it was perfect for me.

Ibanez RG470L

A year or two later, sometime in the fall/winter of 2004, I had an idea. I wanted to take another shot at refinishing a guitar, only this time, I wanted to do something completely unique. In my mind, it had never been done before. I had never seen it before at least. I soon came to find out that it had in fact been done before, and even found a rough tutorial of the basic steps on how to do what is known as a material finish. I asked my mom if she had any of that fabric left over from my quilt, which she did, obviously wondering what I was going to do with it. I told her I was going to put it on a guitar. “Whaaaat??? How are you going to do that??” I simply said, “glue” and headed home with my fabric. Working from that tutorial, I set to work on my second custom guitar finish. This time I decided to refinish a guitar I already had instead of doing another kit. I started with an Ibanez Rg470, left handed, in boooooringblack.

As with any new thing you try, you don’t really know if what you’re doing is correct. I was going through a fairly involved process with the attitude of “just do it and see how it turns out, don’t worry too much about it, do what makes the most sense right now, and you’ll learn a lot and improve on the next one.” I had an outline of the basic process to follow, but I ended up having a lot of questions regarding what kind of materials and tools to buy. (As I later came to find out, I hadn’t even scratched the surface yet in regards to proper finishing techniques.) I was almost clueless. But, I finished it with what little I knew. I think it took me probably 4-6 weeks or so, and what I ended up with was something definitely cooler than what I started with.

It had its flaws to be sure, but that was to be expected, and I was very pleased with it. Everyone I showed it to couldn’t believe it was fabric underneath, it looked like it had been painted. (Kinda the idea.) For awhile many thought I had a hidden talent of being some genius painter, and the reason I hadn’t produced any paintings of any kind up to this point was because I had simply not found my canvas of choice yet. Sadly that’s not the case.

The experience gained from attempting something like this has proven to be invaluable, as it lead me to new resources and knowledge that would shape the rest of my projects to come. And the difference in quality between this guitar and the next, was staggering.

I’ve contemplated re-doing this guitar over the years, as I still have some of the original fabric left, but I kinda like what it represents. It reminds me that you have to start somewhere, and there’s no shame in that. That nothing great ever starts out perfect (except for babies ). It reminds me of the mistakes I made, the reason I use a certain product over another, and that the reason for doing something isn’t necessarily to create the most perfect thing. I did this to flex a creative muscle that was just beginning to grow. I did it because I had an idea come to me out of nowhere, and because it’s important to pursue your ideas and practice making them a reality. I did it to create a bond, between something my mother created and something completely different that I created using the same cloth, literally, which of course created a bond between mother and son. We now have a reason to continue fabric shopping together.

And for all those reasons, despite the poor paint job, despite the bumpy, orange-peeled finish, despite the fact that it’s yellowing because I used the wrong product  – this guitar is exactly perfect.

Guitar with matching quilt.

j.

A Look Back: New Obsession – 1st guitar refinish

It’s always interesting to think back to the beginning of something and what was surrounding your life that might provide a glimpse into why you started doing this thing. At the time you may be doing it just for the sake of doing it, nearly a decade later with more of the story in place you may be able to find some clues as to the why.

So here’s what I remember. I was in college, sometime in the spring of 2003. I had been playing guitar for only a few years at this point, and I think had owned just a couple different electric guitars. I was fully into my new obsession, this guitar world, and had seen online that you could get these kits to build your own guitar. This was awesome I thought, and ordered one. It was the Saga brand, inexpensive, great for first timers. I decided on the “Tele” style TC-10 model. I think because I had just gotten a Mexican Fender strat and was fixing on the next thing, early stages of G.A.S. (gear acquisition syndrome) I’m sure.

So I get the kit, tear right into it as anyone that has no clue what they’re doing would do, and get to work on making my first guitar. The obvious question? What color am I gonna paint it!? I had an amazing idea I thought, at the time thinking I was being so unique. I was going to do a chameleon color shift paint job on a guitar. You know, the kind you’d see on cars! So I found a spray kit by Dupli-Color called Mirage paint. I chose the green/purple shift. It came in a set of 3 different cans with an easy 3-step process.

Being the type that liked following the instructions I was all set with my guitar kit and spray paint kit. I remember the headstock came as a blank paddle so you could create your own custom design,also because the Fender headstock designs are trademarked as I quickly came to find out. I also remember I really liked my design I came up with and cut by hand. It was a slender design, like the traditional tele design, but sharper, curved with points, instead of rounded off. I used very basic tools doing this whole thing, sprayed it in the backyard of the house I was living in at the time, just trying to follow the instructions and not mess things up too bad. Had I messed something up I’m sure I wouldn’t have known.

The whole process probably took me 2-3 weeks. It came out, just ok, I remember thinking. It didn’t look all glassy and shiny like I thought it would, like other guitars I’d seen. The finish even had some texture to it I think. Notice I keep saying “I think” and “I remember”, because I managed to lose all the pictures I took of it!!! So this is probably highly disappointing to not be able to see it. I know it was for me to not be able to find any pictures. So we’re in the same boat. Where is this guitar now, you ask? I have no idea. I ended up selling it almost right away on eBay, and maybe got back the cost of the kit for it. I’m pretty sure I signed “Jai” on the headstock in sharpie. I remember the person that bought it was fairly happy with it, thought it was pretty cool, so that made me feel alright about the whole process. Come to think of it I was quite lucky that somebody even bought it. I’m a lefty, this was a right handed kit, I was planning on selling it from the get go lol. I wasn’t super eager to get another kit and try again right away, but I did feel like it was something that I would probably return to, and I already had a few ideas I wanted to try for the next one. I certainly didn’t realizeat the time how common that phrase would become in just a few short years.

Who or What is a Jai???

…Jai is a character, created to express the thoughts, creativity, beauty, and musical spirituality of a very normal person…

That’s just some line I came up with years ago to describe a newly developed nickname which defined a new side of me that was developing at the time, in my early 20′s. Being pretty shy and unsure about what I was creating, I thought it would be easier to have another name to hide behind. I picked Jai because of a couple reasons. For one, I saw it on t.v. while watching the news, there was a panda bear at the zoo named Kwon Jai, which they said meant, “Sweetheart”. I liked the way it looked and sounded, and thought it was appropriate for the peaceful type of music I had just begun to create on my guitar, which I was still trying to figure out. A couple years later, after fiddling with refinishing my guitars and thinking that was something else I would continue to experiment with, along with the music thing, I felt further justified in using the name for my creative endeavors by making an acronym out of it. My name is Joseph Anthony Wilbur, and since I was now using my imagination and being creative in completely new ways for me, I decided that Joseph Anthony’s Imagination was appropriate.

But really, I’m just a guy, in his early 30′s, who likes to create things. I play guitar, make music, refinish guitars, and enjoy dabbling in graphic design, web design, and making videos. This will be an outlet to share the things I create, maybe some things I like, and perhaps even a thought or two. And in the end maybe it’s just a place to work out my business in lieu of a therapist.

So thank you for being here and sharing in this part of my life, my imagination!  :-)

j.