Custom LTD Viper project

[63dot]

The first guitar I painted was an old Telecaster I found at Guitar Center that somebody had literally painted poorly with a black spray enamel. This guitar was sanded down and then fitted with an off white acrylic finish.

A few years ago, I got an ESP LTD Viper and stripped the nice cherry finish (but very, very thick polyester finish) on it and had it painted. Having less paint overall on it, the guitar had a snappier sound which I liked and it brought out the in between tone of two humbuckers.

Yet the one thing I didn't like was that this guitar, in order to make it balance better than a Gibson SG, had a very thick and heavy body.

Last week, I shaved down the back considerably, losing the artwork on that side, and made it thinner akin to a Gibson SG making the guitar lighter, and put contours on it similar to an Ibanez Joe Satriani signature model. After the sanding down of the body to the desired shape, I put yellow and red layers of stain to put a little color to the washed out white mahogany. After that, I added a few thin coats of polyurethane to seal the finish. When that is done, I will have new artwork painted on the back and seal that with a few layers of matte clear.

[63dot]

Here is a picture of the newly shaved down body after the coat of yellow tint sealer onto the white mahogany. At this stage, it looked a little like a butterscotch rendition but onto an SG type guitar. The later picture with the shiny appearance is that body after a few clear coats of polyurethane after some red tint was added and now it is a cross between the butterscotch and an orange from a sunburst finish. When this cures, I am going to rough it up and have this back side painted with artwork and post it here. Finally, I will swap out one or both of the EMG-HZ humbuckers and put in a humbucker sized single coil like a Seymour Duncan Phat Cat or a Fralin P-92 to brighten the sound even more.

[dannew02]

Very cool! Lets see more of the artwork. The front looks really neat.

[63dot]

Thanks a million!

Here is what she did tonight so far.

[68 Shovelhead]

Kinda whacky, but I dig it. Those LTD Vipers are pretty nice guitars IMO. I bought a bolt neck version I found in a pawnshop, it played surprising well. My neice started playing and I gave it to her.

[63dot]

Thanks for the support. What do you all think is the best way to paint the plastic EMG pickup covers on my guitar? I like these pictures of the ESP Custom Shop guitar and how they painted the plastic EMG pickups. And the ESP Max Cavalera Viper has a really nice painted pickup, too.

Also, here's a picture of what my EMG HZ H1s look like.

[dannew02]

It only depends on what the pups are made of. Primer and clearcoat that's compatible with whatever you're painting with will help adhesion. I don't suppose you have a spare pup or cover to practice on?

[63dot]

Originally Posted by dannew02

It only depends on what the pups are made of. Primer and clearcoat that's compatible with whatever you're painting with will help adhesion. I don't suppose you have a spare pup or cover to practice on?

Actually that's a good idea. If it's the body of the guitar, it's easy to sand off but an EMG plastic pickup cover, now that could be tricky.

I don't usually see too many guitars with painted pups, but possibly because it's not all that easy to make look good. The Custom Shop ESP guitar is done very well but they have a lot of practice and are arguably more ambitious than any custom shop in the guitar world (anyway Google ESP custom shop). :)

For the EMG pup, with this particular set being plastic with six pole pieces, I can remove pole pieces and paint pup and mounting ring. After that I can put pole pieces back in, at height I set for my favorite tone, and mount it back into the guitar with snap on connectors so there's no soldering involved.

The painted example I found on the internet are EMG plastic covered 707s (probably black) and appear to have the same roughed up plastic surface as my black EMG HZs H1s. If I go with the common uncovered DiMarzios or Duncans, I can always do the Joe Satriani treatment to those with pen paint and acrylic sealer.

[63dot]

Here's where the guitar is at now.

The artist finished painting the back and sides and I have to put a few coats of matte sealer to bring sheen down some, then some polyurethane coats, and finish off with matte sealer a few times.

Hopefully, I can keep the depth of the finish intact as it is on front of guitar and back of neck which were many coats, too.

The picture of guitar being held up (bottom) is where it was just over a week ago.

It will take a couple of weeks, or more, to get all coats of sealer, polyurethane finish, and sealer to bring entire guitar's level of glossiness to the same matte finish as the front.

When it's done, I will put all the parts back on and put up some other photos.

Lastly, if I decide to change the pups, and/or paint them, I will post those pics, too. Usually, I work with this type of art on custom skateboards as a business for signs and sometimes for riding for pro skaters, and it's fun to do guitars for a change. Skateboards are a lot easier because a blank is basically two flat surfaces good for brush or spray work. Guitars have all those contours and then with fixed bridge (especially), there's a lot of masking to do.

[63dot]

The artwork's finishing touches have been applied and several matte coats of sealer have been put on to protect paint.

At this point is just three coats into the shellac process and I plan on 15 or so hand rubbed coats or until the background wood finish gets pretty even with raised areas of acrylic paint work and where the top clear coats achieve some depth.

After that, I will decide just how much matte to put on to reduce too much sheen.

[63dot]

The artwork's finishing touches have been applied and several matte coats of sealer have been put on to protect paint.

At this point is just three coats into the shellac process and I plan on 15 or so hand rubbed coats or until the background wood finish gets pretty even with raised areas of acrylic paint work and where the top clear coats achieve some depth. I decided against brushing polyurethane which would have been faster. (actually way faster)

After that, I will decide just how much matte to put on to reduce too much sheen. The picture doesn't show the gloss which is good but in person the shellac appears to be getting too shiny. If it's just a solid color or wood, then I wouldn't mind a high sheen, but such a sheen seems to interrupt the artwork.

What I eventually want is the same hippie vibe as this picture below of perhaps the most famous painted Fender guitar from George Harrison.

[63dot]

This very slow shellac process is starting to show some results. I have about 14 hand rubbed coats on and finally there is some consistency with the back compared to the sides where one part is not far glossier than the other.

It will take another week of similar level of shellac to get to where I can bring some steel wool to it to reduce glossiness yet keep depth shellac has brought.

Photo of blank back is some time ago when it was sealed from bare wood, stained, and coated with a thin layer of poly.

I thought by now I would be putting shellac on existing art in front of guitar, but that will be for some later time. Once the whole guitar is done with shellac, steel wool, and final poly, then I will attack electronics if I decide to go there then.

I don't know how this guitar will hold over time as opposed to if I simply had the artwork painted on with acrylic and then left alone as is the case in most hand painted guitars I have seen. I will never forget the day I went to Hard Rock Cafe and sat under an exact replica of Eric Clapton's painted Gibson SG (the one he used in Cream). It was really so representative of what I remember from the hippies and was like the art on a painted VW bus, only on a guitar.

[63dot]

I took apart the EMG pickups (pole pieces out, mounting rings off) and they are ready to paint over with artwork.

The back plate, kind of a slick plastic, has been gone over with paints and shellac and is ready to be painted on, too. Hopefully, the artwork/paint will stick to the back plate. I maybe should have lightly sanded that plate to make things stick to it better.

While the front of the guitar was painted in 2005 with artwork and the back this year, along with parts, I want the overall appearance of that as a guitar that was done at the same time.

[dannew02]

Krylon Fusion primer (after a good scuffing) on the slick plastics will help with painting them. I painted a guardplate with Fusion paint and it's adhering just fine other than where picks scrape the finish.

[63dot]

Originally Posted by dannew02

Krylon Fusion primer (after a good scuffing) on the slick plastics will help with painting them. I painted a guardplate with Fusion paint and it's adhering just fine other than where picks scrape the finish.

Thanks for the tip.

That slick plastic like the back plate is hard to deal with. I should have scuffed up that back plate some though. It took three coats of acrylic, different colors layered on each other with a coat of shellac in between and on top to build up the look to hide the black plastic of the back plate.

The plate is now ready to paint with artwork and here are the pickups minus the pole pieces and mounting rings. It will be fun to see this whole project comes together.

I know George Harrison seemed to have painted directly on his Beatles era strat pickguard and it has held up well over the years. Jimi Hendrix used a shellac nail polish on his Flying V and that worked very well of course. Nail polish as a medium is probably very unforgiving as it's hard to mix colors and one has to get by with just what is in the bottle itself. I thought maybe the plastic parts on this guitar project should be painted with nail polish for long lasting hold, but it may not look consistent with the already finished acrylic finish on the guitar.

Of course if the artist wants the ultimate freedom with color then oil would be the best choice, but acrylic is fast enough having a 48 hour curing period where as oil takes too long to cure for this project. That being said, a nitro finish if this were a solid color, sunburst, or transparent wood color would also take a long time to cure/dry.

[63dot]

So here's where I have decided to stop for now.

Internet picture of stock black Viper guitar shows its original thickness (see attachment).

After shaving down the body with varying degrees of sandpaper, I put some butterscotch sealer coats on the wood (613). After that came amber varnish and shellac in interlaced coats (615). This was the first week of work.

Finally, the artwork and shellac and varnish over that in a two week time period (689). Side view (622) shows new thickness of guitar body. I have decided to hold off on painting plastic parts and pickup for a later date.

[63dot]

For front of the guitar, I didn't do much this time but put a few more coats of shellac and varnish on front (to match glossiness level with back of guitar) and added background acrylic bronze color on pickups without doing any fancy artwork on the pickups themselves.

First picture is of guitar's front view before the project with matte varnish and next picture is where it's at right now with its semi-gloss appearance. With the wood that was taken out of the back on the now thinner guitar makes it a few ounces lighter. It's always fun to have an endless project guitar for painting and possible mods.

[63dot]

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/acces...RWXGB&ZYXSEM=0

Anyway, I have been thinking of this pickup in the neck, and maybe also in the lead position. The EMG-HZ pickup wiring on the LTD/ESP Viper is mostly plug and play so it's easy to put in new pups and go back and forth.

For a single coil sound, or a thinner sound, I thought about the Gibson P94s or similar type pickup. The EGM HZ H1 ceramic magnet pickups in the guitar right now are very bassy and midrange and like a slightly less powerful version of the famous EMG 81. It's a good rock and roll power pickup but I was thinking of something that may be good for surf, rockabilly, and blues.

What do you guys think about the P94 or P90 style pickups in SGs and SG copies? If it sounds too much like the higher gain humbucker in there already, then I will hold off.

[63dot]

Anyway, it's more than two months later and instead of getting new pickups to get a single coil tone, I wired in a push-pull pot into my master volume knob to also get neck humbucker split, both humbuckers split, and bridge humbucker split. I got tired of the painted pickup look so I returned them back to the flat black plastic look.

The original EMG HZ-1s are pretty hot in humbucker mode so when they were split, they still had enough volume to work with. The middle position with both humbuckers split has a very #2 or #4 strat position sound. Since the neck has 24 frets, then the two pickups are closer together so when they are split, they get that straty sound which is excellent.

[63dot]

Here's a small mod of Bigsby B50 with chrome locking Grover tuning pegs. I also added chrome straplocks and beige pickup rings, nut, and switch. The black chrome knurled knobs I had have given over to simple gold plastic speed knobs.

This thing has a bit of a retro look now but still has that heavy metal tone from the two EMG humbuckers. Maybe I will toss in a couple of chrome covered Duncan '59s or TV Jones humbucker cavity sized filtertrons to make it sound retro, too.