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Need Help with Paint/ Design


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I am rebuilding and repainting a Johnson Strat that I have had since is was 7 (know 19). I am going to repaint it but I need some help figuring out what a ertain design is called or how to do it.

The design I am looking for almost looks like really little tiger stripes but faded, no solid. I mostly see it on les paul models, or guitars that dont have a scratch guard that covers most of the body. At Guitar Center's website, their les paul page has a picture of a guitar with this print, but I can not find what the print is called.

Here is a link to the Website:

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Gibson-Les-Paul-g26549t0.gc?esid=Les%20Paul

I have had this guitar for a very long time, but I did not treat it right at the beginning of it's life with me. It has a lot of scratches and dents in it that I will fill, but i was wondering if I would be able to see the filler through transparent paint. As far as I know, the design I want to put on my guitar should be with transparent paint that One wpuld be able to see the wood grain through.

Please Help !

Thankyou

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The pattern you're talking about is actually wood. It's the natural figuring of certain timber that gives it the ripple effect, which is further accentuated by the use of dyes prior to sealing with a clear finish. It's usually not a print that's applied to the body and then sealed with clear.

On some of the Chinese Gibson Les Paul knockoffs the rippled top is a print that is applied to the body to fool the owner into thinking they have the genuine article.

I have no idea if there is a stock image on the net that you can use to apply to your guitar body, but possible search terms could be "fiddleback maple" or "flame maple".

The other (more involved) alternative is to buy some flame maple veneer and apply it to your guitar. You can then treat it the same way as the real timber on a Les Paul by dying, sanding and finishing yourself.

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Thank you so much. At least I know what it is know. Unfortunatly I can't buy the veneer, but I was wondering if there was any way I could paint the guitar one color, mask some of the guitar with electrical tape cut into patterns like the flame maple, then paint the guitar 1 shade darker of the same color. I dont know if it would work but I feel like it could look cool even if it doesnt look like the flame.

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Unfortunately the "flame" maple pattern is very distinct and if you try to fake that it will be very obvious. For flame maple there is no alternative than...flame maple. OK, or a photo print of real flame maple.

Curious: Why do you say you cannot buy flame maple veneer? It is available from several suppliers that ship world wide. E-bay has several items up for sale, reasonable priced. OK, shipping can be pricy, but if you really want to restore this guitar and want that look... you need to use real maple, of a photo print of some type. And I don't know if a custom made photo print will be cheeper. And even so, I would prefer real wood, just because a photo print will never have the 3D quality a real piece of wood has.

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The closest you'll get to a flame maple-esque paint job would be to make up some kind of stencil out of cardboard with slits cut in it and airbrush or spray the paint through the stencil while holding it an inch or so above the surface of the body. The gap between the stencil and the guitar will allow the paint to go on with a feathered edge. Masking "stripes" on the body with tape and painting the whole lot will give you hard edges to the flame pattern and look much less convincing.

Even so, it still won't look the same as the real deal. Maybe the real trick is not to try and purposely make it look like simulated flame maple, but to treat it as simply painting camoflage stripes on the body? If the guitar isn't worth much except for sentimental value, you're not sure of your abilities with veneering, or don't have access to the equipment to apply veneer, maybe a camo paint job with spray cans/stencils is the way to go?

I had a guitar instructor many years back who put black tiger stripes on his yellow Jackson Dinky. From a distance it looked quite neat, but up close it was quite obvious that he'd simply cut up some black electrical tape into strips of various widths and wrapped the body with them.

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OK, fair enough. If you use masking tape or similar and paint a pattern over that the result will look pretty muck like this:

IMG_0614.jpgThis is the best you can expect with that method, not very subtle, not very close to the look in the picture you linked to. Still a nice design if you like that. If you have access to an airbrush you can get a result that is much closer to the maple look.

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