GEdwardJones

One of the guitarists in Stone Sour (not Jim Root, but the other guy) did the same to an RG421. To my eyes it's a cool effect, but I don't know if I want to burn up a perfectly good guitar.

Like the color scheme. don't like the inlay.

They do. Michale Anthony and Billy Sheehan have signature models. Yamaha also has the brilliant "silent guitar" and electro acoustic which is so quiet unplugged as to be, well, "silent."

I used a Husky gravity feed gun that I bought from Home Depot for $70. Is it a pro grade gun? Not really, but I'm not a pro painter. Can you get a decent finish out of it? Sure. For me, it's a nice gun to learn with.

Acid Pro is, you can get the lower cost/featured Acid for around $30.

Magix Music Studio is very good and costs $80. Jehle uses Acid, which I like as a loop generator, it'll run you about $30 If you're still using Win95 or 98, ProTools Free is an option. Cakewalk aso has "Guitar Studio" for like $50 You can get really good results from any of these packges.

No I'm on a diet

Kevan, Boy you need a porkchop. Seriously, what's it like to have the metabolism of a weasel on crystal meth?

That kinda sums it up. In Germany you will be sued like a mofo if you try to sell "asprin" which is a registered trademark of the Bayer corporation. Bayer lost their copyright here by not defending it. The Les Paul shape is hardly unique to Gibson (unlike, say, half of BC Rich's shapes). The fact that they were granted a copyright on it at all is mindboggling and depressing. Interesting memory. Dean Zelinsky once said that he could sue Washburn for their "Dime" guitars because they were using his trademarked headstock shape, but he didn't because it would be a waste of time and money he'd rather spend the time making better guitars (paraphrased from sleep induced hazy memory).

I don't know if I see this standing on appeal. If it does it's bad precedent. Nobody who plays guitar would be considerably confused by a PRS SC to think it was a Gibson Les Paul. Outside of the outline they are significantly different in detail (sort of how from head on an Infiniti Q45 bares more than a passing resemblance to both a Hyundai Santa Fe and a Ford Taurus) As far as Fender copyrighting the Strat and Tele shapes that would seem to be an uphill battle. Copyrighting a desing 50 - 60 years after it was introduced when it is easily demonstrable that you've done little to protect that design in the interim (see Tom Anderson Guitarworks, Jackson/Charvel, Peavey, Epiphone, Vally Arts, Ibanez, Zion, Aria Pro,etc., etc., etc.) makes their case shakey. One reason so many people get C&D letters from companies is that if you don't attempt to defend your copyright it can be revoked. No suit will ever happen, but the motions have to be gone through. Fender, as far as I can tell, haven't gone through said motions.

Interesting about the heel. I noticed that the holes looked somewhat symmetrical, but I figured that was just the angle of the shot. As bowser said, the block heel necks have a four fret overhangs to accomodate 24 frets (this was the reason behind scalloping the top fouor frets on the original Jems. Not that I understand the logic, but that was the reason) , the AANJ necks have no overhang. Nope, '90 - '91 they started putting the AANJ on the USA Customs (the ones with the "tension free" necks) and the high end EX's. I remember seeing an EX3700 at the store where I took lessons my senior year in high school, which would be 90 - 91, it was the first time I'd ever seen an AANJ. The "middle line" guitars (RGs, Jems, Sabers, etc) got them around 94 - 95, if memory serves.

EX's from that period occupy roughly the same space as the RG3 and 4 series occupies now that is, high end Korean/low end Japanese guitars (well, relatively anyway). They were among the first Ibanezes to have an All Access Neck Joint (which almost all Japanese and Korean bold on IBZ's currently have). Production on the series (though not necessarily that particular model) started around my senior year in high school (around 90 - 91) and I always wanted one. If memory serves those guitars came with Original Floyd Roses instead of the TRSs that the RG3 & 4s came with. As far as I know, any regular AANJ Ibanez neck will fit that pocket.

When I went to buy the paints to paint my nephew's helmets a guy called into the shop and I heard one end of the discussion. "No, I wouldn't buy that....The cheapest gun I think you could get away with for that is one of the cheaper SATAs...Yeah, about $200" Which, of course, made me feel cheap for having bought a $75 gun from Home Depot, my logic being "I'm only trying this out to see if I'm any good at it/if I like it. Oh well I think the flip side of this is to remember that exspensive isn't the same as quality and inexpensive isn't the same as cheap. Your best bet before buying ANYTHING is to do as much research as you can stand. If a company has a reputation for good products then even their inexspensive products will probably be good (just probably, you know, not as good as their exspensive product). But that's just my opinion, your mileage may vary

Thing about the 370 is you'd need a new neck for it and a new bridge if you want to be accurrate.

Oh Kev, Kev, Kev. You shouldn't make predictions on shipping this week in public

RG 550 or 570 would work. As stated above the 550 is front routed. The 570 is rear routed. The 570 comes with a rosewood board, while the 550 comes with maple. Otherwise they're identical. Both of these guitars were designed as "low cost Jems" so they make a good starting point for any Jemification project.

I have a Squire P-Bass I bought on sale for $99. As with Every Squire I've ever owned or played it sounds really nice, it plays fantastically, teh quality of workmanship is crap. If you can find one that's put together well (mine has a nut that was cut about 1/2 again too wide for the A string and the knobs were apparently put on at 45 degree angles to the shafts) you won't be disappointed. The big thing in this class is that quality control is almost non-existant, so you need to make sure you look carefully before you buy.

Well, here's the thing. My wife's brother-in-law is a volunteer fireman/former EMT and, as I semi-jokingly call him, the owner of Enola, PA. So he has a police scanner in the bedroom and he still chips in whenever there's a need. So he heard a call for a LifeFlight helicopter for a motorcycle wreck in Carlisle, which he knew was where Jason was. So he and my sister-in-law were already breaking several traffic laws by the time they received the call from my nephew and heard that the LifeFlight call was cancelled. Nobody was seriously injured (the friend had a minor sprain thanks to landing in a snow drift), but Jason is pretty devastated.

And the thick plottens. So I was trying to spray the colors today. Since a long, time ago I read an article in, I believe, BMX Plus! where they did a shop tour of the Bell factory (which made all of the helmets for GT BMX) that at bell the entire helmet is painted every color on the helmet. So, GT helmets were blue with white, yellow and black pinstripes and red letters so the helmet was painted one color, taped off then painted another. All that is to explain why I painted the entire helmet black, when the black was just going to be a racing stripe. anyway, so I put on the sweat pants that got shrunk in the wash and the T-shirt that I got from making a donation to a charity at Mardi Gras last year, but was WAY too fat to wear before losing about 10 pounds in the last couple of weeks (now I'm only too fat to wear it) and headed out to the shed for some painting. I put a coat or two of black on (I'm pretty sure this picture was taken after the first wet coat) Then I noticed what I had feared during coat three. Yes a little bit of primer had mixed with the black and was spitting out. *sigh* So I stopped the painting and started the heavy duty cleanup of the gun (which is out in the shed soaking right now. But 20 minutes ago my sister-in-law called. My nephew's best friend totalled his bike (the one with 15 years of riding experience). His new bike that he's only payed two payments on. The one that he just spent $3K customizing and just got back last night. The one that I'm painting the helmet on. So, you know, no rush anymore. Which I guess works out, 'cos it's supposed to rain every night for the rest of the week anyway.

Yeah, I thought about that. I'm not at a place in my life where I need a seperate gun for each paint. I'm just going with "clean the one I have as best I can and pray for the best"

Thought about that, didn't know for sure. The problem was when cleaning I was trying to get all traces of primer out of the cannister before I put the colors in (a little ****, I know), but it was hard as all hell trying to get that cannister clean (everything else pretty much wiped right off with a dose of mineral spirits. I'll leave the spirits in tonight and see if that cleans it up for tomorrow.

That's purty. I'm afraid of spalted maple because I know that "spalted" really means "half rotted." Which is a nice look, but just seems hard to work with.

Yesterday (2.21.2004) I finally started the refin of my nephew's helmet . This is that story... (mostly because I couldn't find the original thread). If you're wondering why I'm posting infor about helmet painting on Project GUITAR. It's because I used the same techniques that I read about here to paint it, so there So first off, there's my nephew's passenger helmet. It's an HJC, it's a good helmet, but since he sold the yellow bike he bought it with and bought a red bike he felt the need for change. He was just going to go to Home Depot and buy some rattle cans, then he remembered., "Hey, D and George are good at painting and design and stuff." So he asked and we said yes. Compressor = $100 Gravity Feed Spray guy = $80 PPG Automotive Polyurethane Paints, reducers, hardeners, etc. = $200 Off to a good start, no? First thing was to get rid of some of the clear coat. It's all waxy and shiny and makes a horrible base (or at least that's what the Monster Garage book said). If you look, you can see teh scratches from the sanding on the gray parts. I was trying not to sand through the clear coat, just rough it up a little, but I wasn't entirely successful. You can see down by the logo, that used to be yellow. for the most part, that was it for sand through. So yesterday I had to work (again) so my wife sat down with some 3M blue tape and an X-Acto knife and went to work with the taping Bless her, she's an angel. I managed to stop working at 4:00, instead of the 1:00 I originally had been lead to believe, so it was time to go out to the shed. Yon, the guy who owned the house before my wife bought it, built furniture as a hobby and had a fully powered work shed built in the back yard. Mostly, however, we just use it to store the lawnmower. So it was time to open up the shed. Here's D and Mojo scouting the Perimeter. So we open up the shed and...it's not as bad as we thought it'd be (It had gotten overgrown with Ivy last year and we just had it cleaned off, we hadn't opened it in like 6 months. It looks like a Cat had lived in there for a little while, but other wise it was good. The shed's a bit dusty so we did a little cleaning. Also I had to break in my compressor, which took 15 minutes. Which, in retrospect, wasn't horrible. D had noticed that our Sheltie, Tiggy, had a major case of PooButt (anyone who's ever owned a long haired animal can relate to this) so it was off to trying to get a puppy to stay still in the tub while we yanked as his asshairs. That, my friends, is fun. Especially when he breaks free and gets brown water all over your face.... Anyway, 15 minutes passed, we mixed up 6ml of primer (which didn't seem like a whole lot, but I didn't want to waste it if I didn't have to, that stuff cost $50 a pint) and test sprayed an old headboard in the shed to get a feel for the gun. Next up, the helmet. The first coat was medium-light. There was still a LOT of the original graphic showing through after I finished. Coat 2 (or, as I call it 1.5) was applied 5 minutes later and was basically just enough to make the primer opaque. While painting I did the overlapping layers thing, which becomes harder and harder as the coats get more and more opaque, so I continued on as best I could. I think, for the most part, I did a good job. You might be wondering what the base is. It's a 1 gallon bottle of PineSol. It actually fits almost pefectly inside the helmet and lifts the helmet off the drop cloth so I can get a clean shot at the bottom. I let that dry for 10 minutes (until the primer was slightly tacky, this stuff dries really fast) and put on another, pretty wet coat. Which is where it stands today. There is a little orange peel to the primer from the fact that 1. I don't know what I'm doing, 2. I have a cheap gun and 3. the shed is a tad dusty. Today I'm going to sand the primer to get it nice and smooth, then lay down a coat or 6 of color. I hope to be finished with all the color by the end of the day, but that may be a little optimistic. Also I realized that althought the shed is pretty well ventilated, it didn'tmater, because the air didn't move yesteday, there was NO wind of any kind, so I'm going to put one of the three box fans we have out there facing out the door to stimulate some airflow.. I also realized that cleaning the paint gun's cannister is a pain in the behind. How do you get the mineral spirits to stay in something that has a hole in both ends? oy

it's still an excelent looking guitar, tho. My only real thought was you should've incorporated the hammer-n-sickle into the body as well.

I read he uses twins because they give him a sound closest to the old Lab series. Interesting enough, a former Lab Series devotee, Ty Tabor from King's X. The Gibson Lab was his "secret amp" for 20 years before he spilled the beans. I seriously wonder how one of those would sound with my set-up