rahimiiii

This compressor is meant for airbrushes, not spray guns.

why dont you buy a Warmoth neck with paddle headstock in whatever contour or fret or whatever you need then you can cut the headstock to the desired shape? Warmoth is very reliable and I realize UK taxes are high but they are quite reputable.

Oh and I need to say that I quoted the prices by doing the finish myself. I spent maybe 50 dollars in materials (including an airbrush) for the finish. Is it perfect...? not really, but I am learning. Transparant sunburst has got to be the hardest thing to do out there, because its impossible to fix mistakes. To have Warmoth do the finish I would have to spend 300 dollars extra, so therefore it would have cost exactly the same as a Fender American Deluxe, althought a little better.

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Well, when I quoted the price I used the same quality of hardware as used on Americans, well except using Dimarzio pickups instead of stock Fender pups. I mean CTS pots and everything. Now Warmoth doesn't dress or finish fingerboards for you so you might have do it yourself or have a luthier do it. Its not that hard to roll fingerboard edges however.

I already shelled out for a real Fender, but I was thinking maybe it would have been better if I built from parts instead... Plus I rather buy a little at a time than have to save for months then drop it all in one go.

Instead of buying a brand new Fender American Deluxe.... well because a brand new American Deluxe, Alder body I might add, costs about 39,000 NT (thats around 1100 dollars US), after negiocations and stuff like that... comes with a case, cable, standard accessories (which doesn't cost more than 50 dollars to buy yourself) Well, my current project will cost something like this: Body: 200 including shipping and customs tax (that comes to about 6000 NT) Neck: about 300 including shipping, Shaller locking tuner, taxes and everything (so I'd put it at 11,000NT) Bridge: I am using a Wilkinson, so thats about 120 with shipping (I am still waiting for it 2 weeks later... I hope they didn't lose it! thats about 4000 NT including shipping) Pickups: MAX budget of about 300 US dollars including shipping, ordering a custom prewired assembly with DiMarzio Blue Valvets or something in that price range. Therefore max budget of about 10,000NT Paint and Finish: Did it myself so I spent a total of maybe 50 dollars MAX for this project including a cheap airbrush and 3 cans of clear, and some sandpapers and dyes. Hardwares: Budget of about 50-60 dollars for straplocks, shielding kits, and string trees, 2000NT MAX (shipping included) Total cost: 27,000NT or $818.18USD (using 33 as exchange rate, actual will vary), figure another 50 bucks for a case if needed. With this I get a ASH body guitar, same or better hardware than Fender American Deluxe strat, 100% nitrocellouse (or Acrylic... whatever those spray bombs are) lacquer that will age properly, and Stainless steel frets too. The American Deluxe features a 2 peice Alder body (on clears, for solid colors figure at LEAST 3 peices or more), Schaller locking tuners (which by now is VERY cheap thanks to the advent of Planetwaves), Schaller strap locks (cheap too), Standard American strat tuner (decent, but Standard), medium jumbo nickel frets... polyester finish that is about 1/16 inch thick (no kidding! Good luck stripping those), really bad sustain out of the box due to that microtilt contraption, disabling the feature and tightning the neck against its pocket fixed it but now the bridge cannot be set to full float which is not really a bad thing. Costs me about 1,100 US dollars after negicoating with the salesperson, and still needs to be tweaked. I have since stripped it and put a 3 tone sunburst on it, looks MUCH better now and much better sustain too. I find that the quality of the body is about on par with a mighty mite body except for the contours.

I made some CF sheets once while I was at University of Texas... I origionally laminated them onto a sheet of balsa just to see how to get it, and then I put it in a bag and add some release cloth and breather cloth and pumped air out of the bag with a vacuum pump. a day later I opened it up and cut out the excess at the machine shop in the basement with a diamond band saw... doesnt seem to hurt them much. Of course the carbon fiber ended up delaminating from the balsa wood, I dont know if its because the vacuum pressure was too high so most of the epoxy got sucked out. I did manage to make a very lightweight and flexable plastic board however! how about making bracing out of balsa then laminating them with carbon fiber?

I am thinking that those Fender American Deluxe strat ash body is Northern Ash, because the grain looks a lot like that picture of a bass on this thread. I looked in a store at some of those deluxe ash bodies and the grain doesn't look as dark as a swamp ash warmoth strat body I have... I wonder why, is it because Northern ash is cheaper than swamp ash?

There's a guy that goes by geocha on the reranch forum that sells custom decals... he can do Fender or gibson or whatever, and real accurate ones too!

This is the newer burst... I hadn't had a picture of the progress, so here is the finished product (still drying... takes a month) What I learned is that always point your airbrush toward the outside of the body rather pointing it outside in. This will remove oversprays, another thing I learned is, if it isn't broken, DONT try and fix it! Here is the stripped body after the cherryburst went bad.... I brushed on like 6 coats of high build sanding sealer. I wouldn't do this with anything else like deft or parks sealer because they don't have nearly as much solid as this one. If your sealer looks somewhat thick and opaque from the can, and when I said opaque I mean a 1/4 inch thick layer poured into a pan should totally obscure the bottom of the container, then you can brush this onto ash, and even then do heavy coats because ash is a VERY porous wood, and normally one would use a grainfiller before brushing on any sealer. Once 6 coats have been brushed on, the paint was almost as thick as those Fender poly finished body, although not as bulletproof. Now I let it dry for a week or so, when you can no longer scratch a mark into the paint with your fingernail, you're ready to sand.

One word of caution when using dye based burst, that means burst that does not involve blacks such as cherryburst, tobacco burst, honey burst, or any burst where you can see the wood grain at the edge. The problem with transparant color is that ANY and ALL mistake shows and it is impossible to totally blend it in. That means if a paint drips onto the burst portion, its going to be there forever! Look at this one... before fix After fix Now it is very hard to photograph these things but in person you can still see the fix, however you can make it less of an eyesore rather than making it disappear. What I did was sand out the offending area down to whites, then try and blend everything in. The area will look darker than the rest but it will not look like a big blob of paint. Or another thing that might help is sand off the entire area down to sanding sealer, then mask off any other area as precisely as you can, then attempt to match the colors around, and remove the masking then continue blending. So therefore do your best to not let murphy bite, and that means watch your airbrush angle!!! If you are too steep with normal hobby airbrush you will drip paint onto your body! Well here is a cherryburst I had messed up with... this would serve as a lesson... First I start with this: Notice the black marker lines, I use this method to help highlight the general low spots while sanding the sealer. Sometimes I wish to wet sand the sealer because it cuts down on dusts, but I think its better to dry sand because in this stage some of the wood is still exposed, therefore causing problems. Use baby oil or something to eliminate this problem. The marker helps reduce sand-through because when the marker is gone I know to stop sanding. Then I do the sides first... angle your airbrush or spraygun 90 degrees to the edge of your body. The horns will be hard but try your best. This will help avoid overspray. I wish I had a picture but I dont... sorry. This is my final result with burst finished... however here is where the problem started... I did not like the wide burst in the back so I wanted to correct it... BIG mistake. here is the correction: You can notice lines of different shade, very arupt too. Look at the edge and you will know what I am talking about.

Another possible option is buy a paddle neck from Warmoth, then buy a pre routed body blank from Warmoth as well. They sell body blanks and will route all the critical dimisions like neck pocket, pickup and control routing of your choice on the blank for like 50 dollars more. That way you can just concentrate on shaping the body rather than worrying about getting critical diminsion right.

Carbon fiber pickguard anyone?? it would look REAL cool. By the way I have glasses with Titanium memory wire frames... you could bend this thing like 90 degrees (or more!!! how about 180 degree bends?) and it will NEVER break and it always springs right back to where it was. You could get a hunk of Titanium enough for a trem block on ebay for probably like 20 bucks.

If you buy some expensive exotic wood, you better make sure your capabilities are up to it. Every time I see a newbie load up on some expensive exotic wood, I think......whooaaaaa, there goes a car in the crowd. And if you want to finish any figured maple, get some scraps to practice first! LMII sells some low priced figured maple headplates which is used for headstock veneers, price is about 3 dollars a peice, not bad for some figured maple for practice. Some special techniques are needed to help bring out the figure.

looks okay... just dont use enamel for topcoat because those things never dries hard! Also if you plan on using lacquer on top of enamel make sure to test it because enamel is very picky about what goes over it. I had those 99 cent walmart enamel wrinkle on me just cause I recoated at the wrong time!

This is my second build in Taiwan (I say this because I have built some including some warmoth bodies and necks, a carvin bolt kit, and saga kits while I was still in the USA). The first build (well not really a build, more like a modification) was a 2004 Fender American Deluxe strat origionally finished in "amber" (read that to mean clear coated alder with amber tint). I stripped the thick poly and refinished it with lacquer in 3 tone sunburst. My second build is a Warmoth Swamp Ash body from showcase. The wood grain isn't perfect, there are lots of wild grain and the end grain looks a little ugly due to black stains. The neck was a custom made Standard Thin neck, 6115 stainless steel fret (identical to Tom Andersons I think), 10-16 radius, abalone inlay, maple (regular rock hard maple) neck with pau ferro fretboard. The neck is finished in tinted lacquer with a Fender logo placed on it. The body is in the process of drying. At first I attempted to do a cherry burst that ended up in a dismal failure, not because it looked bad to begin with, but because of my "wise" move of trying to fix something that isn't broken. So after about several fixes that includes sanding back a burst to narrow the burst, correcting oversprays, and other things, I stripped everything when things started sliding downhill, FAST. I decided to try something new with bursts, this time I sprayed the entire body with yellow tinted lacquer, then burst the edge with transparant orange. I think Warmoth calls this "Tiqula sunburst" or something. I think it looks nice... might try a dragon in the distant future however. Now another mistake made was that while airbrushing the tint onto the body, I accidently spilled some onto the burst, so I fixed it by sanding some portion of it off then trying to touch it up. Now touching up transparant present a unique challange, because you can never blend them to be as dark so it will always show no matter what, but I decided the end result will be better than one big spot of paint. Here is the body And this is the neck (front only) Due to consideration for low bandwidth users, I can't show all the picture, however here is a link to all of them.... if you got questions feel free to post. http://s107.photobucket.com/albums/m320/rahimiiii/ I am going to use Gotoh Wilkinson VS100N (same as what Warmoth sells) which is on order from stewmac now... then the tuner will be Schaller locking tuner (already got it), and pickups will most likely be DiMarzio Blue Valvet, on a prewired pickguard from Rothstein music. I will probably go for either Voodoo plus or Blenders... I still haven't decided on a pickguard color, should I use white, black, pearl, tortoise, black pearl, or dark black pearl? I like pearl pickguard because it looks custom but they do cost more...

Gotoh wilkinson will retrofit onto a American Standard/deluxe strat... One of the trem knife edge is elongated so you can be off a hair in terms of stud spacing and still fit.

[quote name='weezerboy' post='13720' date='Jul 8 2003, 08:39 PM'] ....hi, is it possible to paint a whole guitar using a hobbyists air brush? if so what are the pros and cons? [/quote] here is my 2 cents.... use airbrush if you want to do graphics or sunburst. It takes little air or paint to paint the actual color portion of sunburst and you can use very concentrated dye mix if you are using air from a can. However if you are talking about clear coats either use a spray gun/compressor or if you cannot afford those equipments (lets face it, not everyone wants one cause thats alot of investment for a one time job, and a cheap gun doesnt spray that good anyways) then just use your airbrush to spray the color coats, and use rattlecans for clear. Cheap 20 dollar airbrush is great for sunbursting or just spraying translucent dye coats. If you are going to do graphics get better ones.