Many of us made not-so-great decisions in the 80s.
With EVH's striped paint job, then the popularity of the painted graphics on Jackson guitars, many
musicians tried their hand at doing their own paint work. We had varying
degrees of success.
We stripped off the old finish, and used several cans of Krylon trying to make
our guitars look cool. A lot of perfectly good guitars were ruined during
these experiments. I personally had an import Kramer Baretta that had no
less than eleven paint jobs before I settled on a modified rising sun
graphic. If I can find a pic, I'll post it.
The big mistake we all made was stripping off the original finish. For
some reason, we thought we had to remove the old finish before doing a new
one. If you decide to attempt this yourself, be advised all that is
necessary is taking some 600-grit sandpaper, and sand off the shine. As
long as the finish is not damaged, you can then paint right over it. Your
results will be much more professional, because you'll have a good level
substrate to start with. Getting the surface level is the hardest &
most time consuming part of finishing.
So we have a mid to late 70s Guild b302. It was painted a very bright
yellow, and splashes of neon pink, orange, and green applied. The owner
said it glowed under a black light. It's was pretty cool in its day, but
completely not acceptable today. The original pickguard was replaced with
a home-made plexiglass pickguard, and EMG electronics were added. I will
preface this by saying this is an amazing sounding bass made of solid
mahagony. You don't see bodies made of one piece of wood anymore.
Two is the minimum unless you're willing to pay a very high premium.
I found a pic that gives you an idea of what this bass orginially looked
like. We're going to try to bring it back to it's former glory.
