About a year or so ago I posted some photos of a circa 1975 Gibson Flying V that I had decorated by cartoon artists Peter Bagge, Dan Clowes and Robert Armstrong. At the time, the guitar had been sitting around for years waiting for someone who wasn’t afraid to tackle the potentially messy job of applying the new finish. (You can read the guitar’s back story here.)
The thing that scared all of the luthiers I showed it to was that the drawings on the front and back were done done with different kinds of ink. Careful testing showed that the if the solvent in the finish worked with one set of drawings it caused the other set to run and smear. Finally, I took the guitar to Addam Stark in Santa Cruz who was pretty sure he could do the job but he strongly cautioned me that he couldn’t guarantee that finishing the guitar wouldn’t destroy one set of drawings.
Addam had the guitar for about a year and when he got some spare time he would try various tests to see what combination of finish and spraying technique would work. He eventually settled on laying down a couple of base coats of urethane to seal the drawings. Addam sprayed the base coats as a very fine mist that essentially dried on contact. The drawings on the back proved to be stable and came out fine. Even though base coat had almost no solvent in it, the drawings on the top ran just the tiniest amount. I knew this was a possibility and I was very pleased with the result. The very slight ink bleed gives a nice shadow effect.
After the base coats were applied, Addam sprayed a satin sheen lacquer. Because I hadn’t prepared the wood before I had the drawings were done, the pores in the mahogany were open and the surface wasn’t as smooth as Addam would have liked. He wound up spraying a slightly thicker coat than he normally would to cover up the rougher surface. Earlier tests on other pieces of wood suggested that the buffing required to polish a glossy finish would cause the ink to heat up, liquefy and run. A surprise benefit to the satin finish is that because it’s not very reflective, the drawings show up nicely no matter what the lighting conditions are. After I got the guitar back from Addam I took it to Brian Michael at Gryphon Stringed Instruments to set up. The frets were badly worn so I had it refretted at the same time. I had had a clear pickguard made so I could see the drawings on the top and had some cartoon-ish custom pickups made by Seymour Duncan. The most amazing than about all of this is that I somehow managed to save all of the original parts for 18 years and three moves. The guitar sounds and plays great and the neighbors don’t seem to mind the noise. At least they haven’t complained to me.
