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Painting my GH3 Les Paul, Part 1
For months I've been talking about disassembling one of my Guitar Hero guitars and giving it a custom paint job. Unfortunately, while I'm very good at taking things apart, I'm not so hot when it comes to getting them back together in working order. Being unsure what I would find inside the little plastic bugger, and money definitely being an issue, I opted to keep them in working order but boring looking. Now that I have the Les Paul with Guitar Hero 3 and it's nifty little removable faceplate I am finally going to create my very own custom axe. Being a big Sex Pistols fan I immediately snatched up the Sex Pistols
faceplate that Best Buy had, leaving me with a shiny blank faceplate
to play with. Perfect!
Now let's get to the business of creating my masterpiece. Follow the jump to get to it.
Now let's get to the business of creating my masterpiece. Follow the jump to get to it.
My painting background comes from painting plastic model cars, many for contests or paying clients. I say this to put out there that I know a few things about painting plastic and having it look good and be durable. Since this is something that will be used on a regular basis, durability is going to be a key factor in deciding how I paint this.
I'll be using paints that you can find at any hobby shop, Tamiya Fine Primer and Testors enamels in the rattle cans, and a little bit of Testors Acrylics from a bottle for some details I'll be airbrushing on. I'll be clear coating with Testors ClearCote enamels. You don't have to use model paints if you don't have a hobby shop near you or want to save some money, model paints can get expensive but the extra cost is worth it in my opinion. Any spray paint you find at a department store is fine, but your color selection may be limited. I don't recommend using any "hot" paints like lacquer since the fumes can be harmful and they have a solvent in them that can affect other paints. If you go shopping for paints at an automotive store to get "fancy" colors be very careful. Many of these are solvent based "hot" paints. Enamels and acrylics are "cool" paints and are generally safe to use together and these are most likely what you will find at department stores.
Let's go ahead and start documenting the process at the very beginning. This is what the faceplate looked like immediately after I took it off the Les Paul. It's the one that came with it, but let's get a good "before" picture to compare the finished product to when I'm done.
First thing we have to do is prep the plastic for painting. The faceplate is very shiny when it comes from the factory and paint doesn't stick to shiny plastic so we need to fix that. I'm going to start by sanding the entire surface just enough to scuff it up and give the plastic some "teeth" for the paint to grab onto. I recommend 400-600 grit for this job. You can probably go up to 800 but anything finer than that may not be coarse enough for the primer to grab and hold.
Here is the faceplate after sanding.
Not so shiny any more. As you can see I didn't completely remove the white border. It's not necessary to do so, I only needed to scuff it. The surface of the white paint is raised a little bit from the black surface so there may be a void around the inside of the stripe that doesn't get sanded if I'm not careful. The edges of the cut outs are the same way. After I've sanded a bit I'll go rinse it off to remove the plastic bits I've sanded off. Often sanding dust sticks to the plastic in places and makes an area look like it's been well sanded. Rinsing it makes it so I can see the shiny bits that I have missed. I'll sand it again and then rinse it again, repeating the process until I'm satisfied that I got it all. Here is a close up of mine so you can see it a bit better.
Notice the darker band just to the right around the hole for the strum bar. This is a patch I missed in my initial sanding because of the raised edges of the hole, it looks darker because it's not completely sanded. I fixed it after the photo was taken.
Once I am happy that I got it all, I give it a good rinse and wash with a mild soap to get all any residue. It's important to rinse it off very well after the wash to remove any leftover soap. Soap can ruin a good paint job. Since water can accumulate in the little scratch marks I just created in the surface I need to let it dry completely. I'll let it sit overnight to be sure it's all gone.
I'm going to end part one here. It doesn't seem like I've done a lot, but prep is the most important part of painting. It's important to take your time and get it right so that the paint job looks good and last a long time. You don't want your paint peeling off, because you skimped on the prep work. The only way to fix it once that happens to completely clean the old paint off and start all over again, and that is something I don't want to do.
Next installment, I'll prime the faceplate, start working on the design drawing for it and lay down the base color coat.
The third installment will have me transferring my design onto a template and actually laying down the preliminary design paint.
In the fourth and final installment, I'll pull out the airbrush and lay down some detail paint, finish up the main design paint work and clear coat for protection.
I'll be using paints that you can find at any hobby shop, Tamiya Fine Primer and Testors enamels in the rattle cans, and a little bit of Testors Acrylics from a bottle for some details I'll be airbrushing on. I'll be clear coating with Testors ClearCote enamels. You don't have to use model paints if you don't have a hobby shop near you or want to save some money, model paints can get expensive but the extra cost is worth it in my opinion. Any spray paint you find at a department store is fine, but your color selection may be limited. I don't recommend using any "hot" paints like lacquer since the fumes can be harmful and they have a solvent in them that can affect other paints. If you go shopping for paints at an automotive store to get "fancy" colors be very careful. Many of these are solvent based "hot" paints. Enamels and acrylics are "cool" paints and are generally safe to use together and these are most likely what you will find at department stores.
Let's go ahead and start documenting the process at the very beginning. This is what the faceplate looked like immediately after I took it off the Les Paul. It's the one that came with it, but let's get a good "before" picture to compare the finished product to when I'm done.
First thing we have to do is prep the plastic for painting. The faceplate is very shiny when it comes from the factory and paint doesn't stick to shiny plastic so we need to fix that. I'm going to start by sanding the entire surface just enough to scuff it up and give the plastic some "teeth" for the paint to grab onto. I recommend 400-600 grit for this job. You can probably go up to 800 but anything finer than that may not be coarse enough for the primer to grab and hold.Here is the faceplate after sanding.
Not so shiny any more. As you can see I didn't completely remove the white border. It's not necessary to do so, I only needed to scuff it. The surface of the white paint is raised a little bit from the black surface so there may be a void around the inside of the stripe that doesn't get sanded if I'm not careful. The edges of the cut outs are the same way. After I've sanded a bit I'll go rinse it off to remove the plastic bits I've sanded off. Often sanding dust sticks to the plastic in places and makes an area look like it's been well sanded. Rinsing it makes it so I can see the shiny bits that I have missed. I'll sand it again and then rinse it again, repeating the process until I'm satisfied that I got it all. Here is a close up of mine so you can see it a bit better.Notice the darker band just to the right around the hole for the strum bar. This is a patch I missed in my initial sanding because of the raised edges of the hole, it looks darker because it's not completely sanded. I fixed it after the photo was taken.Once I am happy that I got it all, I give it a good rinse and wash with a mild soap to get all any residue. It's important to rinse it off very well after the wash to remove any leftover soap. Soap can ruin a good paint job. Since water can accumulate in the little scratch marks I just created in the surface I need to let it dry completely. I'll let it sit overnight to be sure it's all gone.
I'm going to end part one here. It doesn't seem like I've done a lot, but prep is the most important part of painting. It's important to take your time and get it right so that the paint job looks good and last a long time. You don't want your paint peeling off, because you skimped on the prep work. The only way to fix it once that happens to completely clean the old paint off and start all over again, and that is something I don't want to do.
Next installment, I'll prime the faceplate, start working on the design drawing for it and lay down the base color coat.
The third installment will have me transferring my design onto a template and actually laying down the preliminary design paint.
In the fourth and final installment, I'll pull out the airbrush and lay down some detail paint, finish up the main design paint work and clear coat for protection.
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