About four or five years ago, I bought an old electric guitar mostly because it was really cheap and I didn’t have an electric one yet. However, the previous owner had coated it in gaudy, sparkly stickers which refused to come off without leaving gobs of glue behind, and the receiver for the whammy bar was cracked badly enough that it couldn’t be used at all. It was fun to play around with for a while, but never really got much use because it was in such a state of disrepair. Then a few weeks ago I picked it up again, tried to tune it, and broke a string. Like a hardened drug addict, this guitar had to hit rock bottom before it was going to admit it had some problems.
At first I thought I’d just replace the broken string. Then I figured why not change the set? Keep things consistent. Then I thought hey, while these strings are off I should probably get rid of all this glue residue. To do that properly I had to take off the knobs and covers. Once those were off, it only made sense that I fix the whammy bar receiver while I was inside… before I knew it, I had a full-blown restoration project.
The sticky residue was the first hurdle to overcome, but a little bit of nail polish remover and some elbow-grease did the trick nicely.
Once the glue was off, I couldn’t ignore the fact that this clean white body was a canvas waiting to be painted with something more expressive… and so the project grew yet again.
I wanted the design to be mainly black to match the already black head, and I also wanted it to be somehow related to music without being trite or over-done. What I eventually settled on is a symbol of music bringing colour and variety to an otherwise rigid and mundane world. I first painted the rainbow motif across the centre using acrylic paint, then masked off the grid using green painter’s tape cut to approximately 1/8″ thickness. After masking, I painted the entire guitar black. Finally, I sprayed on a droplet rainbow using the acrylics mixed with water by flicking the tip of my paintbrush. Once I took off the mask, I sprayed the whole thing with many layers of clear glaze topcoat.
The whammy bar receiver was originally cast iron, and very brittle. I fashioned a new one from an old piece of angle-iron and a welded-on nut, then spray-painted the whole thing to help prevent rusting.
Once everything was put back together I took her out for a spin and was quite pleased with the results! Riffing with this guitar felt like putting a new spirit into old bones—and within a short time, I think I was able to do the same thing for one of my old poems. The Startled Eye of Passer-By is a poem I wrote back in 2014 (around the same time I bought this guitar, coincidentally), which may be coming to life again soon as a song: one refinishing project brought on by another.
Dylan Brenneis 