Omg! Thank you so much!! An attenuator is exactly what I've been looking for for years! I'm a bedroom guitarist and hate that I can't crank to get the tone. What a legend! Appreciate your work.
True story: Back in the early 1980s when I was still in the Navy, I got an early 70s Les Paul Deluxe. If I recall correctly, I haggled with the pawnshop owner for a long time until he got exhausted and sold me the guitar for $175. This was one of those ugly Deluxes with the mini-humbuckers and the blue metal flake top. A previous owner had chiseled out the pickup holes and put in some DiMarzios, a PAF at the neck and a Super Distortion at the bridge. The chisel work was pretty rough, some of it showed around the pickup rings. I wanted to turn it into a gold top, so I stripped it and sprayed the top with Testor’s Model Master gold paint. I initially was going to leave the back and neck natural mahogany, but I thought it would benefit from a little color. I didn’t have any brown stain, so I used my wife’s food coloring instead. It was easy to create a nice brown shade by mixing red and green. It raised the grain, so I had to dampen it, sand it back and color it again. For a clear coating I used Krylon Krystal Kleer from aerosol cans. I used three or four coats, and it smelled so bad that I’m surprised that the neighbors didn’t complain and have me evicted. By about 1990 the gold Testor’s paint was beginning to look like imitation snakeskin because it was incompatible with the Krylon I had sprayed on top of it. I sold the guitar during the early 90s to a guy I didn’t know and who I never saw again. He mistook the creepy gold top for a vintage, checked finish, and he gladly paid me many times what I originally paid in Litman’s Pawnshop on Granby Street in Norfolk, Virginia. He didn’t ask whether the guitar had been refinished and I didn’t volunteer the information. I wonder how long he played that guitar until he had to have it totally stripped and refinished? I think it would be possible to use regular artist’s oil colors to tint oil finishes. The tube colors are soluble in linseed oil, so it just might work in tung oil as well. If I ever try it these days you can bet that I will give it a thorough test for compatibility before I put it on a real guitar!
Good story and thanks for sharing it. I have made a couple of videos about using artist oils in linseed oil as a way to color a guitar: ruclips.net/video/QMOl9-CFrXY/видео.htmlsi=AT99ohTgkvqGBpfL ruclips.net/video/FUz8Sq3wZsE/видео.htmlsi=EGg19nA3a_qu8IkJ
Huge thanks for this one. I can't wait to start tinting linseed. So many ideas rushing to me now. I have a guitar neck that's at that stage right now. Going to tint it green now. Thanks again for the information, motivation, and flow of ideas. 🤘 🎸
Greetings Chris, Welcome back. I remember you discussing making pickups, did you discuss in detail under/ over wound and effects of the magnets? My dyslexia and Alzheimer’s is kicking in. Sucks being ancient. Thank you.
As regards dyeing woods - I guess most people may be looking to dye a maple cap (to bring out the flame/figuring) but maple can be difficult as it doesn't absorb well and the results can come out blotchy. I believe there is some treatment you can apply first which may help with this but you would need to research yourselves first and test on a sample. I recently tried using steelwool + vinegar soln (leaving the steelwool until it has dissolved in the vinegar) and also tea to apply a darker stain to a maple cap (actually English sycamore) but it didn't turn out well but, because it didn't penetrate, I was able to sand it out and just go with a Danish oil finish although it didn't bring out the figuring as I would have liked.
Unfortunately, a lot of people think that all figured wood should look amazing with the right finish. However, that is rarely the case. You have to know what to look for when selecting figured wood to get the best results. This video explains my process for selecting figured wood: ruclips.net/video/XJKux5vu7YA/видео.htmlsi=kZ7n9CEd6sqfhIFa
Omg! Thank you so much!! An attenuator is exactly what I've been looking for for years! I'm a bedroom guitarist and hate that I can't crank to get the tone. What a legend! Appreciate your work.
True story: Back in the early 1980s when I was still in the Navy, I got an early 70s Les Paul Deluxe. If I recall correctly, I haggled with the pawnshop owner for a long time until he got exhausted and sold me the guitar for $175. This was one of those ugly Deluxes with the mini-humbuckers and the blue metal flake top. A previous owner had chiseled out the pickup holes and put in some DiMarzios, a PAF at the neck and a Super Distortion at the bridge. The chisel work was pretty rough, some of it showed around the pickup rings. I wanted to turn it into a gold top, so I stripped it and sprayed the top with Testor’s Model Master gold paint. I initially was going to leave the back and neck natural mahogany, but I thought it would benefit from a little color. I didn’t have any brown stain, so I used my wife’s food coloring instead. It was easy to create a nice brown shade by mixing red and green. It raised the grain, so I had to dampen it, sand it back and color it again. For a clear coating I used Krylon Krystal Kleer from aerosol cans. I used three or four coats, and it smelled so bad that I’m surprised that the neighbors didn’t complain and have me evicted. By about 1990 the gold Testor’s paint was beginning to look like imitation snakeskin because it was incompatible with the Krylon I had sprayed on top of it. I sold the guitar during the early 90s to a guy I didn’t know and who I never saw again. He mistook the creepy gold top for a vintage, checked finish, and he gladly paid me many times what I originally paid in Litman’s Pawnshop on Granby Street in Norfolk, Virginia. He didn’t ask whether the guitar had been refinished and I didn’t volunteer the information. I wonder how long he played that guitar until he had to have it totally stripped and refinished?
I think it would be possible to use regular artist’s oil colors to tint oil finishes. The tube colors are soluble in linseed oil, so it just might work in tung oil as well. If I ever try it these days you can bet that I will give it a thorough test for compatibility before I put it on a real guitar!
Good story and thanks for sharing it. I have made a couple of videos about using artist oils in linseed oil as a way to color a guitar:
ruclips.net/video/QMOl9-CFrXY/видео.htmlsi=AT99ohTgkvqGBpfL
ruclips.net/video/FUz8Sq3wZsE/видео.htmlsi=EGg19nA3a_qu8IkJ
@@HighlineGuitars I guess it’s really true that “there is no new thing under the sun.”
Huge thanks for this one. I can't wait to start tinting linseed. So many ideas rushing to me now. I have a guitar neck that's at that stage right now. Going to tint it green now.
Thanks again for the information, motivation, and flow of ideas.
🤘 🎸
Greetings Chris, Welcome back. I remember you discussing making pickups, did you discuss in detail under/ over wound and effects of the magnets? My dyslexia and Alzheimer’s is kicking in. Sucks being ancient. Thank you.
Not recently.
As regards dyeing woods - I guess most people may be looking to dye a maple cap (to bring out the flame/figuring) but maple can be difficult as it doesn't absorb well and the results can come out blotchy. I believe there is some treatment you can apply first which may help with this but you would need to research yourselves first and test on a sample.
I recently tried using steelwool + vinegar soln (leaving the steelwool until it has dissolved in the vinegar) and also tea to apply a darker stain to a maple cap (actually English sycamore) but it didn't turn out well but, because it didn't penetrate, I was able to sand it out and just go with a Danish oil finish although it didn't bring out the figuring as I would have liked.
Unfortunately, a lot of people think that all figured wood should look amazing with the right finish. However, that is rarely the case. You have to know what to look for when selecting figured wood to get the best results. This video explains my process for selecting figured wood: ruclips.net/video/XJKux5vu7YA/видео.htmlsi=kZ7n9CEd6sqfhIFa
Attenuator? I hardly knew her!
Nice.
🤦♂️
I would have worked better using ‘know’