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Here are a few pics of a job I just finished. Here is the way it came in. just a plain jane PRS se.



And here is what I did with it. The paint is a Green-Gold chameleon pearl styled after the highly collectable PRS Metal series guitars of the 80's.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Well done, Brian. How much of a pain is it to mask that off?

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

It was about the same as masking off a set of flames. The trick is getting the flip-flop pearl down correctly.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Really amazing, Brian!
Your finishes are always top notch!

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

Very nice work !

Love it!!!!

Yeah... I dig it.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Wow...that is really interesting.

So...did you top coat heavily with clear after the color? I haven't done any masking effects myself and I imagine that there is a step in the color off the black and that heavy clear coating is the only way to guarantee that the line definition wont be ruined when leveling. If so...how many clear coats?

I'm curious because the same problem presents itself when painting the back of the neck with a solid color and masking off the edge of the fretboard (no binding).

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

Yes you need to "bury" the pearl in clear to be able to buff out a flat glossy surface. But you need to keep in mind the systems thickness barrier which is 5 mills in this case. The clear doesn't need to be as thick as you may think though. The color base coats used in a base coat -clear coat system like this go on really thin. The 5 coats of pearl it took to get this were only about 1.0- 1.5 mills. I shot 3 coats of clear over the graphic and then level sanded and buffed. The one thing you need to address very carefully before the clear is the edges of the graphic. The paint fills and fillets against the tape leaving a ridge at the very edge when the mask is pulled. This must be sanded down very very carefully, if you scuff the pearl wrong it will show through the clear and you will need to start all over again.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/