I've painted a bunch of guitars with automotive acrylic lacquer - solid colors, metalic/clearcoat, tinted clear/clearcoat. It works fine - don't know if I'd take it to Maco.
Automative products and techniques are very commonly used for most gloss finishes and non-oiled satins. The process is more or less the same: after sealing and leveling, a color coat is sprayed (unless a natural finish is desired), then a lacquer, urethane, acrylic or polyester clear coat is sprayed, cured then buffed out. When I started dabbling in refin work, the only place I could find ultra fine abrasives and a decent selection of colors was my local auto parts store. Apart from the wood prep, the theory is much the same as paintin' a car. The old Fender colors were mostly auto colors (LPBlue was a Caddy color from the late 50's) and, at the time, cars were shot with nitro (before more durable finishes became available).
We regularly write checks to Finishmaster here in Greensboro, which is "THE" auto finish shop in town. As someone said, apart from the wood prep part, it's essentially the same idea (I don't think they use polyester finishes on cars though...).
Spray-in bedliner. Just spray it from a closer distance than you would on a truck bed so it doesn't end up quite as rough.
yep, get all my gear from the auto shop! spraying is spraying, as long as they are good theres no difference realy, maybe a little finer finishing and detail.
One word of caution: if you're going to take a bass to a body shop and have them spray it you should make sure all the prep work is done to your satisfaction beforehand. Don't think that the paint will "fix" anything.
I had a friend polish out the body on my Peavey Gv. He's a custom painter. It came out great and saved me lots of elbow grease
friend of mine paints motorcycles for a living, he refinishing one of my old basses. It looked amazing!!
Original Fender colors were "borrowed" from General Motors. I've seen it done time and time again with beautiful results.
We have a few places near me that do car finishes and I would be very interested to see how much they would charge if they would do the job to finish a bass body.
wouldn't that be kind of awkward walking into a shop and asking them to paint it. what would you say? and what if they hurt your babies?
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