Paint a bass?

[DBFIU]

Hi. My girlfriend is a professional artist. The stuff she makes is out of this world. Mostly psychedelic dream world stuff. I thought it would look so nice on my bass.

I have a very cheap beginner bass that has a gunmetal color. I want to do the whole bass in her art.

Is painting a bass considered faux pas? I usually only see single colored basses or basses with wood and laquer. I just want to do this right and make sure I have the right tools and chemicals to do it.

I really was thinking of stripping the paint, sanding it, painting it with an opaque background color then letting her loose on it.

Please point me in the right direction. I'm a complete newb to this. Thanks

 

[jd56hawk]

Plenty of painted basses.
There's a Led Zeppelin painted Peavy T-40 on ebay right now.
Not to mention McCartney's painted Rick, and Hendrix's painted Strat, etc.
Cool Peter Max guitars.

 

[DBFIU]

Thanks for the input. Do you know of special paints I need and laquer to seal it? Is there any particular process I need to know other then basic painting techniques such as stripping, sanding, prepping surface and applying paint?

 

[M.R. Ogle]

Absolutely, go for it!

When it's done, seal it with either a a can of good clear lacquer, or, even better, one of those two-part polyurethane automotive clear topcoats.

Lookinmg forward to seeing it!

 

[jd56hawk]

You're welcome. I don't know anything about it myself but plenty of posts here if you try a board search about painting a bass.
I've seen a few recent ones but the threads move to page 2 or 3 etc.

 

[wolfkeller]

I use duplicolor car paint from meijer. Its a good lacquer. Sand down with 220, paint background, sand that with 400, have her paint it, clear coat, let it cure for a month, wet sand with 1500, use meguires rubbing compound then polish. My latest. Just what I do though.

 

[StreetScenes]

You can try posca paint pens. That is what I have used. They blend like paint and plenty of info on them on the web. I started this on a SUB I picked up. Some skate/surfers are doing some crazy cool stuff with them and any clear is pretty safe to use as far as I can tell.