Custom
August 12, 2007
So one of the things I wanted by the end of this summer was a usable electric guitar. I've had many many problems with my old one and therefore wanted a new one just to start over. So I looked and looked, but there weren't any guitars that I really fell in love with. Now, there were many with which I messed around and had wild nights with but none that could hold my attention. What is a lonely lover to do?...well, take the sci-fi route and create the love of your life of course. The Reyes Lovecaster model was born....I started with my old guitar as the piece of wood to use, it's a circa 80's Fernandes what I think to be a Revolver model but I'm not sure. Here's the only picture I have of it before the work done on it. Original
Then I started to look at some designs I liked. Probably the biggest influence on the design of the guitar is the Ibanez Paul Gilbert Model here. I knew I wanted it white but I went through a lot of design choices on what I actually wanted to put on the white. The first being a design reminiscent of EVH's signature guitars but with less lines and making it red and black on white. Second was the way too cheesy Japanese Kanji symbol for love, then I decided I wanted to write "Amore Vincit Omnia" meaning Love Conquers All in Latin, but I figured that would be too much of a hassle to actually paint on to the guitar. Then I decided on what is on the guitar now which is the simple thin black line through the volume knob.
After deciding on the design it was time to figure out how to actually go about repainting a guitar. The three biggest helps were:
Project Guitar, Ibanez Project and Brad Sucks
What I learned from these sites was that it wasn't going to be easy. I borrowed a sander and went to work, it took me about five hours the first day to get about a quarter of the back of the guitar striped of paint...it was going to take a while. I spent about 2-3 weeks sanding the guitar down working every couple of days until I got it down to where I wanted it. I had ordered Krylon paint, including the primer, color and an acrylic clear coat. To get that factory finish top coat on a guitar you apparently need a shite load of paint. I went through 6 spray cans of acrylic clear coat paint and the finish on the body is still not what it could be (though nobody has to know). My favorite part of the guitar is definitely the headstock check it out.
Next came installing the new hardware and pickups I bought to really make it an all new guitar. The hardest part of this was selecting the pickups and I ended up going with the Seymour Duncan SL59-1 Little '59 for the neck, a DiMarzio Blue Velvet DP170 S (the "S" means it's reverse wound and will cancel hum in the 2 and 4 positions) for the middle, and a Seymour Duncan TB-4 JB Model pickup for the bridge. This gave me an H-S-H configuration and since I wanted more sounds out of it I put in a push/pull knob and can change it to an S-S-S configuration by pulling the volume knob. I'm pretty happy with this configuration for now, with the help of my Vox AD30VT I get a lot of different sounds out of it so it's great for someone like me who is more of a hobbyist than a serious musician.
I guess that's it, that's my tale and I guess in the big scheme of things I enjoyed the experience and I came out of it with a one of a kind guitar and more soldering, sanding and painting experience than I ever wanted. I'm gonna go play now................
