Chapter 8 - Frankie's New Suit

I had ordered the black Floyd Rose, thinking I was going to keep the black finish.  But, my fellow Beer Supply guitarist Pat recalled an old Jackson he once had that was yellow with black hardware.  So, that's what I went with.




Now, to get the old finish off.  I was wondering if this thing had some sort of think plastic coating, so I tried to pry some off the back.

Oops.  Guess it is some sort of paint, after all.  With heat gun in hand, I got it stripped down in about 90 minutes.  Then I taped up the existing cavities that I wanted to re-use, so I didn't have to re-coat with any special shielding paint.

I couldn't be bothered to sand the thing smooth.  It was already going to look rough from the factory holes, so I just moved on to finish.  This is the beginning of 3 coats of primer, 5 coats of colour, and 3 coats of clear varathane.

Once the paint was complete, I used some outdoor black paint for the Floyd Rose area, before the varathane.

The yellow and black reminded me of a crazy New York cab.  So I added a few motifs.

Then, I used a Sharpie to black out the existing Ibanez logo, and printed a custom label for the head stock.

I did a short-cut version of the technique posted over on Project Guitar.  Now it was on to installing the nut.