My relic'd SG
Lately I've been wanting a new guitar. I have a pitifully small budget, but I wanted something different. I trolled around for a pre-loved instrument on craigslist, but nothing quite hit the nail on the head. Mostly because nobody wanted to handover a guitar free of charge. I was reminded that I had some gear loaned out to someone that wanted to learn (and had lost all interest.) The gears where set in motion, and once again I was in possession of my Epiphone SG 310 (or something like that. I had picked it up. more or less, as a souvenir while traveling with my wife back when I had some disposable income. I never really fit in with my other guitar (all Telecasters) so it go sidelined a lot. Sitting down with one of my good friends and fellow gear-nut, we discussed relic'ing guitars. He has a Mexican Strat that he has reclic'd. As he described the process, I started to visualize going through the steps. It reminded me of when I went about refinishing my Telecaster back when I only had one. I then knew what I had to do. I was going to beat my SG until it and I had a mutual respect for one another. There are some things that I learned along the way that were somewhat surprising.
Photo by musiczoo.com
Let's start with the obvious. You are going to change your guitar in a way that will be very difficult to repair. In some cases, repairing a relic job would mean replacing so many parts that it would more new pieces than original. So you strip your guitar down to its bare parts and get ready to do the deed. When I began to distress my SG, I had no idea what it was going to look like. I stripped a Telecaster and repainted it. Over the years, the paint job I did wore in some spots. I wanted to replicate that effect on my SG. What I ended up with was something complete different. Many of the edges have "wear" marks and dings, but it was very difficult to cause that effect. Many of the bevels that are part of the SG shape have been rounded off in the "wearing" of the paint job. Even if I repainted the guitar it would still have a "distressed" shape. So think about that before you break out your "murder tools"
2. You Will Regret Almost Everything
I worked at a passionate rate. Every time I nicked, cut and ding my guitar I grew bolder. I wanted more of that effect. I wanted to go further. If one looked good then ten would be great. Only, as I work a noticed that this ding looked like that ding and those nicks look like someone did it on purpose (duh). I started thinking that I had made a huge mistake that I can't take back. Those marks don't look real. Why would there be dings like that over there! It was all falling apart just as fast as it had come together. So I put it down, went back inside, and had a good cry (a figurative cry). I came back with the mentality that it was the journey that matter, not so much the end result. I let my children bead on the body with a file. I stood on it. I laid it flat on a concrete floor and kicked it around. To Hell with the nitpicky. This is supposed to be fun!
3. It Will Always Look "Manufactured"
Indeed, the marks on my guitar may not fool the "expert" but like I explained above, it is something that I enjoyed. So lets talk about your guitar. No matter how well you think you did, it still going to look manufactured to the one person that matters, You. No matter how well you recreate those marks of instruments that have seen decades of heavy use you will know that your were caused by the tools in your garage. Each time you pick up your guitar, no matter how great you think it looks, you are living a lie. It may be an innocent little fib. Your instrument didn't really earn (or deserve) those marks of abuse. Many people will not even question how those got there, but you know that you did it. there is almost an aspect of exhibitionism. You know a dirty little secrete about your guitar and you parade that secrete in front of everyone just to see if anyone will call you on it.
4. You Won't Want To Stop
It is almost addictive when you wear through your finish and you see the wood underneath. You want more. You want more visible wood (that could be taken wrong). You want more battle scars. You rack you brain to think of where the wear should go. You think about wear the pick would scratch or wear the head would bump into something, or how missing the input jack might put a ding in the finish. You could add cigarette burns (man, visible wood and cigarette burn, this might put me on some sort of watch list) or yellow your finish. There is no limit. I guess you could keep going until your instrument is no longer playable. You could do some real damage if your not careful, but in all seriousness...
5. You Need To Stop
Why do we do this to our guitars. There is really no other group of musician that do the thing we do to there instruments. You don't see drummers spend time and energy into making their instrument look abused (it just happens naturally). Pianist take care in preserving their instruments, much like nearly every other musician. Symphonies take pride in the pristine way their instrument are cared for. Marching bands make their instrument shine before every performance. But a faction of guitarist think that they should degrade their instrument to the point (and past said point) of realism. There are guitar that make my heart sink when I see them. I know that someone has beaten it to the point that it looks like it was recovered from the wreckage of the Titanic. So please, if you are going to add "wear" to your guitar, know how far is too far.
No comments:
Post a Comment