Looks very nice. You could obviously keep tweaking and tweaking, but I’d be pretty happy with that outcome.
Looks very nice. You could obviously keep tweaking and tweaking, but I’d be pretty happy with that outcome.
Kit builds: JBA-4M | STA-1M | AIB-1Q | TL-1 (in progress)
Side projects: Artist TC59 | Sheoak Dreaming | Spalted Marri Metal | Randy Vs | Sassafrassin' | St. Vincent
The Dunlop cleaner will be OK to put on, but it’s really meant for cleaning dirty guitars and yours isn’t dirty. I’d have another go with the Ultimate Compound as it’s coarser than the Scratch X so will remove scratch marks faster. Repeat as necessary then use the Scratch X to add a higher level of shine.
If the scratches are quite deep rather than very light and on the surface, then you may need to go back and wet sand again. Sometimes it’s the only way. Double check that the scratches are on the surface of the finish and not in the wood beneath it. If they are in the wood, then you won’t fix it without sanding the finish off completely. I’ve had to do that before.
If you need to wet sand again I’d start with something quite fine, say P800. If that’s not doing much after a good sand then try P600. You shouldn’t need to go below P400.
It’s important to clean and dry off the surface after each grit. You don’t want to push those coarser finish particles around with the finer grit paper and you need to be able to check for obvious scratches. There’s no point going finer if there are still coarser scratches around. Sand until you’ve removed all the scratches left by the previous grit paper.
Loving the way the purple around the pickguard looks. It looks like a neon glow around the pickguard and compliments the purple in the guitar body. Really happy with the way this is all coming together now.
The finish is mirror!
It's coming up the way I imagined, but better than I expected. The finish is mirror-like, and looks great (in my opinion) with the matching purple/black headstock and rosewood fretboard. The only thing I'm not happy with are the screws I used to mount the Tonerider neck pickups. I'm thinking I may not have put the screws in straight, so I may run into trouble adjusting the height of the pickups. We'll see.. Just waiting on a capacitor upgrade to arrive, and I'll get the wiring done, the bridge on, and start setting it up properly.
delete some of your pm's Matthew its full
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126 guitars done so far still going, 34 Starts, 25 Teles, 27 Les Pauls, 11 SGs, 8 Hollow Body, 21 Super Strats
Deleting now... Thanks.
'Purple Thunder' is finished!
What worked:
The look is precisely what I set out to achieve, with a black burst around a deep purple centre and a headstock to match.
What I could have done better:
I was paranoid about sanding through the clearcoat, and there are a couple of very small spots which could have been sanded flatter before wetsanding.
What exceeded my expectations:
The separation created by CA glueing and clearcoating between the purple dye and black burst created wonderful depth in the body. The grain appears to fan out from behind the black bridge, which looks amazing behind the parallel strings. The purple edge around the pickguard looks like a subtle neon halo and really brings out the purple in the body.
If I saw this among a range of bass guitars in a shop, this is exactly the one I'd buy. Oh - and it plays beautifully!
Last edited by Mathew; 10-09-2022 at 05:40 AM.
Superb effort. Look Forward to you future builds. Just starting on my next one tonight. Very addictive!
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