Fred's SG 3 Pickups

[FredA]

So I prepared another test to compare Keda dyes with some Colortone to see if any dyes would have the same issue.
Only leftover colortone I had is red, so I mixed a red Keda dyes mix and repeated the test, with Keda and Colortone.
Not the same tint as I didn't really try to match them, but both pure red, and as before I kept a reference in the dark in my garage while I exposed the other part.
Before (Keda on the left, colortone on the right):


And after a month (Keda at the top, and colortone at the bottom):


They both lost some colour, but the Colortone resisted a lot better than the Keda dyes...
So Keda is out...

Now, I still want to taint that guitar purple / magenta / violet... so I was looking at getting some colortone from Stewmac, but I was looking at 3x bottles (black, blue, red) and that is a bit steep as I'm not planning too many more blue / red guitars...

And just then Stan posted amazing photos of his purple guitar: http://www.buildyourownguitar.com.au...l=1#post123864

So I just went to get some artist ink, and I'm going to do more testing... but I'm done with the lightfast testing, I'll only test mixing the 3x colours I got blue, violet and black

[FredA]

I ran another test, checking how finish would affect the colour.
I had spare tinted samples, a magenta and a purple one. So I finished a third of each with Feast & Watson Oil based wipe-on poly, another with leftover Dingotone top coat, and the last third with White Knight Clear gloss Acrylic.
I then polished them and compared with s trip I had left bare of finish.

Here's Wipe On Poly outside and inside:


And Acrylic, same outside and inside:


The wipe on poly being oil based did give it a bit of a yellow tint, but it's actually not too bad. The photo taken inside makes it look a lot worse than in real life.
I much prefer Wipe on poly to the White Knight acrylic. It never got hard enough really on my first blue strat, while the WOP I used on the red strat is rock hard in comparison.

So I'm going to go with Minwas water based wipe on poly. I'm hoping I'll get the benefits of the poly, but with a 'clearer' result than oil based.

[Simon Barden]

Full-blast sunlight is a fair test to show you what the effects will be over a long time. I don''t know whether you had any rain during that test period but if so, then that may have leached some colour from the wood as well.

As you've got your test bits of wood, it would be interesting to put them out in the sun to see how they fare with a finish on, and whether one finish protects more from UV than another. Cover half of each piece as a reference.

[FredA]

@Simon: that was not in the open, it's behind glass. So UV are filtered and it was not actually exposed to the elements... otherwise I reckon I may not have found any of the wood left! :-)

The Sun here must be a different star from the northern hemisphere... I come from Europe, I've been here 12 years and I still can't get that unless sunscreen is 50+ it's pretty much useless... your skin just burns after an hour in the sun... and then some critter tries to kill you! :-)


I did a test with a test bit finished in wipe on poly... same result. You can get finishes with UV filters, but I don't think they'd make much of a change really. Most are designed by American or European companies and it's not the same...

Anyway, the point was not really to see how a guitar would react if exposed to full sun all the time... just to test which dyes were more light fast.

[Simon Barden]

I see. Well, glass does filter a lot of UV out, but not all frequencies - which is why art galleries use special UV absorbing films on their windows.

Sydney's latitude is 33.8° south, so not that far off the Tropic of Capricorn, so in mid-summer, the sun isn't that far from vertical and at its most powerful. Even the most southerly parts of Europe only reach down to around 35°N, so the sun will always feel that much stronger where you are. Plus you're affected by the ozone hole in the Antarctic sky, so you'll get a lot more UV than we do in Europe. Reading is roughly level with London, so at around 52°N, our sunshine (if we get it) is a lot less fierce than yours. Even so, factor 30 is pretty much the norm these days.

[FredA]

Now that the Star Wars strat is finished I'm getting really started on the SG.

First here's a pic of my test comparing Keda dyes and Colortone.
The top bits are the references, the bottom ones have been exposed to UV since 3/11 so a bit more than 2 months


Looks like the colortone are a lot more lightfast!

Anyway, that was only to close the experiment as I'm planning to use purple and magenta inks now.

[wokkaboy]

nice test Fred, colortone has kept the colour much better in UV than the dyes, makes the decision much easier.
Purple and magenta should look great on this is a mahogany body ?

[FredA]

I got started on the actual build this morning.
When I received the kit something didn't look quite like what I had in mind with the SG body, but I couldn't figure out what.

The other day I went to the guitar shop in the CBD and I tried a very nice vintage style SG (with 2x P90). I immediately saw what was missing on my kit: the bezels were way too small! That one in the shop had massive beautiful bezels while the kit barely had any bezel around!

I did some research and it looks like the older SGs had big wide bezels, but overtime Gibson shrank them to small bezels.
The new ones now seem to have big wide bezels again. And to me that looks much much better!

So... I had to reshape this body.
I have never done big reshaping before, so I was quite nervous...

I marked the middle line and then the size of the bezels I was planning




And then I got started with the rasp

[FredA]

It took me about 2-3 hours, but I'm pretty happy with the result:






I can now get started with the sanding!

[corsair]

Oh, good work, that man!! See, it wasn't as scary as you thought it was gonna be, was it?!

That's how I remember the SGs I played a lifetime ago; with an enormous chamfered edge!!