Preparations for the Ibanez guitar with Giger design. Messing about with various options. Gathering reference material, positioning, moving, scaling, composing images, whatever is necessary to come to a good design. Meticulous preparation is everything. Below you see one of the trials. I'll probably use
Inspire uros for this one.
Click the pic to see it big.
Preparations Nov 7 2012. Since I am not too familiar with the behaviour of Inspire uros (to a level where I can predict exactly what it is going to do), I will test the paint on my own guitar first. Below are some pics of the dis-assembly, degreasing and masking, The photo of the bay for the switches and wiring was shot to be able to connect the pick-ups correctly after spraying. Now the sanding can start with 2000 grid wet paper. No need to ground, since the existing paint layer is fully in tact. Just sand it to give the paint some grip.
 |
| Switch and wiring bay to record connections |
 |
| Switch and wiring bay cut wires |
 |
| Wiring bay tape mask |
 |
| Front side degreasing |
I bought a bottle of Candy Brown some time ago to get to know Inspire somewhat and so far I think it is brilliant. HOK like behavior. But having the experience that the conduct of different colors of a brand can display a slightly different acquit, I feel safer to first test the paint thoroughly on this axe before I start to work on the Ibanez. The day after tomorrow I will buy the colors I need to do the test spraying. Updates when progress is visible in this post.
Update November 9 2012. Bought Inspire base color paints. Testing. Mix-ratios upto 20 x more thinner than paint which works fantastic (and this is not even the limit). Coverage and handling are fabulous. Waterborne acrylics are no match whatsoever for this type of paint. I requires slightly different adjustments - lower air pressure and somewhat harder needle spring setting, probably because the paint is thinner and is able to pass through minute openings between needle and nozzle (or perhaps I need to take an other look at the needle polishing angle...). It allows to spray thinner lines than acrylics and has an easier to predict conduct, i.e. varying along the way of line width.
 |
| Inspire uros, base | |
|
|
|
|
The colors (from left to right) are: bright blue, magenta, yellow, bright purple, green, white and black. Costs as much as Createx Wicked. I also have a candy brown that has even finer pigments than the base paints. But it will not be used in this project. While testing, I got visions again of my House of Kolor days; Inspire is just as good and costs half the amount of money... This is due to the fact that it is produced in the UK and transportation costs are therefore lower for European artists, since uros are considered to be dangerous goods which makes transportation fees a heck of a lot more expensive.
