DIY relic strat (not for the faint of heart)

taypeng81

New member
Hi there, nothing to shout about, just a share thread on my diy relic strat.


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Life started out for this partscastor as a daphne blue highway one body mated with an eden vintage tint strat neck, loaded with fender 69s. I wasnt happy with the wierd yellow tint and decided to strip the neck down to bare wood and re-finish in nitro lacquer from brightex.

The neck plays nice and smooth now without the sticky feeling of the poly lacquer. I applied the same lacquer to the body but with almost disastrous result. The lacquer tinted the body green and i couldnt get the lacquer out with thinner or even 1 hr plus of wet sanding. I guess theres too much plasticizer in the lacquer? Fortunately the green is pretty even throughout the body so at least from far it looks like a surf green/turquoise color.. zzz.

I resisted relicing the tuners for now for fears that acid will ruin the tuning shafts but the rest of the metal parts got dipped for a good 1hr in brine solution or acid. Interestingly, the guitar sounds less bright now and i think its because of the change of lacquer on the neck.

Its not the finished product yet because the pickguard needs relicing but i couldnt resist just putting her together to play.

In case, i made it sound easy... i mean It was fun but it was also $%^& a lot of work to spray and wet sand the lacquer, really. I'll probably not do it again unless im retired haha.. . anyway thanks for looking!
 
damn i think the colour looks so much better than orginal daphne blue. kudos to you dude!!
 
i believe that every ding and scratch on your guitar should tell a story , if you "relic" it on purpose , it defeats the purpose of having a beat up vintage strat
 
taypeng81 : Really not bad! keep it up. :) always feel like doing some light relic but was not given a chance.. hehe.. But i guess you could wet sand that headstock more to remove the orange peel effect you've got there.
 
the fret board ....finger mark it ...quick!!

The pickup cover and knobs ...put it out in the sun for a couple of days!!
 
donch wan! I wanna be spoonfeed for fricken once!!!!

please also state the price and the bus number to get to the store from Bukit Gombak! :mrgreen:
 
TS, that is one beautiful strat! Ever considered putting the plastic parts out in the sun or maybe soak them in coffee or tea for a few days? You can achieve a nice worned and yellowish white colour by soaking them in tea or coffee. Once again, beautiful strat!

Joe
 
thanks for the kind comments guys, really appreciate it. yeah the relic job is not a complete one. The parts were lying around disassembled for month so after doing some relicing i couldnt resist just putting her together for awhile to hear how she sounded. partly also because i shaved down the neck heel so wanted to test out whether it worked.

will definately get that pickguard and covers under the sun for awhile. im going to try to create some stress cracks also with the help of a heat gun and some liquid N2. not sure what is effect it will have though with the poly undercoat.

btw i got the nitro lacquer from Tat Fong paint at Geylang lor 26. I dont know what bus goes there from bukit timah though haha.. the brand is Betex. i got the one in aerosol can form but it dried too fast to be "real" NC lacquer. Its probably mixed in with plasticizers. just fyi, i heard that from 2005-6 onwards, Gibson also changed their NC lacquer mixture to have more plasticizers (less drying time) I would recommend (if possible) get the liquid can form, which might contain more NC, mix with thinner and spray with a proper spray gun.

Theres another NC lacquer you get can locally also but i havent confirm that yet. the brand is Apilac. The distributor office is somewhere in Kaki bukit. i would try that one instead if im to do this all over again because the betex one has a slight brown-tint. The apilac brand has a "super-clear" NC lacquer.
 
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nice but i prefer the orig neck tint..
can u teach me how to relic..? hehe
have u seen fender custom shop videos?
 
taypeng81: thanks for the info. I was only joking about the bus thingie. :P

I'll do one of my bodies with this Betex nitro next time. :mrgreen:
 
I'm gonna swap the neck out for a rosewood fb one. Yesterday i dropped by GC to have a look at REAL vintages and fender cs relics to see what relicing my strat is missing. im really inspired to get it right now...want to do, must do swee swee otherwise no point doing..

edder - haha good thing bout the shop is the bus stop is just right outside.

arsegras,goose - i needed some time to get use to the greenish color. I'm glad others dont think it looks wierd haha.

eieo, im not qualified to teach man! i just picked up tips from the net. mostly from www.relicdeluxe.com. The only thing i can contribute is that you dont have to use acid to age the metal parts. salt water will do. safer, cheaper etc. use Hot water+lots of salt. Dont soak too long.

and if the metal part does not age after 1 or even 2 hours of soaking. means its not meant to age. if you use acid on it (like i did) it wont turn out right. just use some scotch pad or steel wool or something to rub and take the shine off... hope that helps!
 
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