Okay, here is a quirky but strangely appealing little guitar getting a makeover.

Took a little while to think of a suitable design for this little guitar - then wifey suggested doing it as a strawberry...........brilliant!

First thing to do was to get the whole guitar smooth. This little beasty has had a new neck made and glued in, so to make it that bit smoother the neck joint needs some attention.

Here some small holes are drilled into the area around the back of the neck joint and the area roughed up.......

This gives a good surface for the plastic metal epoxy filler to 'key' onto...........

The epoxy filler is then roughly sanded back..........

And the area secondary filled with isopon to fill in any smaller marks...........

This is then rubbed down............

............and primed. The primer shows any 'high spots' and hollows as it's then rubbed down. These high spots are rubbed down smooth and any little hollows and marks refilled and rubbed down again.

Then the guitar re-primered and rubbed down again until it is perfectly smooth. Much better.

Okay, with the guitar smooth and rubbed down it's ready for the design to be drawn in.

The stalk of the strawberry is drawn in and frisk masking film is applied............

The excess masking film is cut away with a scalpel and some more design detail work is drawn in.

The back of the strawberry. Going to try and make this look as if it's been cut in half.

All drawn and masked out where necessary, time to start painting.

Once the main background colour is airbrushed in................

It's time to start putting in some more detailed airbrushing, to give the feel of a round strawberry............

As the details start going in, the design starts to look more like it's intended............a strawberry, rather than the back end of an angry spider after a vindaloo!

All the seeds painted in and a little highlight work done here............unmistakeably a strawberry in the making now.

Onto the back............did wonder whether I was being too ambitious here..........

But thankfully worked out not too bad...........

Here the guitar has been lacquered, rubbed down and the areas already painted have been masked off.

Time to paint in the stalks..........here a white base colour is airbrushed in.

Then after a bit of playing about..........we have something a bit like a strawberry stalk.

The same process was carried out on the front of the guitar...........

The white basecoat helps the lighter green tones to show out better.

Again, not too bad.............will look better after the masking is removed.

And there it is...............the basic strawberry design is finished and ready for finish lacquering.

Almost good enough to eat. One or two little bits to play around with here...........but basically she's ready for finish lacquer coating.

All finished.............

A very simple design, but it looks the business.

Then it's back to Ben at Crimson Guitars ready for some hardware to be fitted.

The pickups, a progression and racer from Wizard are direct mounted to increase the quality of tone.. it also reduces the weight of the guitar as they are rear mounted.. lovely.

Back plates are screwed in place..................

Nice shot of the neck sunburst............

These black machine heads really bring the headstock to life...............really pleased with this little guitar.

All it needs now is the electrics wiring in and a polish and she's good to go!

Wired up.......................

And ready to go.......................job Done!

At the Cumbria Guitar Show...............

Looking good...............

Certainly a small guitar..........

But plays really well.....................'Result'!

 

 

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