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Paisley Telecaster

By Andrew | December 21, 2007

As it’s been over a year since I’ve assembled a guitar and I’ve mostly forgotten how painful the experience is, about a week ago I figured I’d try it again. I’d even forgotten the promise to myself to never, ever, try to shoot lacquer again as the process is time consuming, infuriating and just overall sucky. Not only did I forget that promise, I decided to try for a paisley telecaster, which entails gluing material to the guitar body and shooting it with gallons of sanding sealer until the texture of the fabric disappears.

Yep, I’m insane.

USA Custom Guitars occasionally has specials on bodies so I picked up a 3 piece telecaster body for 90 bucks. Usually I’d want a light body for assembling a guitar, but in this case I decided to go for the cheapest one I could find since I’m a) covering the entire sumbitch in fabric and b) covering that in piles and piles of lacquer. Yeah, no thin-skin corksniffer nitro here. I’m pretty sure this is going to end up with all the sustain and tone of a banjo.

The tutorial I read on the net said to use wood glue, but I decided to use spray on adhesive to attach the fabric to the body. This might come back to bite me since I think the solvent in the lacquer is the same as the solvent in the adhesive, meaning that if I shoot the sanding sealer too heavy it dissolves the adhesive, giving me bubbles in the fabric (damn it).

Also, since I don’t have a patio on which to shoot lacquer this time around, I’ve decided to use the shower stall in my apartment. As this has no ventilation whatsoever I’m inadvertently huffing the lacquer and now I have a headache.

I’ve now finished gluing, the initial trim of the fabric and have shot a couple coats of sanding sealer. Something tells me I’m going to be shooting sanding sealer for the next month or so as the fabric is just starting to look like there’s lacquer on it.

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