Guildedagain
Enlightened Member
Paint your wagon, paint your cannon ;[]
What effin cannon?
Disclaimer; It's not a real cannon but much lighter and tons more fun.
My '71 F-30. "Aragorn"
It's been thru a lot, got some scars.
I don't play it much these days. It's been years since I made the mistake of buying it, folks on the site hollering "Send it back" but I kept it because it was so nice and bizarre at the same time. Has so much going on cosmetically, I couldn't think of the tone objectively.
But then it started winning some shootouts against my other guitars, as I've posted along the way.
Just lately I used it to jam along with one of Woody's latest postings/composition, which was actually awesome and made me realize that the guitar sounds amazing in E flat.
So it's been hanging around downstairs, in the case, since wife left on trip, and yesterday the weather was so nice I decided to take it outside and play it, on a bench in front of the house.
Totally alone, no calls, interruptions, I start played it and reach for my Dunlop .73 I keep in pick pocket.
Something to note about the "cheap Japanese tuners" on this guitar; I like the big buttons, and the tuners are super smooth, the guitar easy to tune, and it lets you concentrate on playing. Maybe it was the stinky TriFlow I like to put all all tuners that made them better, or what's going on there, but they are just really nice tuners.
In open D tuning.
And I start wailing on it pretty hard and you could get hearing loss from this guitar!
It is stupidly loud, and it doesn't fall apart. It fits the description "cannon" to a T. I could play at a 1/4 of this volume and drown people out and/or get instant complaints from she who like to be obeyed.
I'm guessing people that live quite a distance away can hear it, if they're outside.
I mean strummed hard, it's crazy loud, and it vibrates, to the point you wonder if some braces are rattling. Would be interesting to put a borescope inside to see what's happening when you play like that.
Eventually, I got cold, end of day, concert over and headed back in.
As insane as that guitar sounds, it has a cosmetic issue that's been bugging me for a long time.
There's some very white compound/old wax or outlining the whole pickguard, stuck in the micro cracks. Virtually part of the finish, water on a paper towel wouldn't phase it. The white stuff actually in some crazing in several places, unsightly.
Somehow gears were turning in my head, how can I fix this truly insignificant problem?
I started with the wet/dry towels and old toothbrush and got absolutely nowhere fast.
Thinking about a way to cover it up, I remembered my kiddo gave me a great unlined notebook and some fancy pens for Xmas, and found them.
A set of Gray/Black art ink pens.
I like to doodle and sometimes draw cartoons when taking notes on marital discord, like Andy Capp. These are private and seriously not appreciated by subject, lol.
Anyway, the set of pens has a black brush, micro brush, talk about effing serendipity, wow.
So, I get the guitar on the case on the kitchen table, all the things you can do while the cat's away, and with a headlamp and with my strongest up close work glasses, I went around the pickguard, some part of the rosette where that stupid wax compound was stuck in micro cracks, and this is where it gets crazy! I started painting it in crazing cracks around the PG and a long pre crack on the bass side of the soundhole, the paint would soak right in, disappearing the while lines previously visible, and the excess could either be let dry, or buffed off with a finger tip, it played real nice with the guitar's top, it's water based ink and somewhow blends with the original finish just right, if you have a sunburst.
This is where it gets weird/interesting.
So I've got these glasses on, you can only see a couple inches away, and as I started painting all these other problem areas on the guitar, like tiny areas of shrunken binding around the edges, with a smidge of compound stuck in there, a thin line, easy to cover, and I noticed that the back of the neck joint was quite chipped out around the corners and in fact I could see cut marks with a razor blade where a luthier had previously cut the guitar for a neck re-set.
And I'd never known this in all the years I've had this guitar!
So, I painted all that in too, the slicing job was pretty good but bumped up a little at the end on one side, all covered up now.
The black seemed to blend in with the guitar's finish amazingly well. As well, there are exposed wood on each side of the backside of the neck joint, chipped out finish, and compound stuck in there as well, and the paint pen instantly soaked into the wood's grain there making it basically invisible, matching it to the finish.
I used it around the sound hole on a couple minuscule edge spots, invisible.
If you smudge a little, just go over it with your fingertips, wipes right off finish when still wet.
And on areas that are more persistent, it dries quickly and repeated applications builds up very fast.
So I basically fixed the guitar in half hour's time.
I was like Michelangelo with my tiny brush, trying hard not to eff it up.
It was killing my back, stooping over it like that.
Results were just simply amazing.
Night and day. The guitar looks way more fabulous now.
This guitar's got this weird thing going on where it's repaired in the pickguard area, long story, posted originally, even poo pooed by some but whatever, and so the pickguard is not only somewhat sunken into the top, it's like part of the top like it's melted* on there, and then the finish around the guard is crystalized, jagged, with the compound stuck in, making a jagged white outline around the pickguard, visible enough to be quite distracting.
* Summer of 2016 when I joined up after buying a D4-12 with pickguard issues. I was "fixing" this issue on a hot summer day, things got weird and the pickguard exploded into a ball of flames, right in the middle of the woodshop, lol... I wish I could forget that.
Pics.
White crud, ick.
Art pens
In action
The guitar now, excuse end of good light of day pics.
Perfect, and fixed many other defects.
Made the cuts in the finish for the neck reset invisible after repeated passes of the paint pen.
Blended in the bare wood where finish is chipped out, 100% improvement as well as probably some sealing.
What effin cannon?
Disclaimer; It's not a real cannon but much lighter and tons more fun.
My '71 F-30. "Aragorn"
It's been thru a lot, got some scars.
I don't play it much these days. It's been years since I made the mistake of buying it, folks on the site hollering "Send it back" but I kept it because it was so nice and bizarre at the same time. Has so much going on cosmetically, I couldn't think of the tone objectively.
But then it started winning some shootouts against my other guitars, as I've posted along the way.
Just lately I used it to jam along with one of Woody's latest postings/composition, which was actually awesome and made me realize that the guitar sounds amazing in E flat.
So it's been hanging around downstairs, in the case, since wife left on trip, and yesterday the weather was so nice I decided to take it outside and play it, on a bench in front of the house.
Totally alone, no calls, interruptions, I start played it and reach for my Dunlop .73 I keep in pick pocket.
Something to note about the "cheap Japanese tuners" on this guitar; I like the big buttons, and the tuners are super smooth, the guitar easy to tune, and it lets you concentrate on playing. Maybe it was the stinky TriFlow I like to put all all tuners that made them better, or what's going on there, but they are just really nice tuners.
In open D tuning.
And I start wailing on it pretty hard and you could get hearing loss from this guitar!
It is stupidly loud, and it doesn't fall apart. It fits the description "cannon" to a T. I could play at a 1/4 of this volume and drown people out and/or get instant complaints from she who like to be obeyed.
I'm guessing people that live quite a distance away can hear it, if they're outside.
I mean strummed hard, it's crazy loud, and it vibrates, to the point you wonder if some braces are rattling. Would be interesting to put a borescope inside to see what's happening when you play like that.
Eventually, I got cold, end of day, concert over and headed back in.
As insane as that guitar sounds, it has a cosmetic issue that's been bugging me for a long time.
There's some very white compound/old wax or outlining the whole pickguard, stuck in the micro cracks. Virtually part of the finish, water on a paper towel wouldn't phase it. The white stuff actually in some crazing in several places, unsightly.
Somehow gears were turning in my head, how can I fix this truly insignificant problem?
I started with the wet/dry towels and old toothbrush and got absolutely nowhere fast.
Thinking about a way to cover it up, I remembered my kiddo gave me a great unlined notebook and some fancy pens for Xmas, and found them.
A set of Gray/Black art ink pens.
I like to doodle and sometimes draw cartoons when taking notes on marital discord, like Andy Capp. These are private and seriously not appreciated by subject, lol.
Anyway, the set of pens has a black brush, micro brush, talk about effing serendipity, wow.
So, I get the guitar on the case on the kitchen table, all the things you can do while the cat's away, and with a headlamp and with my strongest up close work glasses, I went around the pickguard, some part of the rosette where that stupid wax compound was stuck in micro cracks, and this is where it gets crazy! I started painting it in crazing cracks around the PG and a long pre crack on the bass side of the soundhole, the paint would soak right in, disappearing the while lines previously visible, and the excess could either be let dry, or buffed off with a finger tip, it played real nice with the guitar's top, it's water based ink and somewhow blends with the original finish just right, if you have a sunburst.
This is where it gets weird/interesting.
So I've got these glasses on, you can only see a couple inches away, and as I started painting all these other problem areas on the guitar, like tiny areas of shrunken binding around the edges, with a smidge of compound stuck in there, a thin line, easy to cover, and I noticed that the back of the neck joint was quite chipped out around the corners and in fact I could see cut marks with a razor blade where a luthier had previously cut the guitar for a neck re-set.
And I'd never known this in all the years I've had this guitar!
So, I painted all that in too, the slicing job was pretty good but bumped up a little at the end on one side, all covered up now.
The black seemed to blend in with the guitar's finish amazingly well. As well, there are exposed wood on each side of the backside of the neck joint, chipped out finish, and compound stuck in there as well, and the paint pen instantly soaked into the wood's grain there making it basically invisible, matching it to the finish.
I used it around the sound hole on a couple minuscule edge spots, invisible.
If you smudge a little, just go over it with your fingertips, wipes right off finish when still wet.
And on areas that are more persistent, it dries quickly and repeated applications builds up very fast.
So I basically fixed the guitar in half hour's time.
I was like Michelangelo with my tiny brush, trying hard not to eff it up.
It was killing my back, stooping over it like that.
Results were just simply amazing.
Night and day. The guitar looks way more fabulous now.
This guitar's got this weird thing going on where it's repaired in the pickguard area, long story, posted originally, even poo pooed by some but whatever, and so the pickguard is not only somewhat sunken into the top, it's like part of the top like it's melted* on there, and then the finish around the guard is crystalized, jagged, with the compound stuck in, making a jagged white outline around the pickguard, visible enough to be quite distracting.
* Summer of 2016 when I joined up after buying a D4-12 with pickguard issues. I was "fixing" this issue on a hot summer day, things got weird and the pickguard exploded into a ball of flames, right in the middle of the woodshop, lol... I wish I could forget that.
Pics.
White crud, ick.
Art pens
In action
The guitar now, excuse end of good light of day pics.
Perfect, and fixed many other defects.
Made the cuts in the finish for the neck reset invisible after repeated passes of the paint pen.
Blended in the bare wood where finish is chipped out, 100% improvement as well as probably some sealing.
Last edited:
