Blind-Summit
THE GUITAR PLAYERS COMMUNITY

Ibanez GRX70 Respray

This is my version of a guitar re-spray, where I have added in my own tips as well as stressing some important points that Damo had covered in his article. Performing any alterations or modifications on your guitar can lead to serious and permanent damage. Before attempting anything, you should have a good knowledge of the electronics of your guitar, including an ability to solder wires and components.

Right then, if you’re still reading we shall begin the first part of this article, which is stripping the guitar down. The second part will cover the re-spray and other finishes to the guitar.

First up, you are going to need some tools:

• Assorted screwdrivers - both cross and flat heads. These are to undo the back panels of the guitar, to remove the pickups etc.
• Allen keys in different sizes. - Again, these are used to dismantle pickups & bridges etc.
• Soldering Iron & Solder - To take apart (and put back together!) the wiring inside the guitar.
• Pen & Paper - Applies to the above - you need to draw out the wiring schematic (where the wires go!) so that you can correctly connect the pickups back to the controls / output jack.
• Sandpaper in various grades. I will discuss this in detail later.
• Sanding block & wooden dowel - The block will keep the paper flat to the guitar body to ensure you remove the paint / lacquer evenly. The dowel was essential for removing paint from the cutaways.
• Damp cloth / kitchen paper - To wipe clean the guitar body after sanding

The first step is to remove the hardware from the guitar. Take off the strings and use this as an excuse to get hold of a fresh new set. Remove the machine heads / tuners and the string trees (the little bits of metal in a “T” shape that hold the 1st four strings E B G D to the headstock). Move down to the body, and remove the pickup covers and scratch plate if there is one.  

If your guitar is a strat or similar, where the pickups are wired into the pickup cover, then hold fast. I will come to that in a second. Carrying on, you need to remove the bridge and tremolo system if you have one. Turn your guitar over, and unscrew the back panel where the electronics are.

If you own the aforementioned strat, you will need to get your pen and paper out here. Take a detailed diagram of where the wires all go to. Note the colour, and the exact place that they are soldered onto. For the control pots, take care to see which of the three pins is wired to what. Check if any components have a wire soldered to the case for grounding etc.  

It pays to be extra careful here, and although my diagram looks basic - it has everything I need to put the electronics back together properly. The components are drawn out roughly in the right positions, just to help figure things out later. Each wire has it’s colour written down as well.

With everything removed, you should be left with the body and the neck. The last step is to remove the neck if possible as it makes sanding the body down a lot easier. One last point that will help sanding is to remove any stickers now, as they clog up the sandpaper. As I said with the equipment section, sandpaper has to be selected according to its grade - i.e. the roughness of the sand particles themselves.

I think it’s time for a brief lesson in sandpaper. Firstly, you can obtain many sorts of sandpaper from your local DIY / Hardware store. These may be glass paper, aluminium oxide paper, good old sandpaper, wet and dry paper. The list is huge. Next comes the various manufactures and types of “job” the paper is good for. Now, I have yet to see a store advertise sandpaper as “Ideal for sanding between coats and also removing paint from a musical instrument”. This is where you will have to turn to looking at the grades of paper. The grades range from 50, 60, 70, 80 etc which is a very rough paper indeed up to 1200, 1400, or even the 2000 range. These are the other end of the scale - very fine grade papers. With DIY / Hardware stores, these will also be termed coarse, medium, fine, and extra fine.

A couple of quick pointers: firstly, a non-clogging paper is a good idea as the finish of the guitar tends to build up on the sandpaper and it quickly becomes useless. The non-clogging sort allows the paint to fall away from the paper, and not stick - hence it lasts longer. Next, please DO NOT become tempted to get paint stripper to remove the finish. This is a precision musical instrument, and NOT a fence in your back garden!

To start with, you will want a medium grade paper, around a 200 grade. You don’t want a coarse paper as this will scratch right through the guitar finish and end up leaving great scratches in the guitar wood. Stick with the medium paper and slowly remove the paint and lacquer.

As I said before, a sanding block is a “must have” in this case. This will keep the paper flat against the body and prevent any over sanded and under sanded areas. Always work with the grain of the wood. It helps remove the paint faster for one thing, and also will give you a smoother finish in the end. On the face of the body (back and front) the grain runs in the direction of the fretboard. At the top and bottom sides of the body, the grain again runs in the same direction - left to right (or right to left!) with the fretboard. At the ends of the guitar, the grain will run towards and away from the guitar. In the photos below, this would be in and out of the photo. Have a look at the second photo where I have added some arrows. I must apologise for the quality here - they were taken with a mobile phone camera! 

After you have sanded down the front and back, you will come to the sides and cutaways. The sides shouldn’t prove too difficult - the sanding block will take the bulk of the finish off, and then some careful hand sanding will clean up the edges. When you come to the cutaways, then it’s time to get the wooden dowel out. Wrap a length of sandpaper tightly around the wooden rod several times, and then work up and down the cutaway to remove the paint.Although not necessary (and by no means go out and buy one especially) a workbench with a clamp is very useful. My workbench divides down the middle into two parts. I was able to then clamp my guitar with several layers of old sheets (or dustsheets) so that I could finish sanding. I also found it useful for sanding the sides.

From this photo of the finished body, you may notice a whitish dull area to one side of the pickup selector slot. This is the bare wood exposed. I had managed to sand so carefully, that I had only removed the top lacquer coat and paint, but left the bottom layer of lacquer over the bare wood. From this point, you can continue to carefully remove the last of the finish to expose the bare wood, or to use the existing coat as a base for re-spraying.For a while I have used the guitar in this state, as although the wood is not wild and exotic, I still enjoyed the wooden look. The black hardware also looked pretty nice with it as well.

From here onwards, I have relied more heavily on Damo’s article for choices of primer / paint etc so props to him for the help.

I took a trip up to Homebase (hardware store) and picked up 2 cans of grey Plasti-Kote primer, 4 cans of their matt black paint, and 1 can of flat finish clear sealer. These went for about £5 a can so it wasn’t too painful on the pocket. I also picked up some wetordry paper (3M’s trade name for wet and dry sandpaper) and also a sponge sanding block that had a 180P grit for between coat sanding. This was such a great item as it cleaned off so easily, and gave a great even finish - so I highly recommend it. I was unable to get the 300P fine grade or the rougher grade for taking off the old paint - but it’s worth getting a couple of these in each grade if you can get them.

I gave the guitar a total rubdown with the sanding block P180 and decided to leave some parts that were covered with the wood cover coat. This seemed to be a plastic lacquer placed down as a primer or wood protective layer. I had been sanding at it for ages (sheer elbow grease - no power tools I’m afraid!) and thought I’d chance it with the primer.

I wrapped a fair chunk of the neck in newspaper taped tightly in place with masking tape. This was to protect the fretboard and nut. I used masking tape again to neatly cover the sides and back of the headstock so that paint would only go where I wanted it to. I also used an unfolded paperclip in the string tree screw holes to stop them from clogging up.

I laid down a couple of coats and it seemed to adhere just fine to the wood as well as this old primer layer. I followed Damo’s guide and gave it a few coats and sanded lightly to remove any imperfections.

One tip that I would like to add is that concerning humidity. Moisture in the air will creep into exposed wood. This ever so slightly expands the wood itself and can cause problems later. It also makes it more difficult for the paint to stick to the bare wood or the primer / undercoat / layers of paint.

You can see that a little of the wood was exposed after sanding. I experimented with the headstock as it would be less critical on paint supplies compared to doing the entire body first.

It is understandable that the weather is a force beyond control, but I do advise allowing the guitar to dry between coats in a warm place indoors. Don’t use a hairdryer, or hang the guitar over any other heat source as this can cause blistering in the paint. A warm dry room is ideal.

I then proceeded to apply the topcoat. With the headstock, I was simple able to hold the neck and spray it at the right distance. Again - the old trick of applying quick light coats is the best advice. Don’t be in a rush to see the topcoat in one go. Build it up slowly and you will get great results. I think I put down about 6 coats with some very light sanding in-between. I had a couple of problems where I caught the edges of the headstock and took the paint away to reveal the primer. Not good! I just had to go and re-spray until I had built up a thick enough coat. After a final coat (and no sanding yet) I was left with the following.

This is exactly the finish I was looking for, but then came my next problem. I went and shook up the can of sealer for a good 5 minutes and then tested it on some cardboard. I was slightly worried as the spray was a very thick and left a splatter rather then a fine covering. I put this down to the fact that the lacquer is likely to be thick in consistency anyway. So I went for it - splattered the headstock and left it to dry. I had kept it as horizontal as possible and the sealer gradually settled and left a clear covering. This eventually dried and left a reasonably nice finish. I had to go in with the sandpaper and clean up the "orange peel" look. I went ahead with several more coats until I was happy that it was a good hard cover.

I tried to leave the headstock about 5 hours between each coat just to ensure it was stone dry. The can said 40 minutes - but there’s no harm in giving it extra.

With the guitar body - I did essentially the same thing until it came to the finish. After applying the top coat - I went over it with wetordry paper and managed to get a very flat and smooth finish - but unfortunately I lost the matt finish. I have no idea how it’s possible to spray a matt paint and then use sandpaper to remove the imperfections without causing a shine.

I then sprayed on the 6 or so layers of lacquer and this time, I used the wetordry paper (wet) and managed to get a really nice smooth finish. Again, it turned slightly glossy so I was a little annoyed about this. I imagine that the only way would be to totally omit sanding of the top paint coat, and the top layer of lacquer but then you risk having an uneven finish. I would love to hear how anyone else has managed a decent matt finish. Perhaps it is the paint?

I shall leave you with some photos (apologies for the lack of high-resolution shots. It’s an old 1.3MP camera and I had to scale them down)

If you have any questions or comments - please leave them in the forums under the workshop section.