Guitar Refinishing

Sometimes your old classic just needs a fresh start.  Maybe you found a gem that was repainted poorly.  We can carefully strip the guitar, preserving as much wood as possible, clean it, and repaint it professionally.  We use factory-grade polyurethane lacquer that is self-leveling and non-yellowing.  Our last step is a professional quality buffing on our factory-grade guitar buffing wheels.  You'll love seeing your face in the shine on your newly brand-new guitar!

What is refinishing a guitar?

The first category of refinish work is restorative, trying to recreate the original style of finish the guitar left the factory with.  This is typical repaint and repolish work as pictured here.  

The next category is transformative finishes, which include painting an unpainted guitar or stripping and staining a painted guitar, aging/antiquing ("relic-ing"), and leather or other material coverings. We can also chrome-plate and gold-plate parts.

Finally the category of custom paint jobs includes application of specific custom graphics, multi-tone color schemes such as bursts or two-tone styles, or hand-painted effects and details such as lace, pin-striping, or anything else you can imagine.

These different categories all have different price points.

What to expect when refinishing a guitar

Guitar refinish is custom craft work and can only be guaranteed for quality, since every job varies in the condition the guitar starts in. We want to ensure you are thoroughly satisfied and feel like you are enjoying a factory-quality guitar when you use our service.  This requires a huge variety of potential steps including:

• safe disassembly that does not damage any part or the body itself
• electrical disconnection and removal of pickups, jacks, knobs, etc.
• structural repair and wood restoration
• surface repair and wood fill
• sanding and surface grooming
• grain filling and sealing
• part cleaning and restoration
• application of up to 10 coats of primer and color depending on material
• application of up to 8 coats of clear coat depending on material
• for gloss finishes, sanding with 320, 600, 100, 1200, and 1500 grits and buffing on our factory-quality 14" buffing wheels

Many of these steps will vary in the time required depending on the condition of the guitar wood and parts being worked on.  To get you the result you want, they all need to be done right.

How pricing works

A single color, satin, body-only job would start at $600. This does not include part cleaning (starting at $95), build (starting at $275), or setup (starting at $135).  So painting a simple Telecaster is going to run around $1005.00 after everything is built and setup.  Not bad for what is essentially a custom, professionally dialed instrument.