Attention Ross: Skinned my guitar today - picstory of sorts

[Cassidy]

Today was the thing. Had some time so I decided to try my hand at putting the guitar skin on the 7620 I just bought. Apologies for this not being the most comprehensive picstory on how to do this, but:

1. I've not tried this or anything like it before, so I'm certainly not an expert
2. It takes a certain amount of care, and I'm a bit of a mono-tasker, so it was hard to remember to stop and grab shots.

That said, hopefully this will give an idea of what's involved.

To start off with, I have a 7620 body knocking about so I used that to draw out my template and cut it down to rough size. I then stripped the guitar down and polished it so the sticker would 'take'. At first I was a little lazy and left the bridge studs and neck attached still. As I got further into it, I removed those to make things easier.



Next up was to cut some small holes to push the p-ups through.



With this done, I set about peeling back the sticker-backing so I could attach the bit behind the trem. I figured this would give me a good starting point. I only peeled back enough to take me up to the trem route, then I folded the backing so it wouldn't get in the way.





I began very gingerly, using a jay cloth to smooth it down as I went. It wasn't trouble-free, but the sticker material is such that you can peel it off gently again to deal with any creases/bubbles that occur (and many did). That said, you can always work bubbles out with a little buffing from the cloth.

Now this is where my mono-tasking kicked in and I didn't get anymore shots. But as we're not talking about anything particuarly technical, hopefully that's forgivable.

I just slowly made my way up the guitar body, folding back (and snipping away where handy) the sticker backing. Once it was covered, I went in with an exacto-knife and cut out the trem and p-up cavities quite roughly.

Here's the (almost) finished result. I need to buy a new blade so I can get in and achieve a smooth cut around all the edges, so it still looks a little rough. But it'll give you an idea of how it ends up.



My girlfriend helped me on this, and I found that pretty bloody useful at points. I guess you can do it on your own, but an extra pair of hands definitely made some parts a lot quicker and easier. Unfortunately, she's not available to help anyone else. She's cooking my dinner!

[jaxadam]

That turned out really good!

[Chris]

That looks great! How are the edges, on the sides and around the pickup routes?

[Ryan]

This does make me feel a little better about the installation process. Looks great man!

[Cassidy]

All the edges are a little rough at the moment. I needa sharper blade to get a decent edge so I didn't tackle it yet. However, I reckon, depending on the sticker you use, obviously, you can get away with some pretty rough cuts around the cavities. I'll grab some shots of the details in a bit.

[Chris]

When I did my UJ kit, it was about an hour to install, and 3 hours with an x-acto knife.

[FrankGoodheart]

I'm very happy you are satisfied with the result and you didn't find too difficult to put the skin on.

Putting a skin may be not super easy, but the other choice is repainting a guitar, and compared to that, putting the skin is a joke, is cheaper, and you can always change idea and take it off.



p.s. - there is another option, leaving the guitar as it is...
but that's for lazy guys :P

[Cassidy]

These are the cavity edges without any cutting. I've gone in quite close to the edge with the blunt blade I was using. It's certainly something you could live with, but I will tidy this up. Otherwise I simply won't be able to sleep!















This shot should give you an idea of how you have to get in quite close to see the edges inside the cavities. A little bit of distance and it's difficult to see the rough edges:



And here's a couple of shots of the uncut outside edges. Clearly I need to get in with a knife on these bits:







Frank, many thanks for this, man. Was very cool of you to toss one over to me. I'm certainly pleased with the result. Once it's all tidied up and I have the zebra p-ups installed, I think it's going to look pretty darn sweet.

[budda]

That is cool!

[Jack Secret]

Don't I know that graphic? Wasn't that on a Peavey Vandenberg in the Whitesnake "Still of the Night" video?