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Custom Bass Weblog - The birth of 'the
schizoid man' |
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By Kevin from Bristol Rocks |
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The Preparation |
Sveeart
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The Detail |
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The Rear of the bass |
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The Finished Paint job |
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Here's the story, I own
the
best bass guitar in the universe. It is a
Status that was made just
for me by Rob Green, made to my spec & it
does everything perfectly.
At my last gig I broke a string and that prompted
me to get a second axe. The
Status is headless and I wanted another headless
so I bought a Hohner 'The Jack' from e-bay for a reasonable £216. The bass
is shown below. |
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The Hohner is great,
after some work on the action it plays fine and has a good range of sounds
in active mode. My only problem with it is that it is dull (The
Status has
some cool visual enhancements)
I have decided that the new bass needs a custom paint job to liven it up.
After some thought and a few hours on Photoshop I decided that I would like
to use the brilliant and iconic design from the King Crimson album 'The
court of the Crimson King' |
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After some searching on
the web I found a spray artist advertising on e-bay and willing to paint up
the bass for 300 quid. I contacted Svee and sent him my attempts at merging
the two images: |
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Svee has agreed to carry out the work and I will be
letting you know how the project progresses.
Now you may or may not like my concept for the custom paint job, but if you
look on Svee's site you will see what he is capable of. I think that £300 is
a good price for the job. The rear of the guitar will look something like
the image below where the art has been blagged from the same album cover. |
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Svee is to start work
at the beginning of February and Since he has a web cam in his studio you
will be able to see him at work.
Keep an eye on this
blog and you will see the project progress and ultimately the birth of 'The
Crimson' |
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The Preparation
Feb 6th 2007 |
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Well first
thing was first, getting the electrics and hardware out of the
way. The electrics in the bass guitar looked a little more
complicated to what I am used to in a normal 6 string guitar so
I decided to leave the electrics in, just tuck them all away and
seal all the holes in the wood where they were. |
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Then I had to
make the surface of the guitar rough so the primer/sealer would
have something to stick to. This is done by sanding the whole
guitar slightly with a coarse sandpaper just till you get the
surface to look dull rather than shiny. Once this was done I
sanded out the dings on the front and rear and also sanded out
the buckle rash on the rear. Then applied some filler and smooth
it all off again. |
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Then comes the
primer/sealer. |
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Then comes the
base colour (black) which I don’t have a pic of at the mo but
its on my webcam. The whole guitar is currently a deep black
ready for me to start work on the detail. |
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The Detail |
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Once the
guitar was sprayed black I drew the outline onto the guitar
using white chalk |
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Then I
started on the shading using just white at this time |
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Once that was
done it was time to get some black in there |
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Black
continued… |
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Black
finished |
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Then a mix or
red and orange candy paint was used to color it all in |
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All that is
left to do on the front now is a few white highlights on the
flesh and then its on with the design on the back. |
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The
Rear of the Bass - 22-2-2007 |
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First off here
is the back in a primed state… |
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Then, just
like the front, the image was sketched onto the guitar using
white chalk, then the image was built up using just white paint… |
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Then some
black was added… |
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And then a mix
of reds and oranges was applied to make the shade of red used
and white highlights were added… |
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Just got to
finish up the end of the neck tomorrow night and then its off to
Bournemouth for the clear coating process on Friday morning. |
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The Finished Paint job -
4-3-2007 |
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| #kin
Awesome!! |
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Sveeart Website |
