Renewing a guitar

Hi!

For a long time now I have been unsatisfied with my red Charvel guitar. It plays well, but I don't like the looks of it.

The old look

I have for a year or so thought about having it repainted. But I just recently stumbled on a post somewhere on the internet about someone who had changed his guitar's look using something called a guitar skin. I have never heard about it before, but I found out that there are several web shops that sells guitar skins, or wraps. You can select from a number of templates or design one of your own. Nice!

I found one company in Europe that sells guitar skins, Guitarskins.eu, so I placed an order there. Unfortunately Guitarskins.eu had gone out of business so I had to look further for a web shop with a nice guitar skin design. I found one called Wrap Edge. They make all sorts of wraps, not just guitar wraps. The problem, I thought, with ordering from an American company was the delivery time. But I got my wrap just eight days after placing the order! Really quick considering that they print out the skin after the order is placed. Good job Wrap Edge!!

Since I was eager to get my "new" guitar ready for the gig this weekend, I started with the application the same day I got the skin, i.e. yesterday. First I removed all the hardware. Unfortunately the EMGs in this guitar are old ones without the quick connector. Since I did not want to bother about soldering them loose, I left them "hanging" in their sockets.

First I removed the hardware

I then positioned the wrap symmetrical on the body of the guitar, cut open small holes for the pickups in the wrap, placed the wrap on the guitar and pulled the pickups through the holes so that the wrap could rest on the body of the guitar. After that I removed the protection paper on the bridge side, cut it off with a pair of scissors and gently positioned the wrap on the body to anchor it. The rest of the protection paper was a little difficult to remove, but I managed to get it all off by removing and cutting it off section by section.

Fitting the wrap on the body without getting wrinkles or bubbles was a lengthy process. I was a little nervous that the wrap somehow would get destroyed by the constant putting on and taking off that was required, but nothing happened with it. Quality :-). I think the whole process would have been a lot easier if I had removed the pickups before applying the wrap. I also tried to get as much of the wrap to go over the edges of the guitar as possible, but I had to give up that idea. It was impossible. With that in mind I could have bought a smaller size. Never mind, I'm totally happy with the end result!!

The wrap in place with the pickups on top 

The final result!

The final result a little closer. Can you see the wrinkles?

 The surface does not look good if you are really up close, but at a normal distance from the guitar it looks killer!!! I had to do a couple of small wrinkles on purpose between the pickups so that the rest of the guitar would be wrinkle free. In the end at a normal distance they are impossible to spot so that trick worked out fine. The small dots on the surface here and there must be because of my lengthy putting-on-and-off routine. So if you plan to do this and you are really fastidious, take your time and remove the pickups!

This was a really nice way to refresh an ugly guitar. Cheap and rather easy. I recommend!

Rock on!