A bit off fun!

[Chris Richards]

I know most are going to hate this but sometimes you've just got to have a bit of fun! I do a lot of relic guitars and restorations where the customer wants the guitar to have an aged look, I know lots of people have differing views regarding relicing guitars, from my point of view as long as you aren't trying to fake anything then it's fine and personally I love the aged look.

Anyhow, with this one I just wanted to go way over the top! For a couple of reasons...a) As an experiment to try out different ageing/relicing techniques...b) I couldn't help myself! There's nothing at all spectacular about the build, it's basically a cellulose sea foam green finish and a load of slap dash unhindered ageing techniques. The inspiration came from watching Vegas Rat Rods episodes where they generally finish cars retaining the desert bleached/rust look.


Let me know honestly what you think, if you hate the thing please say!

[Chris Richards]

A bit *of* fun....Grrr!

[Christ Kacoyannakis]

Looks aged all right. Not my thing, for sure, but there are all kinds of tastes in the world, and somewhere, somebody will think this is the coolest thing in the world, and they will love it. That's the only thing that is important.

[Beate Ritzert]

In my opinion, relicing should mimic "natural wear", regardless heavily relicked the instrument is. Which means that wear from the right arm should be visible. Is that the case here?

[Freeman Keller]

I just always assume that when some one relics a guitar they take a hammer and pound on the frets, dump a little sand in the tuners. Break the truss rod, leave a couple of screws out of the bridge. Wiggle a wire on a pickup until it breaks, just enough to be intermittent, pour something caustic into a pot so it gets nice and scratchy. I expect too much relief, buzzes around the 16th fret, divots in the fretboard, and, oh, make the ends of the frets nice and sharp.

Don't just make it look like poop, make it poop.

I'll add a little anecdote. About the time I built my first Les Paul clone (which was based on the '59 burst and is not relic'ed) we saw a wonderful blueswoman in Chicago. During break I was chatting her up and commented that her LP must be really old from the amount of wear. She said "no, its pretty new. I just play the s**t out of it"

[Brian Evans]

Just a bit o'fun, I don't mind. Right arm wear might be more, the fretboard is OTT (who plays the last fret enough to get that much wear), but the headstock stood out as almost minty, particularly the back. Anyway, I like the concept of duplicating the age and wear of a genuinely old, worn out guitar, scratch for scratch, ding for ding.

[David King]

I'm intrigued by what appears to be a close encounter with a blowtorch over the pick guard and pickups. The knobs seem to have been turned by a giant with hot sandpaper skin. "Over the top" describes it well and in a way I see it as a very welcome parody of the whole relic'd movement. I like the color scheme for the body, it stands tastefully on it's own.

[John Clifford]

A Mad Max guitar! It reminds me of the first car I bought after high school.

[Chris Richards]

Thanks for the comments, I like Mad Max guitar! I think my initial post lead to some confusion, I had no intention of doing a realistic relic, it was a project to experiment with different techniques. More often than not when doing a realistic relic the more complicated and accurate you try to be the more contrived the overall appearance becomes, I've found that the technique you use is the most important thing for reproducing realism. But equally the suggestion above of making the guitar play like poop as well as looking like poop is somewhat baffling!


At the end of the day the most thrilling thing for me is selling or lending out my guitars and seeing them used on stage, I don't see the point of building them and ending up with piles of guitars in every room of the house, so anyway I can think to get my guitars noticed I will try and fortunately there's quite a few guitrists who like to get noticed and seen playing something different and this guitar fits that bill quite well, it's currently shared by two guitarists and just like the comments here it's loved or hated but never ignored.


Thanks for the comments and all the best to everyone for the New Year

[Steve Sawyer]

I'm not at all into relic'd instruments, but I have to say, this poor thing looks like it got left behind in the fire from which B.B. King (according to legend) rescued "Lucille", was spray-painted by a drunk, left hanging for a couple of years on the back wall of the wood shed, and was then tied to the back bumper of a pickup truck and dragged around the county!!

Obviously, you're a man who doesn't believe in half-measures.

Seriously, a beautiful job!! I can definitely see someone falling in love with this, and not resting until it's part of their collection.

[Mark Wybierala]

For what I believe you're trying to accomplish, its awesome. Post Katrina rescue is what I'd call it. It should have a cameo appearance on the Walking Dead. I don't believe that the producers of the Walking Dead have exploited the fact that zombies do not drown in rivers although I do remember a great scene when there were zombies living under the mud next to a river bank from a mud slide. Yea its overkill but its done with obvious skill. It is exactly what one would find in a basement after a catastrophe.

[Steve Sawyer]

Just realized in looking at this again, the pick guard looks "rusty". Great effect!!

[Chris Richards]

Thanks again for the comments guys! I'm liking "Catastrophe Strat" mulling over in my mind what headstock decal I could come up with around this theme?

[Matthew Lau]

I know I'm late to the party, but how about "Catastratphe?"