I opted to use my phone a friend lifeline for the frets in the Vangaurd neck. Kevin at Coyle’s Richboro Music does some cool stuff. One of those is tossing my neck into his refretinator machine.

He shared an update on Instagram, check it out here: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cha8qlSuYGe/

The frets are stainless steel and jumbo-ish size. I have stainless frets in another guitar and I’m never going back. Bending is sooo smooth and they stay clean longer. I hear they last a bujillion years too.

I’m super happy with the work he did, and highly recommend them to anyone looks for fret job. I think he has a mail order service on his reverb page where you can mail a neck and he will do the work and send it back.

There are a few more small jobs to do on the neck and then it’s ready to go.

• Apply a new logo to the headstock
• Clear coat the headstock face, wet sand, and polish.
• Make a new truss rod cover (this is gonna be cool)
• Put satin finish on the back of the neck
• Install tuning machines.

The temperature outside this morning was cooler and low humidity. Time for clear coat!

I’m using Spraymax 2K Gloss Clear in a can. This stuff is nasty so I’m spraying it outside. I set up a tent and blocked off the sides to keep the breeze down. My little Black and Decker workbench hold my guitar holder thing nicely.

I sprayed the whole can on the guitar. 5 or 6 coats and it looks suuuuuper awesome!

Here is a quick video of it in the sun. 🍆💦

Time to repaint the headstock on the Vanguard. Kramer headstocks have a small border of black painted on the sides to give the appearance of a headstock plate. I taped that line off using blue tape. I also covered the other areas that might get over sprayed.

Here is a photo of the little detail HVLP spray gun I have been using. It’s from Harbor Freight and it works real good!

Then I sprayed the headstock with a nice basecoat of Createx Autoborne Sealer Black

Next is a coat of Createx Wicked Gloss Black to finish it off.

After the paint dried a bit, time to peel the blue tape off!

The next step is to add a bit of clear and then a new Kramer logo and more clear.

I sprayed the color coat on the Vangaurd. The color is Createx Candy2O Grabber Orange. It’s the same water based stuff as others. It dries real quick so I was able to put on about 6 coats. This time it’s a proper orange and nobody will mistake for brown or copper.

The color is a dye that is mixed with a clear paint. It’s like a 6:1 ratio of clear to color.

Then I used a small HVLP spray gun to spray it as even as I could. It came out pretty good!

Overall I am happy with it! There are some small imperfections… A hair on the front near the neck pickup, a couple blotches in the silver that show up.

Here is a quick video of what it looks like outside in the sun.

The white basecoat has dried and now it’s silver time! Instead of the charcoal metallic like last time, this time I’ll apply a coat of Createx Wicked Metallic Silver.

This coat came out a bit blotchy looking. Maybe when it dries it will look a bit better.

The next step is some candy orange!

I sprayed the body with a white basecoat. I used Createx Autoborne Sealer White for this. It covered everything up really nice!

The next step is to spray metallic silver.

I was not happy with the paint color, so I’m going to paint it again but use a lighter basecoat this time. Also, I’ll take the opportunity to fill in some dents and dings that showed up when I painted it.

The first step is to sand down the areas with dents and dings.

Then I added Bondo to the areas and let it harden overnight.

The next day, 20 minutes with a palm sander took care of 99% of the paint.

Sanding back the paint leaves some of the black sealer in the teeny dents and dings that I missed. I’m kinda glad they will be filled in now!

The rest of the paint was removed by hand with 320 and paper by hand.

The end result is better than what I started with!

I put the final color coat on the guitar today. The color coat is Createx Candy2o Grabber Orange 4654. This is a clear orange color that lets you see through to the metallic color underneath. The more you put on, the more orange it gets.

I’m very happy with the results! I’ve never sprayed a candy color like this on something that I care about.

Here is a video of it outside so you can see the color better.

After some thought, I don’t really like the color. It looks cool outside and in bright light. Inside and in lower light, it looks way too dark (like brown or copper). I’m going to repaint it using a much lighter metallic base coat.

Stay tuned..

I was too excited and decided to spray the next color. The next step is the metallic color. I used Createx Wicked Charcoal Metallic W359. This paint is also water based and easy to clean up.

It took a few passes to get the coverage right, but hole shit it looks cool!

Here is a quick video of what it looks like outside.

The next step is to spray even coats of candy orange until is looks sexy as shit. I’ll use Createx Candy20 Grabber Orange 4654 for that.

The black and metallic are the easy parts of the paint and I’m pretty nervous about the candy. I’ve only ever sprayed candy color on plastic models.

I sprayed the guitar with a black sealer coat. This is the first of four colors.

This paint is Createx Autoborne Sealer 6002 Black. It’s nice because you can get small amounts of this stuff and it’s water based so it cleans up nice and easy with warm water.

I’m spraying out of a Harbor Freight HVLP detail gun and using my awesome friends compressor and advice.

I was pretty nervous about this. I’ve never used a spray gun on anything I really cared about. Luckily the paint manufacturer has good instructions.

The next color I’ll spray is Createx Wicked Charcoal Metallic 359, followed by Createx Candy2o Grabber Orange 4654, and then lots of 2k clear.

Wish me luck!