I wrapped my Prototype in green vinyl

[bry4321]

After allowing myself to get egged on to buy this Prototype I made a few changes. 1: The finish, while nice, reminded me of my parents' 1970s Ethan Allen coffee table. I didn't want to paint it so I watched some youtube videos and tried to wrap it in vinyl. 2: Took out the neck pickup and replaced the other (non-stock) pickups with Gravelins. 3. Took out one of the switches, kept all 3 knobs, 2 volume/1 tone, had the remaining switch point down to use bridge pickup which I believe is the opposite of how they worked when new but which seems more intuitive.

I kind of lucked out because I was able to sell the pickups that were on the guitar so my out-of-pocket costs were pretty minor. 

Re: wrapping. My advice, don't do it unless you have a flat surface and are just putting on a flag or skull sticker or something like that, or unless you have a friend who works at a graphics shop or car-wrap place who knows what they are doing. There is a reason I didn't show a picture from the side. However I have no regrets since I can just heat it, pull off the wrap, and go back to the original. 

The following people deserve no blame for the final result, but I got amazing help from Gravelin for the pickups, which sound great to my amateur ears, Frets on the Net for the replacement pickup ring (the original was smashed in one corner), Chandler/Pickguard Planet for the replacement pickguard (the original was routed out for a neck pickup), and the HFC members who weighed in pro/con before I bought it. 

[Steve Haynie]

Sea foam green makes any guitar look good.

[beezerboy]

oh, the humanities....

[Disturber]

Does the vinyl "kill" the tone much? Must be worse than putting a very thick layer of poly on a guitar. I love the original 70s look. Still, congrats if you are happy! 🌝 ⚡⚡💫

[bry4321]

8 hours ago, Disturber said:

Does the vinyl "kill" the tone much? Must be worse than putting a very thick layer of poly on a guitar. I love the original 70s look. Still, congrats if you are happy! 🌝 ⚡⚡💫

Thanks @Disturber--that is a logical assumption and a big possible drawback I should have mentioned in the first post. I wish I could tell you the difference if any but I am old and deaf, so I am just going assume "it boosts the tone." 😎🤣

[ZR]

The front looks cool.

What does the back of the guitar look like wrapped?

[cmatthes]

I highly doubt that a wrap will kill tone.  The myth about thick finishes killing tone was debunked years ago.   
 

I mean, maybe Eric Johnson or a dog could hear the difference in something as thin as a human hair, but it’s really not in the hearing spectrum of the overwhelming majority of humans to distinguish that.

]

[Steve Haynie]

Does the wrap "breathe" like a proper finish? 😉

[bry4321]

3 hours ago, ZR said:

The front looks cool.

What does the back of the guitar look like wrapped?

Thanks, I will get a pic. The big challenges were the sides and the curves/horns. Also I had hoped the vinyl would hide some of the dings in the finish but it didn’t really. I have no idea how durable this will be without some kind of topcoat. The vinyl is pretty inexpensive, I went to rvinyl. Plus got a heat gun from Amazon and a few craft supplies. 

[cmatthes]

I vastly prefer the new color!

[bry4321]

On 10/23/2022 at 9:13 AM, ZR said:

The front looks cool.

What does the back of the guitar look like wrapped?

I cut out a piece for the back first then cut it around the edges of the guitar, then cut out a piece for the front and overlapped it with the back piece. That is where it looks the worst, but I wasn't too worried about it and was not very patient. It is also an area where I think someone who knows what they are doing could do a MUCH better job, and why I would try to outsource it unless you just want to experiment yourself. I was pretty nervous about getting a knife close to the body and gouging the finish. 3M sells some kind of knife-tape that I think would help too with practice. I could probably heat some of the areas where the vinyl overlaps and around the plate/cover to make them less noticeable. You may be able to see on the back how the vinyl makes some of the various dings show up, and you can see how the vinyl wrinkled because I wasn't good at heating/stretching it to fit. 

 

EDITED TO ADD: Anyway, you can see why I only showed a pic of the front earlier 😎

[princeofdarkness56]

Dings and wrinkles ?? The correct vernacular in the Hamer guitar world would be mojo. Or if you ever decided to sell it and wanted big bucks, the word I would use would be relict. 

[JGale]

"Pizza Friday" is popular as well.

[Biz Prof]

On 10/21/2022 at 8:11 PM, bry4321 said:

Re: wrapping. My advice, don't do it unless you have a flat surface and are just putting on a flag or skull sticker or something like that, or unless you have a friend who works at a graphics shop or car-wrap place who knows what they are doing. There is a reason I didn't show a picture from the side. However I have no regrets since I can just heat it, pull off the wrap, and go back to the original. 

Looks very nice from the front...where it matters.

[tommy p]

What is the weight of the wrap?  How is the wrap's acoustic tone?  Is the wrap waterproof?  Does the wrap anger easily?  So many questions...

[burningyen]

On 10/23/2022 at 12:00 PM, cmatthes said:

I highly doubt that a wrap will kill tone.  The myth about thick finishes killing tone was debunked years ago.   

I haven't yet seen a real debunking. John Suhr is someone whose experience I respect, and he seems to think there's some effect, but maybe not a huge one relative to other factors:

The type of finish means nothing. The sound wave can’t spell what’s on the paint label.

It’s the properties of the finish and the thickness that matter but compared to other things it is an aesthetic preference and that is about it. Funny enough after testing at Fender everyone preferred at least a few coats of polyester sealer compared to a raw body and it was the opposite of what everyone thought they would like. The painted bodies had more bass. Personally I don’t like nitro on necks because it gets soft when hot and sweat will deteriorate the finish making it sticky. At least for me.

 

[kizanski]

He's full of shit.  

[bry4321]

1 hour ago, burningyen said:

I haven't yet seen a real debunking. John Suhr is someone whose experience I respect, and he seems to think there's some effect, but maybe not a huge one relative to other factors:

The type of finish means nothing. The sound wave can’t spell what’s on the paint label.

It’s the properties of the finish and the thickness that matter but compared to other things it is an aesthetic preference and that is about it. Funny enough after testing at Fender everyone preferred at least a few coats of polyester sealer compared to a raw body and it was the opposite of what everyone thought they would like. The painted bodies had more bass. Personally I don’t like nitro on necks because it gets soft when hot and sweat will deteriorate the finish making it sticky. At least for me.

 

Maybe this will clear things up

 

Before wrap: 

 

 

After wrap: 

 

 

 

[LucSulla]

Just call it relic'd. 

I think whatever makes you want to pick it up more is justified by that alone. 

As far as paint:
 

 

Whatever the effect wood or paint has on tone, my personal opinion is that it's so negligible as to be meaningless when it comes to what I do to get paid. No one is going to notice a slight dip in midrange or a tad more sparkle at Bubba's Redneck Cavalcade or Pete's Lawyer Blues bar. I lean more into keeping a variety of pickups in my guitars than a variety of tone woods and finish thicknesses. The PAF Joe DiMarzio neck I have in my 82 Les Paul Custom sounds a helluvalot more like the PAF Joe in my JS1200 than they sound different, and most of the difference can be attributed to pickup position and scale length. 

I go for gear that:

1. Works every time.
2. Dials in easily.
3. Most importantly, makes me enjoy playing on or through it.

Personally, I think everything else is just campfire ghost stories. BUT - if that nitro finish makes someone want to pick a guitar up more than the same thing with poly, by all means, go with nitro. Whatever makes you want to play more.

[bry4321]

UPDATE

Tone before vinyl wrap: 

Tone after vinyl wrap: