COMING OF AGE
It’s all in the details – as ProShop manager, Nathan Sharp, explains
“What I’ve tried to show you is the different techniques that we’re doing here,” Nathan tells us. “The V120 was done by one of our technicians who does the kind of ‘rat’ styles – so that’s an acrylic white under-coat and a red acrylic top-coat. Then it’s stripped back and aged. All the parts are individually aged by us as well. It might have been a bit more aged than you were expecting, but we wanted to really show the original sunburst under the red. “I tackled the V100 in a different manner. The original goldtop is over sprayed – as is the headstock face – in nitrocellulose, but we obviously do a little work on the neck back. We have to put the ProShop decal on, so we have to spray that in as well. To do the whole guitar would probably push the final retail price to a full respray cost. Obviously, that’s a lot of money so we decided to concentrate on the main visual: the top of the body and the headstock. “One thing we like to do is to make it look like an old guitar, so, for example, where I’ve plugged the tailpiece stud holes, usually over time – however carefully you plug them – the finish will sink. So I’ve purposely made it look like that. We’re really trying to make these look like they are 40 or 50 years old with the sort of character you would see on those guitars. “There’s probably been about six hours of work that’s gone into that V100, but there are quite a few things on there that I wouldn’t normally do to put into production as a ProShop. As I said, I wanted to show you and your readers the range of stuff we can do, so you’ve got all the whistles and bells on there, although normally I wouldn’t put all of those on the one guitar. And, of course, the spraying is all about waiting – the drying time. So while it might be six or so hours’ work in total, that’s over two to three weeks because it’s taken a couple of weeks for the lacquer to dry before I can craze it. It’s so unpredictable how the finish will crack, too. We use a heat and freeze technique – and I was really happy with the way that one went – but, yes, it can certainly be unpredictable. Although, again, that’s something I like. It means that each guitar has its own uniqueness. “Some of the simpler guitars might only take two to three hours – maybe just changing a pickguard or changing pickups, and a goodquality setup. At the other end, it might be where I’ve hand-scored the finish cracks, which can take around eight hours. We try to keep it within those boundaries; I wouldn’t want us to be spending two or three full days, that’s just not practical for us here.”