# Staining a basswood guitar



## Betterlaidplans (Mar 5, 2007)

Okay I have an old schecter omen 6 with a basswood body, its loaded with a duncan distortion in the bridge and a jazz in the neck. essentially i don't want to get rid of it and i really like natural colored guitars. So I was thinking maybe i could stain it it bring its appearance up with its sound. Any thoughts as to whether its worth the time and effort?


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## noodles (Mar 5, 2007)

Basswood is just not the type of wood that accepts stain well. It generally has a lot of voids that need to be filled before painting, so sanding it down will more than likely expose patches of wood filler. Even then, green mineral streaks are highly common, and the grain is so open that it will just continually suck up stain. You don't see natural finishes on basswood for this very reason.


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## 7 Strings of Hate (Mar 5, 2007)

yea, i love basswood, but it does have those green streaks often


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## darren (Mar 5, 2007)

I believe the JEM7RB ("Root Beer") was lightly burnt around the edges and overall to bring out the grain a bit, then stained yellow/brown and then clearcoated. A tinted clear may also be a way to get some colour while keeping some of the grain showing through. A slight toasting of it might also help neutralize the green mineral streaks.


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## Betterlaidplans (Mar 5, 2007)

hmmm, good point noodles. I suppose I'll just sell it and get a Schecter hellraiser seven and shred on that.


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## Necky379 (Mar 5, 2007)

i did a squier stagemaster body in tung oil. you should consider doing that. it doesnt get as dark as a stain but im sure it would be easier. it took a lot of oil and took forever to cure. if i did it again id blend it with rubbing alcohol or something to make it dry faster. it teally looked nice but when i got the paint off the body it turned out to be like 5 or six pieces of wood under a thin veneer (which i ended up sanding through acidently). i looked into doing some thing i think was called ?violin oil? but they had pure tung oil at the hardware store so i ended up using that. the violin stuff is real dark. i remember there was two types of tung oil, one was pure the other was some imitation, probably tung oil blended with some type of solvent or maybe it's completly fake all together...

anyone know an easy way to get paint off? it was hell when i did it. id like to try it again with my new heat gun.


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## Shawn (Mar 5, 2007)

I've thought about stripping my S 7420, which is mahogany, and staining it, but im still undecided about it.


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## Betterlaidplans (Mar 7, 2007)

Shawn said:


> I've thought about stripping my S 7420, which is mahogany, and staining it, but im still undecided about it.



that would look awesome. Buzz from Unearth did that with his S7. I'm sure you can google search some pics and see what it looks like to get an idea if it's a good idea for you or not.


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## thrill74 (Mar 7, 2007)

On my 7420 I sanded the pink off of it and used a lower grit around the edges. Then my other guitar player used some linseed oil, only like 3 coats. It came out looking pretty nice, almost a light almond color with the edges much darker. But a nice wear spot apeared where my palm rested by the bridge. When I get it back from getting the trem posts filled then I'll put up a pic. My other guitar plaer did the same on his AX7 but it was Mahogany and turned out just like those AX120's and RG321's that are just oiled.

Edit: I almost forgot, I have a pic of it as my main myspace pic 
http://www.myspace.com/willrawlings


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## jtm45 (Mar 8, 2007)

You can get opaque stains that would just give you a solid colour stain.
That would be pretty cool in the right colour and it would still give you a nice open sounding guitar.


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