How much to change a neck carve and paint a so so guitar?

Tall_martin

Hi,

I've always liked vester instruments. I tried a thumb copy in a shop when I was a teenager but couldn't afford it.

I've had a few of their basses. Jazz copy was uninspiring, the thumb copy was awesome and I played loads of gigs on it. It went when I stopped playing bass in a band.

I've recently bought a vester strat copy. It's fine, but the neck profile makes my hands ache after 2h of practice.

It was £110 off eBay.

Any rough estimates for the cost to get tooled up to recarve the neck and paint it in flip paint? 

I've got basics like files, a rasp, vices, space. I have spacer thing for tiling to get the neck profiles. I've seen a spoke shave mentioned a few times. Are they a useful tool for this one off job or only necessary if I was carving the neck from scratch?

I have an Aldi air compressor which came with a spray gun. I've spray painted a few lorry scrapes at my dad's garage 25 years ago and the odd thing with rattle cans. I did one of my basses 4 years back and I'm still not happy. It's fine, but I was hoping for perfect after putting 20+ hours in to the paint job.

I've just bought a PRS silver sky se, Which is awesome and likely to be all the strat I need for the foreseeable future. 

Is it worth pumping some cash and a heap of time into something which will fundamentally still be a £100 90's strat copy?

Thanks for any suggestions!

paulnb57

Not sure its worth investing time and money into such a cheap guitar, but I have done the same!

You could use a Stanley blade like a furniture scraper to reprofile the neck, its surprising how little needs to be removed to make a difference

As for paint, removing the old finish and preparation is the really hard bit (I hate sanding), then respray with decent automotive rattle cans, not the Halfords shite, go to your local supplier to the trade. Car repairers often use rattle cans for small jobs, they will mix any colour and carry colour swatches to choose from…

If you cock the paint up, you sand it back and redo it…

Youve not much to lose really….so why not have a go