Painting Hardware

[meambobbo]

I was thinking about disassembling my Edge III, and locking nut, and probably tuners too on my RGA8 and painting them to spruce up the look of the guitar a bit. I'm thinking a gold base, white saddles, and black tuning pegs and locking blocks for the bridge, gold base, white lock piece, and black screws for the nut. Tuners would be gold washer/nut, white tuners.

I have white D Activators with black pole pieces in there. Gonna get/make some pickup rings and paint them gold.

So the color scheme is Black -> Gold -> White -> Black

What kind of paint should I use? Any additional advice?

 

[Danukenator]

The general consensus is that paint won't last too long. Apparently there are a couple brands that are a lot stronger/long lasting but it's going to wear off.

 

[flypap3r]

You could try duracoat-durabake coating. Lot's of people use it on guns as a wear resistant enamel. It's fairly thin, so it would work on things as small as saddle screws, as well as, bigger parts like the bridge itself.

 

[meambobbo]

Thanks!

I figure I'm going to leave the parts where the strings actually contact and are visible, or otherwise have regular mechanical interaction, their standard black color. So the actual interior of the saddles, the tuning pegs, the bridge posts, the nut screws, will all remain their standard black. Ideally reassembly and re-setting up intonation and bridge height should be the only stressful adjustments. If the paint can survive that, it seems worth my while to do it.

I figure the paint will chip off the underside of the nut locking blocks and the tuners where the string winds around, but it should be invisible most of the time. My guitars don't get much abuse, so I'm being optimistic on the durability.