{"id":1548,"date":"2015-06-23T12:30:50","date_gmt":"2015-06-23T19:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/?p=1548"},"modified":"2015-06-23T16:07:13","modified_gmt":"2015-06-23T23:07:13","slug":"the-tangerine-dream-refinishing-the-retronix-r-800","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/?p=1548","title":{"rendered":"The Tangerine Dream: Refinishing the Retronix R-800"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

I got a great deal on one of the first Retronix R-800<\/a>s — the Korean-made models of J. Backlund<\/a>‘s designs — thanks to Kickstarter<\/a>. Fantastic look, very comfortable neck and body contours, trem bridge with coil-tapped humbuckers — extremely\u00a0well built and designed for flexibility. The company even threw in a hardshell case as a surprise to backers, custom-fitted to the unusual shape.<\/p>\n

The only thing that bugged me about it was the color. The Cobalt Blue\u00a0turned out to be a lot darker than the prototype photo<\/a>\u00a0suggested — “blurple” at best, and to my eye, almost black unless sunlight was shining directly on it. I was really bummed, to the point where I considered selling it, but then realized maybe I should just have it refinished. And so…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When I returned to the Bay Area, I contacted my old friend Greg Philpott at Orbiter Guitars and asked if he was up to the task. Greg had previously refinished\u00a0one of my basses<\/a>\u00a0and we share\u00a0a love of shiny hot-rod finishes, so I suspected the answer might be yes!<\/p>\n

The first thing Greg did was disassemble and strip it “like a chop shop on a hot car,” in his words. When he did — and shined a direct light on it — the finish looked more like what I was expecting, even though Kat’s photo above is 100% accurate to the guitar’s colors in normal light.<\/p>\n

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It didn’t take Greg long to figure out why it looked so dramatically different:\u00a0There’s\u00a0a layer of purple pearl on top of the cobalt. Over a silver or white, that purple pearl might have looked really cool, but here, it just choked the intensity out of the cobalt and made everything muddy and dark. So it wasn’t just my crazy eyes this time — that’s not cobalt.<\/p>\n

\"\"As Greg sanded it down, he uncovered\u00a0the layer colors and even found an imperfection or two on\"\" the original paint job. He quickly had the guitar\u00a0primed for re-painting (note the blue in the neck pocket).<\/p>\n

My original vision for this guitar was always something bold and dramatic — a metalflake finish in green, teal, or orange. I have a\u00a0guitar<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0three<\/a>\u00a0with metalflake finishes which I love, but after discussing the difficulty (and expense!) of applying flake finishes, we decided on a non-flake candy tangerine.<\/p>\n

\"\"What I was asking for involved\u00a0painting a translucent “candy” color over a sparkly metallic base (over the\u00a0primer). Each layer takes several coats, the color growing richer with\u00a0each one, and\u00a0the finish needs\u00a0sanding between each coat. To make the orange pop, Greg sprayed\u00a0a silver basecoat. Some guitars\u00a0are sprayed over a gold basecoat, but that would have made for a darker orange with more red in in it. Three or four coats of silver already looked sufficiently awesome:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"I was looking for what I called “orange soda orange<\/a>” or “creamsicle orange<\/a>” — what Kat would call “orange with a lot of yellow in it.” We chose\u00a0House of Kolor<\/a>\u00a0Kandy Tangerine for the job, which looks pretty damned good on curvy objects<\/a>. Just one\u00a0coat didn’t look very orange at all — more like a light dusting of copper. But as Greg built up more layers, the intensity kicked in.<\/p>\n