What I Did With My OLP

[handyman]

Check it out...






Put one black Tone Zone and one black Air Norton in for pickups, a black Wilkinson trem, black locking tuners, a black Tone knob, a graphite nut and painted the logo and the edge of the guitar black. The second photo is a side view, have never seen one like this that the back isn't black. I thought that was pretty cool, but then I masked off that line and painted it black, which made it look really cool.

Can't take any credit for the trem and the nut though, got the idea from a guy on Ebay.

[Majestic]

Nice work.

Those are definite quality improvements.

[kissmyace]

Did you paint the back, or was it like that. Is that a burnt orange type color, or red in a funny light ? Love it.

[KRAMER5150]

pretty cool

[Wolfgang_'99]

pretty cool

Got that right!

[AT]

I might bug you for some advice as I'm about to strip and paint (for the first time) a Wolfgang Special body.

[Otis5150]

Can't take any credit for the trem and the nut though, got the idea from a guy on Ebay.

Graphite nuts kick ass! I have them on my Wolf special and my tele. Actually, my tele has an all-graphite string path from the bridge to the tuners. I NEVER break strings! The tele also has the Tone Zone/Air Norton pickup combo. Great pickups.

Congrats on your OLP. It looks great!

[handyman]

I didn't paint it, the only thing I painted was taking all the white parts...the OLP lettering, the white line that goes around the surface...the body came with the orange back, with a white stripe in between the flamed (fake/photo deal from what I read on Harmony Central.com) orange front. It was really weird, I almost bought a different one, but then found a crack in the neck and grabbed this one instead. I did all the light work, putting in the pickups, changing the knob/switch and the painting. I brought it to a guy who builds high end guitars to get the nut, tuners, trem and a full set up done. This trem is a two post deal, so he needed to take the old six screw one out, put dowels in the holes and drill out two new ones for the new trem. If you look REALLY close you can see the dowels, but you hardly see them at all. He set the action really low, checked all the electronics and tweaked the neck/frets. I used to own a EVH Ernie Ball back in the day, sold it like a dumbass, but this plays/feels/sounds pretty dam close to it...and looks bad ass with all the hardware and shit.

[Otis5150]

I dig the (faux) black binding. You did ithat with just masking tape and paint???

[handyman]

Masking tape, can of spray paint and a fine and regular black sharpie! I did the OLP logo with a ultra fine sharpie...if you get right on it, you can see I was free handing it, but from a little bit away, it looks fine. The officially licenced product is still in white, but you have get a microscope out to see that. I did the edge pretty tight with the tape (that blue painter's masking tape) and if I missed something here and there, I hit it with the sharpie from a side angle. I masked off the edges, then covered the main guitar with sheets of copy paper. Put it on top of my green Waste Management (local trash co) barrel and sprayed away.

I got the guitar for $169, didn't really matter if I f-ed it up!

[lil'devil]

this is the great thing about these cheap guitars - guiltfree experimentation.

i like the way it looks.

how does it play? does it stay in tune with that graphite nut?

can you post some samples ... we'd love to hear what it sounds like.

[handyman]

It plays/sounds great...seems a bit lighter than my EVH one, but not $1000 different. I play it through a Mesa Boogie Nomad 45 head and Avatar 2x12, anything sounds decent through that!

[handyman]

Tuning, yeah, it stays in tune...if I really slam the bar, a couple of strings go out...but that's to be expected without the locking nut. I'm not a super whammy bar guy, so it works for me.