Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Hi. What is the best brand of paint and the best procedure for painting chrome black?

Chrome does not enjoy being painted ....it tends to peal fairly soon .

Perhaps you have seen black hardware on other guitars and assumed that it was black paint .

It was most likely one of the following ;

Black oxide -screws are commonly this

Black chrome ...Schecter did this 20 years ago , lots of headaches and a high failure rate.
Black nickel , less of a failure rate ...Schaller does this on their tuners etc.

Black powder coating ....Not a plating at all .Interesting process , and something found on Ricks .

If the chrome is in good to great shape ....don't mess with it .
If the chrome is pealing .... sand it , and take it down to 320 grit paper ....you have nothing to lose if it looks terrible .
The 320 will give the paint something to 'grip' .

If it must be done powder coating is the best method, just make sure that any threads are masked off. I used to use a place in Spanaway that did excellent work a few years ago.

Spanaway ???Washington,USA???

Yep, the one and only. I lived between Puyallup and Spanaway a while back while I was stationed at Fort Lewis. Which would make taking the Blackstar to you alot easier if I still lived there!