Give Your Guitar A Facelift With Stunning Handpainting From Bad Ace

Not a fan of relicing? Go in the opposite direction 17-Feb-13

After falling in love with a face in the crowd (the face was actually a guitar, and the crowd was the internet), Richard Beech went on a personal mission to locate the fleeting glimpse of rock and roll beauty...

Occasionally, as a guitarist, you see something and you know you just have to add it to your collection. Well that's what I thought when I first saw a rogue picture of a Gibson Les Paul Studio with gold binding, I'd previously never seen a white LP Studio with gold binding, and I was pretty sure this guitar wasn't a standard Gibson affair.

So for a couple of days, I searched high and low to find the source of this picture, I think I first saw it shared on a Gibson guitar fanpage, but without any clues as to where the pic came from.

Then I was doing my usual rounds frequenting the Reddit guitar community, when I saw a link posted with the title 'I like to paint guitars'.

I hadn't made the connection yet, but as I followed the link, there it was, the white LP Studio with gold binding, in all its glory, along with a collection of handpainted guitars.

As I scrolled through, I fell in love with some of the designs, and it was clear that the person responsible for the handpainting took a great deal of care and personal pride over the work.

Bad Ace Pinstriping is the name of the company, and a gentleman named Tim Graham is the man behind the eclectic collection of custom paint jobs. Guitarists get in contact with Tim, send him their guitar(s), and he gives them the once over and sends them back.

As a measure of 'rock and roll-ness', he also paints motorcycles... so, you know, he's pretty cool.

As proof of aforementioned rock and roll-ness, I thought I'd let the guitars do the talking, here's a selection of Bad Ace Pinstriping's work: