EBJPM Paint Flaw?

[Rush]

I had some time recently to pull out a brand new Sapphire Black EBJPM I purchased in March of 2004 for about the 4th total time this morning since I've owned it.

I was outside and noticed some strange paint contours or lines running in certain areas of the body. Right under the pickup selector switch it is really prominent. It is also very noticable running between the knobs and bridge. I've confirmed it is a paint defect by using reflections. The image distorts terribly once it hits one of the lines. They run parallel to the neck and can easily be seen when playing standing up and looking down at the guitar. I'll try to get some pics of it soon.

This guitar is brand new and has hardly ever been played. I've still got all of the plastic covering on the back of it and have never had a chance to even change the strings. Has anyone else ever seen this on this particular model guitar? I purchased this one from PMBLues.

I've also owned a Desert Gold that I played much more and I never noticed any of these flaws in the paint. I don't think I would have missed this type of thing on my first one either.

Any help or insight would be appreciated.. it's pretty annoying now every time I look down and it just glares out at me.

 

[jongitarz]

I am wondering what you mean by checking it out by reflectons

 

[Rush]

I am wondering what you mean by checking it out by reflectons

I'll get a nice reflection in the body by holding it a certain way. The image reflected looks normal except when it hits the part where the paint is flawed. At this point the image distorts where it should be normal if everything were flat and smooth.

 

[PeteDuBaldo]

Hello Rush, I see you made it over here.


Off the top of my head, I would guess that either the laquer is cracking, or the wood grain underneath is lifting it up, and you are seeing the texture of the wood grain underneath. I have seen similar problems on violins of various ages/qualities, but if you posted a pic, that would tell jongitarz a thousand words

 

[Rush]

This is very hard to capture on my little camera, so this is the best I could do. If your holding the guitar it's much easier to see than trying to capture with the camera eye. I also noticed some lines from the bottom of the bridge to the bottom of the body that stand out pretty good. I've tried to capture this by getting a reflection of a wall in the pic. There is definately something wacky going on with the paint here, it's definately not normal.

Image1: No flaw in the reflection
Image2: Reflection is flawed because of the lines running in the paint
Image3: Edge is flawed because of the same thing.
Image4: I can assure you my light doesn't have jagged metal arms

 

[OrangeChannel]

Personally I don't see much there. The res isn't good enough to produce it.

 

[PurpleSport]

I'm with Pete on this....looks like the typical sorta thing that happens when a finish naturally settles into the wood grain. In this case, my guess is it's settling horizontally along the lines of the basswood's grain flow, which is why it runs parallel to the neck.

Have a look at flametop Les Paul and you might see a similar warbling phenomenon, but it will instead run vertically against each of the flames unless it's an extra thick application of finish - even saw this on some new ones in the store the other day.

I wouldn't get too worked up about it unless the finish was actually physically cracking - can you feel an uneven-ness if you run a finger over the affected area?

Oh, one other thing: basswood's actually pretty soft...any chance the guitar's had something pressing down on it there, or something sitting on top of the case that put pressure on that part of the body?

Remember, guitars are made of wood (unless you're playing a Steinberger, of course ), and thus are subject to the idiosyncracies of Mother Nature to greater or lesser extents. And like people, they have individual personalities and voices and markings...so think of this as it showing you it's version of a fingerprint!

 

[OrangeChannel]

I mentioned what Purple said on the JP forum. In fact I had an old IBZ 570 that had te same issue. I'm guessing that the grain was a bit uneven. It doesn't affect the tone or playability of the guitar. That being said as basswood is soft, did you maybe have the trem bar pressing against the body whilst in the case?

 

[Rush]

I mentioned what Purple said on the JP forum. In fact I had an old IBZ 570 that had te same issue. I'm guessing that the grain was a bit uneven. It doesn't affect the tone or playability of the guitar. That being said as basswood is soft, did you maybe have the trem bar pressing against the body whilst in the case?

Thanks for the replies guys.. I didn't have anything pressing down on it and am always TOO careful of those types of things. If you go over to my site you can see some pics of it when I first purchased her and none of this was noticed or can be seen in those photos. It's pretty prominent and I haven't heard of this issue on the EBJPM before so that is why I was alarmed, and the fact that it does look pretty bad at some points. I'd be interested to know if any of the other EBJPM owners could do a little test and see if their axes have the same issue. If its fairly common I'll forget about it, but otherwise I'll have to look into getting something done about it. My Desert Gold didn't exhibit this and that guitar was produced way before this one that I purchased new in March.

 

[Rush]

Just thought of a few things...

1) How come it only affects certain parts of the body?
2) Clearly the image should be reflected the same all over the body, but as you can see in image2 that it is distorted.

Maybe it's a bad piece of wood, because the areas affected are only certain regions in the body. Anyway.. just a few more thoughts.

All of you check out your EBJPM and see if it exhibits this type of thing for me please!

 

[OrangeChannel]

None of mine have that ish.

Hey dude,

Didn't ya have a desert gold?

Late!


Jon

 

[koogie2k]

Aside from the paint, how does it play? Is it affected at all? Is the paint cracking or anything? Like it was stated earlier, guitars are finicky....kinda like us.... maybe she is coming into full bloom... lol.....If you really think it is that bad, call the EBMM customer service and maybe you need to send it in to get checked or fixed....that would be your best bet. I have never seen this issue before.

 

[Rush]

Aside from the paint, how does it play? Is it affected at all? Is the paint cracking or anything? Like it was stated earlier, guitars are finicky....kinda like us.... maybe she is coming into full bloom... lol.....If you really think it is that bad, call the EBMM customer service and maybe you need to send it in to get checked or fixed....that would be your best bet. I have never seen this issue before.

I don't feel anything when running my finger over it, so it is definately something below the surface.

The guitar plays fine.. it's definately a cosmetic issue. I went to guitar center today to grab some stuff and I checked out a lot of guitars. I saw a few low end ones with some paint issues, but nothing else. I couldn't find one that had the same issue as mine.