Turning Back Time
Joe Riggio: Guitar Refinisher
CG: How did you first start JR: Sometime around 1995, getting interested in guitar fin- while I was well into running my guitar repair business inside of ishing? Joe Riggio: It really stemmed Guitar Maniacs, in Tacoma, WA from my love for spray painting with Rick King, a good customer when I was a kid building model of ours, Gerry Parkhurst had recar kits. I always went the extra cently been turned on to the guimile to get all the details right and tar bodies and necks being made to make sure that the finish was as by the then newly opened USA fine as I could get it with a rattle Custom Guitars. He knew of my can! My father was a true “fix-it” interest in guitar finishing and extype of guy, and he and I enjoyed perience in building guitars and restoring and painting bicycle and commissioned me to paint and build 2 telecaster-style guitars for car parts. him. It was really that order that About the time I was 17 and made me apply what I knew, in a playing guitar, some friends and more serious manner, for the first I took advantage of local guitar time. parts manufacturers and dabbled in building our own. After fail- CG: Where did you learn about ing to find a local painter with the authentic paint colors/forany experience finishing guitars, I mulas of the original vintage bought my first small compressor guitars, and where did you find and spray gun and began learning that paint? JR: I read a very early article how to do it myself. in Vintage Guitar Magazine that CG: How did you start doing showed where the original Fender this professionally? 12 :: SEP/OCT 15 :: COLLECTIBLEGUITAR.COM
colors were taken from American automobile colors of the time. Unfortunately, I also found that the local auto body and paint stores, where I had been purchasing lacquer, didn’t really have those old formulas available to them. It was surprising to me that that information had been lost over the years. When I finally set out to establish my own usable formulas for the original colors, I went on a serious quest for both original paint chips (in mint condition mind you) as well as original guitar examples that had areas of finish exposed that I could match. Batches of the original paint used in the 50’s and 60’s definitely did vary a bit, but I now have what I believe is the most comprehensive collection (although continually growing) of authentic formulas for using on vintage and new guitars. CG: Was there a lot of trial and error?