by Maliciant » March 12th, 2007, 7:26 pm
I'd say take the electronics out before you try that, and if you have a pick guard or any other plastic parts they'd need to be removed too, if your neck can easily be removed, and maybe even if it can't, you should remove that. I don't think the material used for the body of an electric guitar matters much so damage to it also isn't that big of a deal (in terms of sound), but you don't want the neck warped or the electronics etc to get messed up. Metal pieces like the bridge might also be best to remove (the heat/whatever you use to put the fire out probably won't be kind to the chrome finish or whatever you have)
Now to the possibly more practical advice, that guys face is on a magazine, he's probably got people who do things like burn his guitars for him, the point being, he probably has more money than you, and me, and setting 10 - 15 guitars on fire until one burns just right might not be too big a deal for him if it gets his face on a magazine, you setting your guitar on fire will probably only get your face on a magazine if you (while it's still on fire) beat some old nuns to death with it. The next thing is there might have been some prep work that went into getting that guitar to burn like that (removing some of the finish in advance so that it's possible to burn the colored parts of the guitar etc). And then the last and probably most important thing, almost nothing you see in a magazine picture is totally legit, it's like professionally recorded live music, the live part just means that they started with a recording of the band playing live, and cleaned it up so you get to hear some audience in the background, and the singer says some stuff between tracks etc, magazines tend to be airbrushed on a regular basis, look at the effects you see in movies (and keep in mind that your typical 14 year old graphics wiz on the computer is able to do those same things at home on his parents 4 year old computer), what can a magazine do with a single image (and this is the cover image, the most important image in the entire magazine)? I have my doubts about that specular light on his sunglasses being untouched for example... but I'm not an expert on those things.
In short, I think that what he did to his guitar is purely destructive, art was an accident and heck, in person that guitar might look pretty crappy, there is no telling looking at the cover of a magazine. If you paid for the guitar yourself (no parents help/gifting it to you) or if it's your only guitar, then absolutely don't do it, if someone else paid for it they'd be obligated to kill you, even if you got the result you were looking for, but that's my opinion, in the end it's your call what you do but I seriously think you'll regret doing it unless of course, you have money to burn too, in which case use that to get the fire nice and hot :p
(editted in cause I forgot, I do not think that this will affect the sound of your guitar so long as you remove pretty much everything from the body of your guitar before hand)
