Aged Pickguards--How's it Done?

Eazycheetah

Newbie
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Anyone have any direction on how to age a pickguard?  I've seen a few Fender Custom Shop Strat pickguards that looks really nice, as well as some of the GR Gutiars pickguards for sale, and was wondering if anyone had any experience on how to achieve an aged look.  For example, how to age an new aftermarket white or parchment Strat pickguard...or even one that's black.

I've seen some instructional stuff on aging smaller pickup covers, knobs, etc., using iodine and emory cloth, but not sure how that would transfer to a full sized piece of plastic.

Thanks! Craig  :guitaristgif:
 
I saw a guy soak his in coffee - so I tried it on the knobs and tips. Worked really well on the knobs and the selector switch tip, but not the bar tip. When I did it I heated the coffee up in the microwave with the stuff in the coffee and it got a little too dark for what I wanted  - so I then bleached it back to a nice cream color.

here's the site I got the idea from:

http://entertainment.webshots.com/album/256430234SzJiVl
 
a few years ago I bought new white pickup covers for my strat from Warmoth because the ones on it were almost tan in color. whithin a few months the new covers where starting to tuurn brown as well...smoke free home too... at the time I was leaving my strat out on the stand and sunlight would always get into the room.  The same thing happend to my biege computer at that time. all the plastic parts aged to a tobacco yellow color
 
my first guitar was a squier strat.
at the house i lived in, one whole wall of the room was doors with big windows.
so the sunlight always shined thru into the room.
a few months into owning the guitar (that i bought new) i went to replace the pickguard with a blue pearl one, and i noticed that the plasic under the knobs was alot whiter than the rest of the pickguard...

so i guess that if you left your pickguard out in the sun everyday for say a month? then it would sort of age out naturaly.

i would want to put it in a ziplock bag to protect it from weather, but i dont know if maybe the ziplock bag would block the UV or something.
 
A friend of mine ages stuff regularly (and very nicely) and from what he told me...he uses brown shoepolish for it. Apparently it doesn't work with any polish, he tried different ones and one of them does not come off like some others. I guess different people use different tricks.
 
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