Making a Gold Record Scratchplate - Jooky Style

Well, after much messing around with cloth and velvet and suede, I thought I'd try a different approach to the whole scratchplate idea and go back to the basic idea of the guitar.

You see, we're into the last weekish of the challenge, and I've kind of gone off on tangents, as per, and so I thought it was time to go back to what the 'concept' was in the first place.

Now, I know I haven't really explained before, but with the 'Pimp One' I wanted to do some kind of tribute to the question and answer that went on between Marvin Gaye and Sly and The Family Stone in the Seventies, mainly because it was a volatile and interesting time, and in both cases they produced amazing records.

What I'm talking about is Marvin Gaye recording and releasing 'What's Going On?' - something political coming from somebody who had been seen as our standard, 'pop' act, if a really good one, that signalled a change in music and the power it had to convey what was going on, on the ground, without the hideaway easiness of the Sixties metaphors.

This was revolution, and very much symptomatic of the times, and without sounding like a dodgy NME retrospective was pretty much incredible.

As for Sly and his merry band, they answered Gaye's question with a statement of their own, the album 'There's A Riot Goin' On' complete with Stars and Stripes on the cover. This signalled a less stark approach but with words and ideas that captured the mood, even while the groove made you shake you thang

Coming back to 'The Pretty In Pimp One', I wanted this guitar to kind of capture that. On one hand it would be scorched by revolution's fires, and yet on the other it would have the whole Family Stone, pimp-esque livery of crushed velvet and gold.

This I've tried to do - the neck is tarnished and literally scorched, while the body is covered in velvet and the fittings are heavy gold.

The scratchplate though, what to do there?

Finally though, it sank in and so today I've made something that I hope will join the two sides together.

I've taken an old LP, and roughly melted a shape out of it using my trusty and now rather messy pyrography tool, gouged holes for the pickups, pots and switch and then with a nod toward two fantastic albums, painted it gold.

I like to imagine that this is how Time Life make their Best-of collections.

Anyway, you can't really see from the foto, but it does rather look like somebody had butchered a 'gold record', which was the point of all of this. It is drying at the moment, but I'll put it together later this week, let you see whether it works or not for yourself.

p.s. Yes, it was a U2 record, but what the hell, eh? Nobody is more, err, revolutionary than Che Bono