APPLY OUR DECALS ON GUITAR'S HEADSTOCK

CREATE & INSTALL A CUSTOM DECALS ON GUITAR HEADSTOCK

Adding guitar headstock decals is something you might consider for any guitar you build, whether it's from our guitar kit or starting with a blank piece of wood. A decal serves as the final touch and the signature logo of your creation, making it an important aspect of the design. Guitar Fabric offers high-quality decals that enable you to easily create beautiful headstock designs. In the following section, we will explain how to create custom decals using our products and how to install them on your guitar headstock once you receive them. Finally, we will provide a few examples of satisfied customers who have graciously shared their custom decals with us. 

How to create your own customs decals using our decals for guitar products

You can find the products to create custom decals for guitar headstocks in the "Headstock Guitar Decals" category on our website. We offer various fonts and styles of headstock decals, which serve as template designs. Once you've chosen one, you'll need to fill in the required information according to the guidelines provided in the details section of each product. This includes details such as color, title, subtitle, and serial number, as specified by each template's requirements. Note that some information may be optional. Additionally, we offer special features such as receiving a preview of your decals to ensure they meet your needs, or purchasing a second decal at a discounted rate.

Please review the provided images of each product, examine the font letters, and consider our examples to visualize how your decals will appear. This will help you select the most suitable template and provide the appropriate information.

Once you've made your selection, you can expect to receive your decals in approximately five working days. They will be high-quality decals designed by a design expert using a semi-automatic process. The decals will arrive pre-cut, and the only remaining step will be to apply them to your guitar's headstock.

Installing a headstock guitar decals, pre-requisites

Before applying your waterslide decals to your guitar's headstock neck, ensure that your neck is properly varnished and prepared. Whether you've built a guitar using our kit or have an existing neck you wish to add a decal to, make sure the neck and headstock are finished appropriately. To install your decal logo on the head of the guitar neck, you'll need: 

• Varnish
• Recipeint of Water
• P1000 to P1500 wet sanding paper

Preparing the decals

To install the decals on your headstock neck, you'll first need to varnish the side of the decals where your custom logo is printed. We recommend using the same varnish you used to finish your neck, especially if you're building a guitar from our kit. For instance, if you used water-based varnish for your neck, you can also use water-based varnish for the decals.

You can varnish your decals using either a spray or by applying varnish with a cloth or brush. While spray varnish typically provides more even results, it's not mandatory.

Here's the process for varnishing your decals:

• Apply a thin layer of varnish.
• Wait 2-3 hours.
• Apply a second layer of varnish on your headstock decals.
• You can use a hair dryer to speed up the drying process, but natural drying typically yields better results.
• Apply a total of 3 to 4 layers of varnish on your decal.
• Once finished, wait at least 12 hours for the varnish to fully dry.

Following these steps will ensure your decals are properly varnished and ready for application onto your headstock neck.

IMPORTANT: Varnished your decals will create a protective layer and is very important. If you don't do this the color will melt with the water in the next steps

Preparing the Headstock Neck

Once the top of your decals has been varnish you should prepare the neck headstock (which should be already varnished). We advise to sand slightly at P1500 and remove any dust on the headstock of your guitar. The surface of the headstock should be clean.

Water your decals

At this stage, with a clean varnished headstock neck and a varnished logo decal in hand, it's time to apply the decal. Begin by filling a container, such as a bowl, with room temperature water (ideally between 15 to 25°C), ensuring there's enough to fully submerge the decal. After immersing the decal and its backing in the water for about a minute, delicately remove it. Now, proceed to carefully apply the decal onto your headstock neck.

IMPORTANT: move all the time the decal with precaution to make sure the logo itself do not break. Still if you have well varnish the decals in previous step it could be quite robust. It is also possible that the decals start to be slightly removed from its paper support but ieally you want to keep it on the waer support until the very end as this way it will be easier to install the decals on your guitar neck.

Applying the decals on your clean varnish headstock neck

The neck should be lay down. Then put your logo decal along with its support close to where you want your decal to place on your headstock. From there, with a finger move slowly the decals to its final position on the neck. If a fold appear you can later on use a clotch to remove any fold. Once happy about its position wait until the water has been removed. You can also wait 1hr and dry the remaing water with a cloth.

At this stage you should have your headstock decals well integrated on your neck. Still we propose 2 final steps to integrate fully the headstock decals: apply another layer of varnish and wet sanding.

Final Integration of the decals on the guitar headstock

Now that the logo decal is dry and well integrated in the neck you can improve its integration to make the border in particular less visible by 2 additional steps:

• You can varnish the neck headstock with the decals integrated on it. Here 2 to 3 layers of very thin varnish is enough. Remind to wait 4hrs between each layer and half a day to fully dry once you have apply your last varnish layer 
• Finally you can wet sand around with P1500 with a particular attention around the border of the decals to make the border of the decals fully integrate and invisible

Some example of decals created for our customers

Here few example of customer headstock decals created using our product tool.