I got this guitar as a Christmas present from my girlfriend at the time, Brenda, who scored this particular guitar for me from a local music store. For you fellow guitar lovers/addicts out there, you know it does not get any better than receiving a guitar as a present!!

The guitar remained in factory original condition for only a few days. First, I added chrome pickup covers as I prefer the look of covered pickups on black guitars. To me, when I think of an Explorer I visualize the original 50's Korina Explorers with that cool natural finish. I had a brilliant idea, why not strip off the paint and finish her in natural? This was probably the single stupidest thing I have ever done. Not reading up on how to do this properly - that is to find an easy way- I was armed with only sand paper of various grit and some ice cold Bud lights!!! Needless to say that it took forever and I was exhausted. My forearms literally felt like they were on fire and truth be told, it took me about 23 hours of my weekend to complete the stripping. I was so tired I didn't even strip off the paint that was hidden underneath the pick guard. After completing the job using steel wool, I sealed the wood using an automotive clear coat.

I must say that while it was a lot more work than I ever imagined, I was very pleased at how great she turned out. All my buddies said I was lucky for a) getting it to come out so nice and b) that the wood used for this Explorer was blemish free. Apparently, the woods used in the construction of guitars that are to be painted in dark solid colors are sometimes cosmetically flawed. After stripping my guitar and seeing how cool she looked, several of my friends asked me to do their guitars. I am not stupid and realized that stripping a guitar with sand paper is something I never want to do again.

Upon reassembly, I realized that the chrome hardware did not look as good against the natural mahogany color so I purchased all new gold hardware. With all new gold hardware, I next realized that the white pickguard did not cut it and installed a black one. Al last, she looked cooler than shit and I was completely happy with the end result.

I visited KAMAN's guitar site and was drooling over replicas of Paul Stanley's Ibanez Ice man with a cracked mirror top. Being a huge KISS fan, I asked Kaman about doing the cracked mirror top on my Explorer. A week later I emailed him and said I love the look of the single pickup layout on guitars and thought it would look much cooler than the two hum layout for this project. He jokingly said he wished I had told him that earlier as he had already routed the toggle area through the back but agreed that a single pickup layout would be cool.

Luckily, I had kept the original chrome hardware as the gold hardware didn't cut it against the cracked mirror top. I was so impressed with Kaman's work that I also sent him my Jackson Kelly for the same treatment. I played my Explorer a lot and loved the look of the cracked mirror. Yes, there were a few sharp edges but that was not a big deal until winter came. Living on the East Coast, we get big temperature and humidity changes from season to season. The winter conditions were not kind to the cracked mirror top, as I assume the mirror pieces had contracted and expanded with the changes in the temperature. The end result was more sharp edges and many of the glued in "cut-out" mirror pieces cracked even more. This is a minor point though, and after rubbing the face with some denim she was good to go. I still play KISS tunes on this guitar all the time...hey, I am vain what can I say.