I flew out to LA and met with Pamelina and other LA-area custom guitar painters before the USCG guitars began. Chuck Fukagawa, from Hoshino Japan was stationed in LA and made the contacts with the painters. Pamelina did quite a few samples that we picked for production. Many of the graphics guitars during my tenure were copied in Japan from originals by Pamelina and others. Most of the “real” artist guitars like Jennifer Batten’s, were hand-done originals by Pamelina. You can tell the difference as the originals have easily-felt raised paint on the surface of the regular finish, while the copies are screen-printed and have no surface texture to speak of. We tried spraying clear over some of the originals with mixed results.
Rich Lasner