The Guitar Garage

Guitar Garage Open House Nov. 1st & 2nd, 2014 - Noon to 5 PM

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Fri, 01 Nov 2013 00:33:00 +0000

A few of the Guitar Garage custom-builts that will be displayed

Aluminum Thru-Neck 9-string Baritone Guitar

As part of the Waltham Mills Open Studios, Guitar Garage will be having an open house event, displaying some of custom-built and restoration work and showing off our workshop.

We will be open to the public on Saturday, Nov. 1st and Sunday, Nov. 2nd - from Noon until 5 pm both days.

We will also be joined in our space by Currier Amps, who will display some of their custom tube amplifiers, vintage tube amplifiers and a collection of vintage lap-steel instruments.

Weirdo Vintage - 1963 Alamo Titan guitar
& 1968 Premier "scroll-top" guitar

Besides our instruments, we will also be displaying a variety of vintage instruments - and will have both vintage and custom instruments for sale.

Please check out the following video interview (4 minutes long) produced by the Waltham Mills Artist Association !!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7yLyOS5TLg

Complimentary food and beverages will be served - so come hang out a while at The Guitar Garage !

Guitar Garage is located in Building 18 on the 3rd Floor of 144 Moody Street, Waltham MA

The main event link is located here - check it out - there will be over 70 artists opening their studios to the public.

Gibson SG Supreme Amethyst Burst Refinish

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 02:13:00 +0000

I was contacted by a client to refinish an early 2000's SG Supreme from its factory "Midnightburst" (dark blue burst) finish to a lighter finish that would better show off the flamed maple top.

The dark blue factory finish really was too dark to show off the flamed maple top except for under very bright light.

Rather than simply redoing the top in a lighter transparent blue, he inquired about changing the top to a transparent purple or amethyst burst finish, while leaving the back of the body and the neck in the factory midnight blue. To illustrate the color he was interested in, he sent along a picture of a large amethyst crystal that captured the color and depth he preferred.

I told him I could try, but the final finish that resulted would depend upon the color of the underlying maple - and also - how cleanly I could strip the maple top.

When I first got the guitar - I could see what the owner meant - the flamed maple was clearly visible under a strong light - or with the use of a flash, but under typical lighting, the guitar simply appeared to be dark blue fading to nearly black around the edges.

The picture below is a bit misleading - this was taken under a strong bench light AND with a flash - the guitar was much darker in person.

After disassembly, the first step was to strip the top of the guitar, while trying to not damage the finish of the sides of the guitar and instead establishing a nice straight line to go from the lighter purple finish to the midnight blue sides and back. Because of the difference in colors, it was not going to be possible to fade one color into the other along the sides.

Fortunately - Gibson still did use nitrocellulose lacquer on the the SG Supreme - making it much easier to strip than a polyurethane finish. However - it quickly became apparent that it was going to be difficult to get all of the remnants of the blue finish out of the grain of the flamed maple - especially the darker "stripes", which are more open-pored than the lighter body of the maple.

I masked the sides as well as I could using decent quality 3M "blue" tape - and then tried to keep the chemical stripper at least 1/4 inch away from the actual edge of the masking, to avoid any of it seeping under the tape.

Using this approach, I was able to strip the majority of the finish off the top - using a mix of scraping and sanding to get it off closer to the edge of the body. There were a few small areas where the finish DID soften under the tape from the stripper - inside a small part of each of the horns, along the edge of the top bevel in one spot and a small area at the butt of the guitar. The finish didn't come off in these areas, but it did become uneven - which was frustrating - I'll have to experiment with better masking tape and maybe give myself a broader margin from the edge when using strippers in the future.

After the chemical stripping - finished scraping the edges bare and then sanded to entire top - partially with my random orbital sander and the rest with a sanding block and by hand - working down to 320 grit on the orbital sander and then 600 grit with the sanding block.

As you can see in the pictures below - some of the blue did remain in the grain in a few areas - for example near the controls and a few edge areas. I wasn't as concerned with the edges - since those would have the darkest part of the amethyst burst, but I was concerned about areas closer to the center of the body, where the lightest part of the purple burst finish would be.

I clearcoated the top for two reasons - first to seal the grain of the maple which would allow for any future refinish to not have deal with color trapped in the grain (Gibson doesn't do this step - maybe because they feel it lessens the flame ?). The second reason was for me to see how the flame top looked vs. the remnants of blue in the finish.

The clear coat really made the flame "pop" - but did show up the blue that was still in the grain. I shared the pictures with the client and cautioned him that some of the blue might show up as darker areas through the amethyst burst, but he said to go ahead.

I also test sprayed a piece of rock maple that was similarly light in color with a tinted clear coat to see what kind of dye mix would yield the desired color. I found that simply using Transtint Purple #6026 in a clear gloss base gave me a color very close to what I wanted. I opted to go light on the color, knowing I could build up density later if I needed to.

Before spraying the top, I first tended to the areas on the edges that had been damaged in the stripping process. I mixed Tintsall Prussian Blue into clear laquer along with a small amount of black laquer to get a midnight blue color that matched the sides of the body. I used the lacquer in its unthinned state - which was quite thick - to touch up and build up the areas with a fine brush. When these areas were dry, I wet sanded them lightly to level them and make sure the color matched. The finish on the sides is essentially opaque, to cover up the transition from the maple top to the mahogany body and neck. There was still a little uneveness in the areas, but I would clear coat over them later so I didn't worry about it at this stage.

Then I sprayed the light purple transparent base coat onto the body. I did mask off the back of the body and the neck again - but I left the midnight blue sides unmasked.

I was happy with the results - and my test slab of rock maple had been a pretty good indicator of the what the guitar would look like !

Now came the darker edge of the "burst" - for which I used the same Purple #6026 dye, but with a lot more dye in the clear gloss base. The goal was to spray a nice dark purple border - and then go back and fade the darker color into the lighter center with a much softer spray.

I was VERY happy with the results - and managed to resist the temptation to make the edge darker and darker and wider and wider - probably my biggest challenge in doing any sunburst finish !!

This detail shot shows the way the original midnight blue finish starts at the edge of the SG top bevel - and the masking on the back of the body and neck.

Once the tinting was set - I clear coated the top with roughly five clear gloss coats - and then after removing the masking on the back - I clear coated the entire body one more time.

After allowing all the coats to cure - I wet sanded and buffed the entire body per usual practice - the top requiring more wet sanding to level the flame maple (which is why it received so many clear coats).

The client liked the final results - and though it is possible to see a few little bits of blue as dark spots in the grain of the maple in a few spots - they are hardly prominent.

The midnight blue, almost black, back of the guitar also goes well with the purple burst top.

Most important - the flame of the maple top itself is now much more visible !

Sold: 1972 Fender Precision (P-bass), Olympic White Refinish

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 21:37:00 +0000

SOLD!!

This Fender Precision was repaired and refinished and assembled from a bunch of vintage parts I collected over time. I had always wanted to build an Olympic White with Tortoise Guard P-bass, as I think the creamy color of the aged Olympic White looks great with the brownish-red of a vintage tortoise guard. So I assembled this example, but now have decided to part with it as I have more than half a dozen vintage Precisions and I really don't need that many.

The body is refinished with a '60s style nitro finish: yellow stain, clear sealer coat, flat white primer, Olympic White color coat and a tinted clear topcoat. The tinting of the clear coat was done such that there is a "shadow" under the pickguard, neckplate, bridge and bridge cover with those areas yellowed less than the exposed areas of the body (see below).

The resulting bass weighs in at almost exactly 8 lbs with the chromed bridge and pickup covers on. The 70s grey-bottom pickup (10.8K Ohm resistance) is powerful and sounds great (like they all do!) and the bass plays well. The neck has a tiny amount of relief ( 1/32nd of an inch) and plays well up and down the neck and intonates pretty accurately as currently set up.

The bass is not a mint-condition restoration, but is also priced accordingly at about half of what an original sunburst '72 P-bass sells for currently.

The bass comes in a kind of beat-up but solid early 70's Fender bass case with a fairly rare rootbeer colored lining - I originally got the case with a mutilated '73 Jazz bass that was brought to the US from London, so maybe its an export Fender case? It has the correct 1972 - 1975 Fender logo on it.

This bass is located in the Boston area and is available for in-person examination if you're local. For those outside of the Boston area, shipping will be extra - please contact me with your location and I will give you a quote for shipping via FedEx or USPS.

I accept payment by cashier's cheque/money order, cash in person or Paypal - though there will be an additional charge to cover Paypal expenses (approx. 3 1/2% of total).

Please direct all inquiries to me via email: krishna@guitargarage.net - with something like "'72 P-bass" in the subject line so I don't miss your email if it ends up in my spam folder.

Details

The majority of the parts ARE correct for a 1972 Fender Precision, but they are from different instruments originally.

The vintage parts include:
- 1972 B-width neck, refretted and refinished with repro logo
- 1970 - 1973 alder body, with routing repairs and refinished in aged Olympic White
- 1970s grey-bottom Fender P-bass pickup
- 1969 - 1972 Fender bridge with extended G saddle screw
- 1968 - 1975 Fender 4-ply tortoise guard, with chip at point near output jack
- 1972 - 1975 "F" tuners & bushings
- 1972 - 1973 Fender hardcase, with rootbeer-colored lining

The reproduction parts include:
- chrome bridge & pickup covers
- strap-buttons
- F-logo neckplate
- pots, knobs and output jack
- various screws
- thumbrest
- nut

Body repair and refinishing

The body is a vintage Fender body, from between late 1969 and early 1973, based on the following characteristics:

- two dowel-pin marks on back, one on the body centerline near the butt of the body and one just inside the bass side cutaway (P-bass bodies from late 1967 through about 1979)

- placement of the bridge closer to the edge of the body (1969 til late 72/early73)

- no channel routed from control cavity to pickup (1958 through early 1973)

- remnants of yellow stain, which would have been applied under the finish (approx 1960 - 1973)

Most likely this was originally a sunburst body, though its hard to tell with all the modifications and refinishes its had over the past 40 years.

The front of the body is where the real mayhem has occurred !! The body had been routed and plugged once before I even got it - for a large bridge pickup and a larger pickup in the stock middle position, as well as routing for a switch at the bass side of the pickguard and for an extra control/and or battery under the guard adjacent to the stock control cavity.

I plugged all the routed areas with alder - using epoxy as the adhesive to minimize shrinkage over the long term. I feel that using a glue with water content (such as Titebond or hide glue) will swell up the glued-in plugs - more so than the surrounding wood - but this swelling subsides VERY slowly - especially once the plugs are sealed up and finished over (on the order of 3 months to over a year). Using a two-part epoxy, there is little to no moisture introduced - and the epoxy itself has minimal shrinkage and is very tough/strong.

I then re-routed the pickup cavity and the edge of the control cavity - the results before finishing are visible below.

And here's the body with the flat white primer coat applied - ready for the color coats.

Once the color coats had been applied and wet sanded, then the entire body was clear-coated, with a VERY slight amber tinting to take some of the edge off the blinding whiteness. Note the back of the original tortoise guard - with some factory marks (9) and grounding foil applied.

At the correct angle, the outlines of the plugs for the bridge pickup and the switch near the pickguard edge are just visible - click on pictures for expanded views.

Oasis Prototype Guitar, built by Gary Cooper

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 21:12:00 +0000

Here's a follow-up post to my previous write-up on Oasis guitars - the instrument I'm profiling here is apparently an early version of builder Gary Cooper's work and given the logo, would actually qualify as a prototype for his Oasis guitars.

This guitar was recently put up for sale in California by someone who found it via an estate sale or something to that effect. The lore that came with the guitar was that it was built circa 1975 by Gary Cooper, which would be a few years before the blonde mahogany one profiled in the earlier article.

My earlier article also had a picture of another Oasis "prototype" - the truth is that Cooper was probably building a small number of custom instruments, of the same overall form, but differing in the woods used, pickups and trim. Note that the bound-top prototype has the same Oasis palm tree and pyramid logo, but is missing the name "Oasis" on the headstock - the name was apparently an addition to production instruments.

This guitar has some features that are similar to the production models - such as oval pickup surrounds - though on this instrument they are carved from what I believe is walnut as opposed to being made of plastic.

The oval fingerboard inlays also seem unique to this example - but the laminated neck construction is common to all three guitars I have pictures of - they just all use different combinations of wood.

One very different feature on the instrument is the headstock construction - which has a separate piece of oak (?) attached with a scarf joint. The Schaller tuners are consistent with the other Oasis guitars profiled.

One missing feature is the glued on Oasis label on the rear control cavity cover - perhaps because this is a prototype or perhaps because the rear cover was changed out at some point. The current cover appears to be a black cover similar to the cover on production Oasis guitars.

The bridge and tailpiece on this guitar also differ from the other two Oasis guitars profiled in that they appear to be off-the-shelf tune-a-matic style units - as opposed to the heavier bronze custom-made units.

All in all - a very interesting and nicely built American instrument from the 70s.

If anyone has more info or history or pictures relating to this guitar or other Oasis guitars, please do contact me, either via the comments area or by email: krishna@guitargarage.net

Transferring a design from paper to wood: Using a pounce or ponce wheel & powdered charcoal

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 20:14:00 +0000

This is just a little how too article on a simple technique that comes in handy when working from a tracing of a guitar or part of a guitar, and transferring that tracing to the surface of the wood being used to build the new instrument. It involves using a device called a "pounce wheel" (also sometimes called a ponce wheel) to help transfer a pattern onto a piece of working material - whether its wood or fabric.

Here's a picture of a pounce wheel.

Create your design drawing on paper - I used tracing paper so I could see the grid pattern on a drawing mat as I laid out this design for a John Entwistle-style "Fender-bird" body. I taped down the drawing to the slab of pine I wanted to transfer the design onto.

I used the pounce wheel to trace the lines. The pounce wheel has tiny spikes on it and rolls easily - as it rolls it leaves tiny perforations through the tracing paper. You can buy pounce wheels at most large art stores and also sewing/seamstress supply stores.

A dusting of charcoal powder will pass through these lines and onto the underlying wood - leaving a tracing of the body shape. A "pounce bag" was made from a square of fabric cut from an old undershirt.

Once some of the charcoal is worked through the fabric by tapping it on a hard surface, then dust the pounce lines by tapping the pounce bag around the pattern.

Removing the pattern leaves a fine tracing from the charcoal dust that passed through the perforations.

I used a sharp pencil to trace over the lines so they wouldn't rub off. I've also heard of people using colored chalk, including the type used for "snapping lines" by carpenters.

The original pattern can also be re-used - as the charcoal powder wipes off easily using a soft cloth - and leaves behind the original drawing as well as the perforations. I may experiment with more durable vellum for making my patterns - its pricier but much more durable than tracing paper and somewhat water resistant.

The slab can now be cut on a bandsaw or with a jigsaw to shape.

This is actually just a mock-up of a "Fender-bird" - based around a Warmoth Jazz Bass neck. It will allow the customer I'm building it for to try on the instrument for size before I cut the "real" body out of better quality but more expensive alder (this body is made from scraps of Home Depot pine joist material).

1967 Fender Jazz Bass: Rebuilding a water-damaged rosewood veneer fretboard

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 13:08:00 +0000

I took this project on more as a challenge than as a typical repair - not sure how much I'd charge to do it again, but almost certainly A LOT more than I did in this case I'm documenting ! That being said - this repair does show the resiliency of Fender necks and that almost anything can be repaired on them.

The subject of this post was a 1967 Fender Jazz bass neck that had apparently suffered water damage and then gradually started to fall apart over the years. It came as part of a package of parts that a client purchased off Ebay from a guitar repair shop that was clearing out some long dormant projects.

When I received the neck: it was missing a chunk of the rosewood fretboard veneer and one fret at the end of the neck, most of the frets were loose, and some of the binding near the nut was missing. And obviously the green nut was NOT original ! Once I started examining and wiggling the frets it became obvious that not only were the frets loose, but so was a significant portion of the rosewood fretboard !!

After removing some of the loosest pieces of the fretboard, I considered just pulling all the frets up until the 9th fret - and flowing some thin super-glue under the loose portions of the fretboard and clamping it all together and hoping for the best.

But first I took the neck to my friends at Mouradian Guitar Repair, in Winchester, Massachusetts for some consultation. John Mouradian pointed out that a lot of the fretboard appeared loose and bowed up from the neck - and that the maple strip covering the truss rod also appeared loose. He told me that I had to make sure that strip was glued back in place - without mucking up the trussrod in the process - so I should take off as much of the rosewood veneer as was loose - and maybe consider planing the neck down for a new slab board. Though that would be labor intensive as well - since a new board would have to be cut for inlays and binding.

I decided to take a different approach - in an attempt to keep as much of the neck original as possible. I would take John's advice, and remove all the rosewood and inlays that were at all loose - and repair the truss rod overlay - but then I'd REINSTALL the pieces of the original rosewood and inlays - dress the fretboard make sure it was good and flat - and then re-install the original frets and binding.

So I started by removing the binding on the neck - which came off easily with a little warm alcohol/water solution brushed into the seam and a razor blade to gently pry it loose. I then began working under the rosewood veneer with a razor blade - also flowing in some alcohol and water to try to soften the hide glue - and work my way up from the bottom of the neck.

Loose bits peeled off - note that I left the side dot markers in place !!

As I made my way along the neck - the first pieces came off easily - and note that the veneer was basically sliced into rectangles by the fretslots - the fret slots actually bottom out in the maple of neck! As I got up towards the 15th fret though, the rosewood started putting up more of a fight - and was cracking into pieces as it came off - with some sections along the treble side of the fretboard remaining very securely attached. The inlays also proved inconsistent - with some easily popping out and some cracking or requiring a lot of force and prying with a narrow chisel to remove them.

I used a large piece of masking tape to fix the removed pieces in order for later reinstallation.

Finally however, I had everything loose off the neck - and had about 40% of the truss rod overlay exposed - and it was obviously quite loose and popped up from the surface of the neck. I ran a razor blade down the seam of the truss rod overlay to make sure there was some room to work some glue in.

I used Titebond wood glue - working it in with my fingers - it will actually push into the small gap, but unlike superglue, it won't be drawn in by capillary action - and therefore the Titebond won't glue up the truss rod - which would keep the truss rod from working evenly. (tip o' the cap to John Mouradian for that advice !)

Applying Titebond

Working the glue into the seams

Using a slightly damp paper towel to remove extra glue

Clamping the overlay in place - small strips of waxpaper are under the wooden cauls

I did slightly tension the truss rod after the glue had dried for a day - just to see if the overlay had glued in at all - and it didn't budge. I didn't want to push my luck though, as I figured re-gluing the rosewood and inlays onto the neck would further reinforce the truss rod overlay.

Now came the time to put the puzzle back together !!

A jigsaw puzzle !!

First I had to clean the old glue off the inlays - as well as repair one of the inlays that split (used superglue). I scraped and sanded the undersides and didn't worry about the tops, since I'd be leveling the fretboard later.

I used Titebond glue to reglue the pieces of fretboard and inlays - making sure that the joined edges also had glue - and then wiping the extra off the surface of the board with a damp paper towel.

Titebond has a pretty long working time, so I was able to glue all the rosewood pieces and inlays in place before I gently clamped everything down with a 7.25 in radius block - with waxpaper between the block and fretboard. Note the lines between the pieces of rosewood in the picture above.

Remaining chips and gaps were filled with a combination of superglue and rosewood dust, and hit with accelerator spray. Then the defretted portion of the fretboard was sanded with the same clamping block to level out everything. The view below is after sanding - note the new piece of rosewood added at the very end of the fretboard.

Several more stages of sanding, working down to 600 grit paper - and then some Olde English scratch polish oil to show the results. Even the new piece at the end of the neck matches pretty well. And you can barely see the lines where the rosewood veneer cracked and was reglued ! Even the repaired inlay looks intact !

Prior to reinstalling the original frets, I lightly recut the fret slots, as they had glue in them from the repairs. I also straightened any kinks in the frets and then over bent them a little at the ends to make sure they fret ends wouldn't pop out. I reinstalled the frets with a light bead of Franklin Hide Glue along the tang of each fret - and then once again used the 7.25 inch radius block to clamp the frets in place.

One new fret was installed at the highest position (the shiny one !) and then filed down to match the height and width of the old frets. As you can see - the fretboard looks pretty consistent - with the gaps and seams being all but invisible ! The third inlay from the left was the one that was cracked.

The other end of the fretboard - that LPB headstock will be getting a little cleaning up too !!

Finally, I reinstalled the original binding, which had a split at the very butt of the neck above the truss rod adjustment - probably from some shrinkage and was missing a short segment on the bass side near the nut. I spliced in a small segment of new binding and lightly tinted it with some lacquer - the splice was visible but at least the neck felt right now in the first fret position.

Regular Duco plastic cement was used, though straight acetone will also work. The Duco glue will fill more gaps and has a longer working time. The old side dots made placement of the binding on the bass side of the neck very easy - the binding just snapped on over the dots - almost like two Lego pieces going together!

The replacement piece of binding, shaped to follow the contour of the headstock

Meanwhile - the body had undergone its own restoration - and had the Lake Placid Blue finish heavily ambered to match the very green headtsock - I think I did a pretty good job at matching !!

All in all a fairly challenging piece of work - I think in the future I'd instead replace ALL the frets and sand the entire fretboard after the repair work to really get everything as level and even as possible and to start off a new with fresh frets.

That being said, the bass played very well and had no twist or bow under tension - I had to go back and file a few frets here and there to get the action low, but that's to be expected in most refrets and especially in a case where half the fretboard is re-assembled from fragments !!

Next up - I have to figure out how to fabricate a new veneer fretboard for an Olympic White headstock 1966 Fender Jazz bass neck I have lurking around ....

2 String Shortscale Microbass: Custom built kid's bass

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 16:03:00 +0000

The Concept

This project grew out of the idea of building a true beginner's instrument for kids, that would get them started on the path to playing music and minimize the initial discouraging hurdle of "my instrument won't make any good sounds".

I drew on my own experience as a kid - trying to learn to read music and play the recorder - along with all my other 1st grade classmates - as a lesson on how NOT to do it. That experience was so bad I had no desire to make a second try until I was high school and saw the Ramones play live - and thought "I can do that !!"

But even then, I remember finding guitar a bit challenging and I actually ended up playing bass initially - and then going back and forth between the two. But starting on bass allowed me to learn timing and concepts of repeated riffs and progressions - without getting tangled up in all those skinny little guitar strings and complicated chords - it was just one string and one note at a time.

I also picked up the skill of identifying the root notes in a song pretty early on - which meant I could figure out my own bass lines that would at least "work" when playing with others - and later on, once I learned a little bit about guitar, was really helpful in allowing me to improvise guitar leads.

I also thought back to the songs I first started out learning - the ones that were easy yet gratifying to play - ranging from the holy trinity of "Louie, Louie"/"Wild Thing"/"Hang on Sloopy" - to "Wipeout" - to "Blitzkrieg Bop". All of them solidly rooted in a 1-4-5 blues tradition - all of them with "connect the dots" riffs (e.g. all the notes being on fretboard positions with dot markers).

The other common element with all these songs was that they could all be played on just TWO strings - the "E" and "A".

I decided to build an instrument that would facilitate everything that made my initial experiences of playing rock n roll with my friends so fun enough - and encouraged me to continue to learn and start writing my own music. An instrument that would provide a solid foundation for playing rock music by teaching timing, rhythm and the basics of making tuneful sounds come out of a stringed instrument.

So the concept for this instrument began to gel in my mind - a short-scale and narrow neck best suited for smaller hands, two-strings to simplify playing and instruction ("upper and lower" string), semi-hollow construction so it could be played unplugged and would be light, and a body shape that wouldn't require a guitar stand.

The Design

This bass was actually commissioned by a 7 year-old boy's mom - so I DID have a few design parameters to work with: he wanted it a lime green color and he wanted a lightning bolt on it !! And his mom wanted to try to give it to him in time for the holidays - so I had roughly 4 weeks to build it from sketch to completion !!

At first I was designing the bass with a 30-inch scale - the same scale used on many Gibson, Guild and Danelectro basses (EB-0, EB-2, Starfire) and on Fender Mustang and Musicmaster basses - but I realized after doing a rough layout that even a 30-inch scale might be unwieldy for a 7-year old - so I opted for a 27 1/2 inch scale. To compensate for the short scale and keep the string tension from being TOO low, I planned on using the low-B and E string from a 5-string bass set - that is, .135 and .105 gauge strings.

For the body shape, I wanted something non-traditional - and as I said before, something that would stand pretty securely on its own. I drew some inspiration from the Dean ML body shape - and made a quick sketch on a bank deposit slip.

I then made a full size paper template of the instrument - which made me change my mind and flip the body shape upside down (compare the template to the rough body and neck). I used the headstock of my 1979 Ibanez Iceman as the inspiration for the headstock shape.

To make the instrument easy to build and set up - I decided on a bolt-on neck - and as I said before - a semi-hollow design. The body was built in a very "Danelectro"-style, with a 1 inch thick pine frame around the edges and a neck block - and then 3/32th inch plywood for the front and back of the body.

I had toyed with using two of Hipshot's Triple Lock 1-string bridges but then decided if I wanted the bass to truly be semi-acoustic, an archtop style carved rosewood bridge would be more likely to carry the string vibrations to the body top. I also decided to try using half a P-bass pickup, since I'd only have two strings.

The neck blank was a piece of 3/4 in. poplar - straight from Home Depot.

I used a table-saw a great deal to build the narrow neck. I first cut a slot for the double-acting Stewart-Macdonald truss rod using two passes on the table saw. After the neck was tapered, I added two small wings of poplar make the headstock and inlaid a narrow piece of walnut into the part of the truss-rod slot that extended through the headstock. I used a belt sander to taper the face of the headstock backwards before gluing on the fretboard.

Then I installed the truss rod and glued on the pre-slotted and radiused rosewood fretboard (purchased from Luthier's Mercantile). I used a simple jig made from a piece of plywood to taper the entire neck blank and fretboard.

The rough cut neck and body are pictured below - with a pickup and volume knob just positioned for layout.

In the next picture I've sanded the body edges and then used a router to round off the edges. I also used the router to cut away a neck pocket - using a template cut from masonite. A rickenbacker-style slash sound hole has been added to the upper bout - it was really noticeable how much sound it projected when I tapped on the body before and after cutting the sound-hole - surprising!

The fretboard has also been had dot inlays placed (white plastic), then been radiused (7.25 inches radius) and fretted with normal Fender bass-size wire. The neck is still unshaped at this stage.

The neck was contoured using a Micro-plane rotary shaper - which is a fearsome looking device - very effective for the rough shaping of necks - the trick is to use a light touch and keep a firm grip on the work piece so that the cutter doesn't dig in and leave a big gouge in the back of your neck.

I usually have the cutter lowered right onto the deck of the drill press - though I plan on cutting a hole in a plastic cutting board and putting this on top of the current deck so that the cutter part of the rotary plane is even with the work surface.

I have used this device on maple, poplar and mahogany necks - it's remarkably tough. I bought mine at Rockler, but Microplane products are widely available.

Once the rough shaping and contouring of the neck was accomplished, I worked down from a rasp, several different files and finally 100 grit sandpaper to get the neck contour I wanted. A down-draft table for dust collection is high on my list of "things to acquire" !! Carving a neck generates a lot of wood chips and saw dust !

I unfortunately neglected to take pictures of the neck carving process - but here's the neck after being sealed (nitrocellulose sanding sealer) and primed and sanded - with two spare Grover Imperial tuners in place.

Here's the body at the same stage - with the single coil pickup ( 1/2 a GFS-brand P-bass pickup) positioned.

The instrument was now ready for painting - and after initially mixing my own green color - I recalled seeing a can of acrylic lacquer at Autozone called "Sublime Pearl Green" - I decided to make the 3-minute drive to the shop - and sure enough, it was still in stock. The paint was high quality acrylic lacquer, though much thinner than the lacquer I buy from Restoration Auto - so I'd say the quart I purchased for $25 was roughly equivalent to less than a pint of lacquer from Restoration Auto. However, after hazmat shipping charges, etc. - a quart of paint from Restoration Auto usually costs me between $60 and $80 - so the price was very reasonable ! And it was convenient.

I still thinned the lacquer further with some straight acetone - and then sprayed several medium coats to make sure I had a fully opaque finish. The last coat I thinned a little more and sprayed at a lower pressure to lay on a very even and thin coat - with the goal of getting the "pearl" to look even across the entire body and neck.

A day later, I applied a few clear gloss coats of nitro - again at low pressure - I was aiming for a "no-buff" finish, since I was on pretty tight schedule.

While the lacquer was setting up - I moved ahead with creating the requested "lightning bolt". At first I considered painting it on but then I thought I'd get a more striking (pun intended) result by cutting a lightning bolt out of thin black pickguard material. This would also be more durable and maybe even somewhat act as a pickguard. I made a truss rod cover out of the same material.

The hardware is rough fit below - if you look closely at the headstock you can see the little flecks of "pearl" !!

The rest of the hardware was somewhat hurriedly fabricated: I made a tailpiece inspired by the one on my 1965 Mosrite Venture's Bass - a short piece of right-angled aluminum corner with a rosewood insert - drilled for two strings and for two mounting screws. The bridge was carved from two pieces of 1/4 inch rosewood laminated together and then cut and shaped on my belt sander. The string nut was cut from a piece of black plexiglas, Rickenbacker style.

The view below shows the tailpiece and bridge. The side-mount jack, single volume knob and strap buttons are all from Guitar Fetish.

Once I finally strung the bass up and tensioned it - I had to tweak the neck a little - some tightening of the truss rod - a little shimming of the neck pocket (to get the strings higher off the body to get some good downforce on the bridge) - and a little filing of a few frets in the higher registers to get rid of some buzzing.

Once I had the bridge positioned for good intonation - I fixed it in position with two small pickguard screws. I didn't want the young owner to have to struggle with finding the correct bridge position again just because he changed the strings !!

As a final step - I applied two small pieces of 3M footgrip tape on the two "feet" of the body - to make it less likely that the guitar would slip and fall if it were left standing up - and to protect the finish and wood when the instrument was standing up.

Completed

What was most surprising was the sound of the bass - the single-coil pickup, low-tension fat strings and semi-hollow body led to the bass sound almost like a fretted stand-up bass !! It had a VERY big sound !!

The bass standing in front of my trusty Ampeg B-15N - to give you an idea of it's size - roughly the same as a Fender Strat.

A good view showing off the "pearl" in the Sublime Green Pearl finish - especially on the back of the neck. The back of the neck and headstock were wet sanded, compounded and buffed, whereas the body was simply buffed with a dry clean buffing bonnet.

I'm very happy with how this bass turned out but I am thinking of some changes for "Mark II".

For one thing, I'd try to accentuate the acoustic characteristics by making the frame of the body deeper and thinner - using 1 1/2 inch pine and 1/16th plywood for the top and back - with two longitudinal braces under the top - and maybe by adding a second sound hole.

I'd also probably use a Firebird-style baby-humbucker, as the single-coil 1/2 P-bass pickup does pickup electronic noise from neon lamps, etc. Though I'd have to see how this would affect the sound.

I might also add a 3rd string (but keep the narrow neck) - as this would make it pretty much a fully-functional, gig-able instrument - though not sure that will follow my original "concept".

How to: Fender Mary Kaye blonde finish

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 21:25:00 +0000

The Mary Kaye finish is a slightly transparent blonde finish - much like Fender's blonde Telecaster finish but without any yellow tint (and very different from the more yellowed and more transparent butterscotch finish) - applied over ash wood and in combination with gold hardware.

The name comes from the association with Hawaiian female guitarist Mary Kaye - not the cosmetics empress Mary Kay ! Mary Kaye was pictured in Fender promotional photos around 1956, sporting a blonde Strat with all gold hardware - and the name stuck.

Fender's Mary Kaye finish is most often associated with the Stratocaster - on which it first appeared in 1954 - but it was available as a custom color on Jaguar's and Jazzmasters - and probably any other model for which there was gold hardware available during the early 60s. The finish reappeared on Fender custom shop models more recently - of course on Strats, but also on Precision basses.

While there were very few "Mary Kaye" instruments made back in the 50s and 60s - the few pictures I have seen do appear to show a yellowing that does make the finish look a great deal like an aged blonde 1960s Tele finish - perhaps with a bit more transparency - though blonde Tele's are all over the map in that respect.

A customer asked me to finish a very lightweight aftermarket swamp ash body in as close to a "new" Mary Kaye finish as I could - with an emphasis on also keeping the finish thin. I decided that I'd basically try to do a late 50s/early 60s Tele blonde finish, but make an effort to first highlight the grain in the swamp ash with a dark grain filler so that it would be highly visible through the blonde finish.

I unfortunately did not take pictures of the body BEFORE I started, but as a first step I lightly sanded the wood with 400 grit paper and a block to make sure the wood was clean - the body was actually very nicely sanded from the factory !

I then used a water-based grain filler on the body - Wunderfil brand Walnut grain filler - which was liberally applied - and then dry sanded off once it had dried. As with any grain filler, the object is always to just leave the filler in the grain, especially if the finish is going to show the grain (i.e. a blonde, natural or cherry finish).

And just a quick note - since the grain-filler I used was water-based, I obviously could not wet sand. You can wet sand with oil based fillers, but then I'd recommend first spraying a sealer coat of clear lacquer on the body so that the water doesn't raise the wood grain.

Here's the Strat body with the grain filler sanded off - ready for sealing with a clear coat. The dry filler is not very dark until it's hit with a coat of clear.

A clear coat was sprayed on - to seal the filler in - and this also really made the filler much more visible - and showed off how gorgeous the grain in this swamp ash is.

This single piece body was cut such that the crest of the grain was aligned with the center of the body - and neck. The owner theorized that this feature, combined with a tight neck pocket fit, would make this instrument particularly resonant !

The oval dark area is just figuring in the ash - its also visible in the earlier pics, but was high lighted by the grain filler.

Now it came time to apply the translucent blonde color coat.

I used a clear gloss nitro base, to which I added a dilute gloss white lacquer - I'd say about a teaspoon worth to 6 ounces of lacquer - and then thinned for spraying a light coat. Its better to put too LITTLE white in than to put too much in - you can always build up the blonde coat.

After the initial coat of blonde - the body had a distinctly "pinkish" tint - which was from the wood color - but it was surprising, since with the clearcoat over the grain filler that wood didn't look pink at all !! I unfortunately can't find any pictures of that stage of the refinish (maybe I forgot to take them!) - but after looking at pictures online of reissue Mary Kayes and confering with the owner, I decided to make the blonde finish a little more opaque AND add the tiniest amount of a brown tint to the white. I added some brown dye to some clear lacquer - and then just added it drop by drop til there was just the slightest "tan" cast to the white - very subtle. I decided against adding an amber dye, as I didn't want a "buttery" aged looked to the finish - just a milky white look.

Adding another coat of blonde accomplished what I wanted - I'm not sure if this is because the swamp ash is a slightly different color than what Fender typically uses under a blonde finish or if the Mary Kaye finish does have a very subtle brown tint to it ?

Once the color was right - the body did require quite a few clear coats to fully seal the grain of the ash - the texture was still a little visible through the blonde finish.

After a few weeks of curing, wet sanding and buffing out - the finish was where I wanted it.

It can be hard to capture the translucent nature of a Mary Kaye finish - but this close-up shows the grain of the ash through the finish.

I unfortunately didn't have a gold Strat bridge and jack cup to model the completed body, but here it is with a pickguard dropped in. Look carefully and you can see the grain showing through the finish - as well as a slight slight pinkish tinge from the swamp ash. Over time, this finish will yellow and look more and more like a vintage Tele.

I think in the future I might try an even darker grain filler to highlight the grain - I have recently started using Timbermate Ebony Woodfiller for my mahogany work, and it really emphasizes the grain. With the Mary Kaye finish, if the grain is TOO prominent, I can simply add another coat of translucent blonde until I have the level of grain definition I want.

How to Refinish a 1969 Les Paul Goldtop

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 21:48:00 +0000

One of the classic electric guitar finishes is the Gibson Goldtop finish, which debuted in the early 50s on the Gibson Les Paul and ES-295.

The finish consists of finely ground bronze powder suspended in clear lacquer, resulting in a gorgeous deep metallic gold color. Due to the behavior of the bronze particles, it is a challenging finish to get even color and consistent results with, but I'll try to outline my experiences in this post to make it a little easier for anyone else out there.

The guitar being refinished is a slightly modified and stripped 1969 Les Paul ~~Deluxe~~ Standard - which is one of the earliest of Gibson's "re-issues" of 1950s Les Pauls. The guitar would have been originally fitted with P-90 pickups and had a Goldtop finish, with a stained mahogany back and neck and white binding on both the top and neck.

This example had been stripped - and routed for humbuckers - and had a side ding repaired, and then had grain filler and a few tinted coats of finish applied to the back and neck. The pickup cavities needed some wood added at the corners for pickup surround mounting screws, but otherwise there was no wood work required on the guitar.

Note the 3 piece maple top - the very earliest of the "reissue" Goldtops made in 1968 had two piece tops with a center seam.

I did discuss returning the guitar to its original twin P-90 configuration, but the owner preferred the sound of humbuckers and opted not to. This picture illustrates the pickup cavities have been widened to fit humbuckers.

There were remnants of the original gold finish in both pickup cavities - which would prove useful for properly tinting the final finish (see at the edges of the tape).

One of the first tasks was to procure the correct bronze powder for the top finish. The owner of the guitar tracked down the source of the bronze powder originally used by Gibson in the 1950s - Cres-Lite made by Crescent Bronze Co. of Oshkosh, WI - and ordered a 2 lb can of their "Extra Brilliant Gold #256" bronze powder. Crescent makes an amazing variety of metallic powder pigments - worth checking out their website sometime!!

More recently, Gibson has switched to an entirely different pigment that is composed of gold-colored mica chips, as opposed to a metallic powder. Gibson made this change to prevent the classic "greening" that occurs with Goldtop finishes when the protective clear top coat wears away - the "greening" is due to oxidation of the copper in the bronze powder, and typically occurs at the upper edge of the body where the player's arm wears away the clear coat and sweat speeds the oxidation of the bronze powder finish.

Example of goldtop finish wear and "greening"

The first step was to fill some small dings (from the pickguard bracket mainly) and then seal the maple top and sand it as smooth and even as possible, since as with ANY metallic finish, flaws in the underlying guitar would be very visible otherwise. I used a nitrocellulose sanding sealer on the maple - no grain filler is necessary on close-grained woods like maple. There's also no primer coat under a goldtop finish, or for that matter under ANY of Gibson's lacquer finishes.

Before spraying the color coat on the top, I did mask off the sides of the binding, but not the top edge. The binding on Gibson instruments is traditionally sprayed with the color coat and then scraped clean with a razor while the finish is not fully cured - and then oversprayed with a clear coat along the with the rest of the instrument.

Scraping the binding is easier and cleaner than trying to mask the curved lines of the binding around the top of an instrument. The sides are masked as they are straight and therefore easy to accurately mask.

Once the masking was in place, I mixed the goldtop color by mixing about two teaspoons of bronze powder into about 6 ounces of clear gloss lacquer. This was then thinned about 50% for spraying, with frequent stirring before the spraying.

It is also important to clean out your spray gun immediately after spraying, as the bronze powder tends to clump together and block the gun or spit out chunks of bronze pigment on the next use. Also, do not use the same spraygun for clear finishes after using it for any metallic powder finishes, as one or two small grains of metallic pigment will inevitably show up in the middle of you otherwise perfect cherry SG Junior refinish !!!

I actually had to spray this top twice - because I did have the exact problem I described above after I had applied a tinted clearcoat over the gold coat. I was in the midst of spraying a clear gloss top coat, prior to wet sanding and buffing - and a piece of bronze pigment spat out of the gun and stuck in the finish. I attempted to wet sand it out, but this cut into the tinted clear coat and then it was impossible to match the tint evenly again ( I did try and wasted a lot of time trying !!).

But anyway - I'll describe the rest of the process sans the mishaps - just realize this is a finish that is unforgiving of flaws !

So the second time through - I sprayed the gold top on in several coats - trying to get as even a finish as possible. I also used a different gun from the one I usually use - I used a small automotive detail spray gun - NOT an HVLP gun, as the HVLP gun didn't seem to lay down as smooth a goldtop finish. This does mean more overspray - and bronze powder everywhere - so be prepared to clean up thoroughly afterwards.

For the last color coat, I thinned the finish with a little extra acetone and lowered the air pressure a little more - and focused on just laying down the final coat, lightly and evenly. Once it looked good, I immediately sprayed a light clear gloss coat to seal in the bronze powder. The dark spots in this picture near the controls is just a product of reflections in my camera lens, not on the actual finish.

I let the finish set up for a day and then set about scraping the binding. I made a little jig from piece of dowel and a razor blade, though I also ended up doing a bit of scraping freehand. The razor is sticking out just enough to scrape the width of the binding and is glued in place (super glue).

You can see the little curls of gold lacquer behind the scraper. The lacquer is much softer than the plastic binding if you don't let it cure, so not much pressure is needed - the goal is to NOT scrape down the binding at all, though inevitably a little does come off in places where the binding is a little rough and the gold finish is imbedded in the binding a little. Ideally, there is some of the sealer coat between the plastic binding and the goldtop to act as a buffer - the binding should NOT be masked for the sealer coats.

Here's the top edge of the binding starting to look pretty clean. The color difference is due to the flash vs incandescent lighting in the prior picture.

Once the color coat was set and the binding scraped and cleaned completely - it was time to apply a tinted clear coat to the goldtop to try to match the remnants of the finish in the pickup cavities and to tint the binding to give it the correct aged look (which IS due to the lacquer overspray darkening more than it is the plastic darkening).

I used Stew-mac's vintage amber tint in a clear gloss base - tinted lightly - and then slowly built up the color over several thin coats. I looked at the binding and checked in the pickup cavities to get what I felt was a good even level of tinting.

Finally - the sides and top are tinted and clear coated after scraping and cleaning the binding.

The entire instrument was clearcoated - since the back of the body and neck had not been completely finished when I received the instrument. I let the finish cure for several weeks before doing the usual wet sanding and buffing process - taking extra care not to sand through the clear coat on the top. Note that the Les Paul's carved top (and unremovable bridge posts!) made it necessary to hand wet sand the entire top - something to remember to price in when giving a quote!!

Here is the completed refinish - though without the hardware installed. I also taped off and preserved the original but somewhat chipped and battered headstock.

Notice that the original finish inside the pickup cavities matches the top !!

Musicmaster Disaster: Completed

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 15:19:00 +0000

Here's a long overdue follow-up on a post from a few years ago.

I started off with an early 70s poplar Fender Musicmaster Bass body that had been mercilessly routed for different pickups and then apparently broken in half and badly reglued together. The body was a cheap ebay purchase - I think I paid $15 for it plus shipping.

The initial stages of rebuilding and refinishing the body are covered in this post.

I eventually tracked down a 1971 Musicmaster neck that had been defretted and a set of the fairly unique early Musicmaster Bass tuners.

Musicmaster & Mustang Colors

As is often the case - the large body plugs I had glued in when I repaired the body were showing their seam marks, so I ended up sanding the front and back faces of the body flat again and spraying a few more coats of Daphne Blue.

I decided NOT to do a clear coat over the color coat, in keeping with the style of original Musicmaster Bass finishes - though I will point out that Daphne Blue is not a "correct" color for Musicmaster (or Mustang) basses or guitars.

This family of instruments had their own formulations of blue and red - with the blue being a slightly darker and greyer variation on Daphne Blue and the red being a slightly darker version of Dakota Red. I believe that at least from 1970 on, these were fairly thin polyurethane finishes as opposed to acrylic and nitro lacquer finishes - so it may be that the red and blue were "offset" colors formulated in a different base. These colors also did not have clear coats applied over them, so they do age slightly differently than typical Fender finishes - with more darkening and less yellowing.

I'm not sure what was used to finish 1965 through 1970 Mustangs and Musicmasters - but my 1966 Mustang Bass does not appear to have a topcoat on it and the color is a bit different from Dakota Red. If anybody has some details on this, please let me know or post a comment !

Putting It All Together

The neck was a straight-forward refret, using Fender's current "medium" guitar fretwire as opposed to the "jumbo" fretwire used on Fender's full-size basses from 1966 on.

I made the pickguard using an old hacked up Musicmaster Bass pickguard as a pattern, though I later realized I could have bought one from WD Music Products pretty cheaply. Those are Strat knobs on the controls in this picture - I replaced them with the proper Jazz Bass style knobs.

The bridge is a recent Bronco Bass bridge, as is the pickup - with rest of the parts (neckplate, knobs, strap-buttons) being standard reissue hardware. The pickup is a bit different from the original pickup in that it has a bar magnet across the bottom of the pole-pieces (as is typical of many Fender Squier pickups) as opposed to just having magnetic polepieces. I may swap out the pickup for a reissue vintage Strat or Mustang pickup eventually, as these are much closer to the Mustang/Musicmaster guitar pickups that were used in original Musicmaster basses (yes - there are 6 polepieces under the plastic cover for ALL those Musicmaster basses!).

The bass has round-wound strings on it, but those may also be switched to flatwounds - as I find that combination to sound particularly good on Musicmaster basses!

I do greatly prefer the slimmer 1976 and earlier Musicmaster Bass necks to the much chunkier 1977 to 1982 necks. The more recent Squier Musicmaster and Bronco necks are also of the later chunky shape unfortunately.

And here it is - complete !!

All in all - a good playing lightweight little bass !!

1965 Fender Jazzmaster, Candy Apple Red Restoration

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 15:03:00 +0000

My buddy Rod brought this guitar to me a few years ago - he had purchased it because it was almost entirely original - with the exception of the factory Candy Apple Red finish, which was stripped off.

The original finish remained in the pickup and control cavities - and he wanted to know if I could match the remnants of the original finish - as well as spray the headstock to match and apply a repro headstock decal.

Careful examination of the remaining original finish revealed a gold undercoat. Around 1965, Fender switched from a silver undercoat to a gold undercoat for its Candy Apple Red finish - resulting in a slightly darker, browner C.A.R. finish (at least to my eyes).

The yellow stain is revealed where the paint stick was placed during the factory painting process. The dull red plastic piece is a neck shim - this guitar had two of them !! So much for precision manufacturing !!

Since the body and neck were in good condition other than being stripped, I took the job on. I also happened to own an original Candy Apple Red Fender Jaguar from the same era, so I had a good reference to use in achieving the correct tint on the transparent red part of the finish.

Sanded to clean up and level the body - some of the original yellow stain and undercoating remained.

The body was then stained lemon yellow using Stew-Mac dye in a denatured alcohol base.

A sealer coat of Behlen's vinyl sealer was applied - though nitrocellulose sanding sealer would also work. Fender seemed to go back and forth between both sealers in the late 50s and early 60s. Notice how the sealer darkens the yellow tint. This would be the base for a 3-color sunburst also.

A white primer coat was applied and lightly sanded - and then the gold undercoat was sprayed on. I used Jacquard "Brilliant Gold" bronze powder in a clear gloss nitrocellulose base for the undercoat. I went sanded the first coat and then carefully sprayed on a final gold color coat - since the final metallic undercoat CANNOT be sanded !! Sanding will leave marks in the finish due to the metallic particles being "scratched" and brightened unevenly. This applies to all finishes with metallic powder as part of their pigmentation - including colors like Pelham Blue and Lake Placid Blue.

The headstock was also primed and then undercoated. I'm not sure if Fender usually primed their custom color headstocks - does anyone out there know for sure ? Or was this another area where Fender was inconsistent ?

The next step was the tinted color coat. I tinted clear gloss nitro with Stew-Mac's cherry pigment (same color used to do a Cherry finish on a Gibson SG or the red part of a Fender 3-color sunburst !!).

After a few coats the color was deep enough and even.

The depth of the color was built up over several coats - with special attention to keeping the color even by using a fairly wide spray pattern and light coats. Keep the spray gun moving smoothly and fast because you CANNOT have any runs form !! The will stick out like a sore thumb !!

Buffing Out and Assembly

Once the color was at the depth I wanted - I sprayed several clear gloss topcoats on. I let the finish cure for a few weeks - I wet sanded and puffed out the body and headstock. It is important to let the Candy Apple Red finish to cure, as its almost like having two finishes - one on top of each other - due to all the layers of the finish.

As you can see - the remnants of the original finish in the neck pocket and pickup, control and tremolo cavities matches the new finish applied to the body. Note that the "gold" areas in the pictures are the large brass shielding plates, which were left in place during the refinish process - there is original C.A.R. finish under those areas as well.

The lighting in this picture better reveals the deep red tint - good match between the headstock and body too - though I'm sure this wasn't always the case at the Fender factory !

The original loaded pickguard - ready for re-installation ! Notice the masking tape used to hold wires in place - that's original from the factory !

Finally, the guitar is assembled !!

The original guard is surprisingly pristine !!

Per 1960's practice - the repro headstock decal was placed on top of the finish, with no overspray.

And finally - some pictures of the Jazzmaster posing with an original finish Fender Jaguar. The Jag is slightly earlier than the Jazzmaster and has a SILVER undercoat as opposed to the GOLD undercoat of the Jazzmaster. The slightly darker tint of the Jazzmaster is visible in this picture - especially on the headstock.

As far as I know, this Jazzmaster currently resides in France !!

Saving a fretless, 9-string 1963 Fender Jaguar neck !!

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 18:01:00 +0000

A friend of mine was able to purchase a "project" Jaguar for a very reasonable price - the Jaguar was fitted with a WD replacement neck but also had the original and much abused neck sitting in the case.

I decided to see if I could repair the original neck, since it had a completely different profile (smaller) than the replacement neck and it would add to the value of the guitar IF it could be made playable again. Plus I like a challenge !

A Poor Sad Old Neck

The neck had at some point been fitted with 3 extra tuners and also been defretted and the slots filled with wood putty. Not sure what kind of music you play on a 9-string fretless guitar - maybe some kind of experimental drone stuff, like early Sonic Youth or Glen Branca ??

Anyway - beyond the extra holes and missing frets, the fretboard was very heavily worn by the strings (almost scalloped) and also missing a few chunks of the rosewood veneer fretboard and had what at first appeared to be a twist to the neck.

On the plus side, the neck had a nice worn finish on the back that was very comfortable, the original neck date stamp and the truss rod worked.

Below are some pics of what I started with.

Extra tuner holes, note heavy fretboard wear !

Filled fret slots and missing rosewood chunk

Another view of the extensive fretboard wear

Nicely worn finish on the back of the neck

Jun 1963 neckdate - but notice that the right side is shorter than the left side !

I actually took the neck by Steve Morrill, a Boston guitar repairman, to see if he though the neck could be heated and untwisted. Steve looked at the neck for a few seconds and then said "its not twisted - the heel is uneven".

And he then pointed out that one side of the heel was shorter than the other - and therefore sighting down the back of the neck, the plane of the heel was not the same as the plane of the back of the headstock.

But the flat of the heel had the various small factory pencil marks - and the original finish on it - so the uneven heel was the way this guitar came out of the factory in 1963 !! Meaning this instrument definitely had a few of the trademark red plastic heel shims on one side when it shipped to the dealer. Just an indication of how inconsistent Fender's standards were in the pre-CBS days - the Jaguar was Fender's top of the line guitar, above both the Jazzmaster AND Stratocaster !!

Fixing the Fretboard

To assess what I had to work with, I lightly sanded the fretboard with a radius block (7.25 inches) after first adjusting the truss rod to flatten out the neck as much as possible. This clearly revealed the low spots on the fretboard.

Because the wear was so deep, I decided to repair the rosewood as opposed to planing it down to get rid of the wear divots. I used a technique I had used many years ago on a very worn 1966 Melodymaker, which had held up well over time.

The technique basically uses rosewood powder and cyanocrylate glue (super glue) to fill gaps and low areas. The resulting composite is very hard, bonds well and looks like dark rosewood, but obviously without any grain.

I used rosewood powder I had saved from a previous fretboard shaping project - I actually have three different colors of rosewood due to the variation in fretboard materials used out there. I picked one that I thought would match the fretboard once the glue darkened it up - and started applying small mounds of it wherever there was a divot. I also cut a small rectangle of rosewood to patch the missing chunk at the high end of the fretboard.

I leveled the "filler dust" with the edge of a razor - and then generously applied some Medium consistency cyanocrylate glue to each area - and glued the rosewood chunk in place with the same glue.

I also filled in some fretslots that were heavily chipped during the defretting and applied glue along these areas as well.

I then sprayed the whole fretboard with an accelerator spray (Rockler brand, but anyone will work) to set the glue almost instantly.

Note that I also slightly drilled out the fronts of the extra string holes and an extra string tree hole and filled them with grey epoxy.

The result is NOT attractive - with large blobs of rosewood/plastic sitting on the fretboard !!

Looks like some kind of cancerous growth !!

Despite the use of accelerator spray to harden the glue, I decided to let the glue fully cure overnight since it was quite heavily applied in some areas and I wanted it fully hardened before I started leveling it.

I sanded the fretboard with the radius block again and heavy grit paper - and when I was done, there were still some low areas - some in the areas I had already filled and some that I neglected to fill during the first pass.

Since these areas were not very deep - I switched to a Thick consistency cyanocrylate and applied it to the low spots.

The second application did the trick - sanding the fretboard again resulted in a nice flat surface - with the filled areas visible as dark patches. I knew that after oiling, the color would blend in much more plus the patches would be less prominent on the assembled guitar since they would be under the strings!

The fretboard patch would be getting a local application of dark walnut dye to darken it to the color of the surrounding wood.

Next came the time to clean out and in some cases, recut the fret slots and to install the frets. I used StewMac's standard guitar fretwire and their matching .023 width fretting saw. The fretwire is probably a bit bigger than the original Fender wire from 1963, but it would give me ample room to work the frets if necessary once the neck was under tension.

The slots, cut, the frets bent, cut roughly to length and placed.

I installed the frets and used a small amount of hide glue to hold them in, since the slots in some cases were a little loose. I then used the radius block as a clamping block and let the glue dry overnight.

The next day I finished fretting the rest of the neck. Once all the frets were in, I did have to go back and individually clamp and glue a few frets, using a small drop of Thin superglue, so that the capillary action would pull the glue into the fret slot.

The frets did need a little leveling here and there once the neck was under tension - a few iterations, some filing, some polishing and eventually the action was low and even across the neck.

The Rest of the Guitar

As I've covered many refins in this blog already, I'm not going to go into detail on the rest of the work on the guitar, except for one interesting little detail - stripping the painted over original pickguard!

The pickguard that came with the guitar was black, but from the back of it and the edge bevel, I was pretty sure it was the original mint green guard that had come with the Jag from the factory.

I didn't want to use a paint stripper, since it would attack the plastic, I used 400, 600 and 1000 grit wet & dry paper, with plenty of water. As you can see the black paint came off very quickly.

I then finished up with some buffing compound and some very light buffing, as I didn't want to buff through the patina/aging that survived under the paint !

The owner saw another Jaguar I did in Lake Placid Blue and asked for that color for her guitar as well, with a matching headstock to cover up the additional tuner holes and string tree. The body was in surprisingly good shape and finishing the body and headstock went smoothly. The hardware is a mix of original and replacement parts (one pickup was dead and was replaced).

Ah the fun of wiring a Jaguar !! So many switches and pots !!

As you can see in this pictures - the fretboard ended up looking fine - the clay dots were preserved - and after a bit of shimming, the guitar set up nicely and played well !! Even the plugs on the back of the headstock don't look THAT bad !!

The small amount of epoxy used hid the extra holes under the finish and repro decal

There they are ! And a set of reissue Kluson tuners

Had to "pose" the completed guitar in an original early 60's brown Fender case !!

1959 Fender Precision: Restoring One of the Quintessential Electric Basses

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 21:22:00 +0000

Precision Bass History

The 3rd generation Fender Precision Bass was introduced during 1958 and established what most of us know as "the P-bass". More than 50 years later, Fender is still making the Precision Bass with no significant changes - "if its not broke, don't fix it".

The first generation Precision came out in 1951 and was a simple instrument in the vein of the Fender Broadcaster/Telecaster guitars that Fender had debuted a mere two years earlier. The body was slab of ash, with a one-piece maple neck, a simple single-coil pickup (more or less a 4-pole piece version of the Telecaster guitar's bridge pickup) and a very simple two-saddle bridge. The headstock shape was similar to that on the Telecaster guitar as well - just scaled up to fit four big Kluson bass tuners.

The second generation Precision had a similar body profile, but instead of slab body incorporated the front and back contouring and scoops that had been introduced on the Fender Stratocaster guitar in 1954 - the edges of the Precision body was also rounded with a much larger radius - making bass more comfortable to play, since the back edge wouldn't dig into the player's ribs and the upper front edge wouldn't cut into their forearm. The contours also shaved some weight off the body. The bridge, pickup and other hardware remained generally the same, as did the maple neck.

The 3rd generation Precision had the most changes and established the blue-print for the Fender P-bass for the next 50+ years. Perhaps the most significant change was to the pickup, which now took the form of a staggered two-coil humbucker, which had a very different sound from the old single-coil design. The bridge, while still very simple, now had separately adjustable saddles for each string allowing for better intonation. The anodized aluminum pickguard acted as a mount and shielding for the electronics, which combined with the humbucking pickup made the instrument much less prone to stray electronic noise. The body was essentially the same as the 1954 version, though the new pickguard gave it a different appearance. The neck was different in that it now incorporated a headstock more like the Stratocaster guitar rather than the Telecaster was also slimmer in profile (front to back) - though Fender's from the era do vary from instrument to instrument.

'59 P-bass from Idaho

So onto the subject of this post - which is a 1959 Fender Precision that has a good 50+ years of play under its belt - and a number of refinishes as well. The bass belongs to a client in Idaho, who acquired the bass, pretty much in the condition seen below, roughly 20 years ago.

He had always intended on refinishing the instrument, but had just never gotten around to it. However, through a combination of fret wear and nut wear, the bass had slowly become unplayable and he finally contacted me around the middle of last year (2011) to see if I though it was possible to restore his bass - and of course, if it was affordable.

He sent me a set of pictures - some of which are below. Cosmetically, the biggest issue was that the bass had been stripped, stained and then BRUSHED with some sort of shellac (see the second picture). The gold anodized aluminum pickguard had also been spray painted black and then back of the neck had been sprayed with some sort of clear finish as well.

Functionally, the biggest issue was that the frets and neck had been worn deeply in a few positions - namely the 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th position. As the owner said, "the cowboy chords" !!

I told him I'd most likely have to do a partial or complete refret but try to save the original finish on the fretboard - and that I'd try to strip the body clean for a 2-color burst, but that if it didn't come out clean, we'd have the reversionary option of a blonde finish.

On the plus side, it appeared that ALL of the hardware was original with the exception of the bridge cover and a few missing pickguard screws.

Really ? Someone thought black Krylon looked better than anodized gold ?

Gotta love those stained scratches and brush marks !!

Heavy playing wear at the "dots" !!

I received the bass and after inspecting it, I wanted to see if I could at least get it playable. The strings were more or less sitting on the frets and I suspect that the owner had inadvertently switched to a lighter gauge set of strings which effectively made the nut slots too low and the neck tension too high.

I built up the nut slots with some baking soda and superglue and then refiled them to a better height and width. I also loosened up the truss rod a little - fixed a loose ground - and then bass played! The action was SUPER low, but at least now it was working. The first 10 frets were VERY worn and grooved whereas the higher ones weren't grooved at all!

I then started the disassembly to see what I had to work with. The first obstacle I ran into was that the neck was STUCK to the body - and I mean literally stuck - like it was glued in !!

I tried just prying it loose at first - but I was worried about either ripping a chuck out of the softer alder body - or even worse, damaging the neck !!

I ended up working a very thin palate knife between the body and the neck - the neck still wouldn't come loose, so I stood the bass on end and dripped denatured alcohol into the small gap using a small paint brush. After doing this several times and waiting a few minutes - I then used my hands to try to pry the neck loose - and "POP!!" - out it came !!

Once the neck was out, it became obvious what was holding it stuck in place - the remnants of a lime green paint job that had gotten softened by the prior stripping and then acted as a glue to hold the neck in place.

What's really horrifying is to imagine this '59 P-bass sprayed lime green - presumably sometime during the early 80s ...

Remarkably - the penciled neck date DID survive all of this - and sure enough, read "2-59" - February 1959. The pickup cavity had a different date - "12/58" - which is not unusual for Fender instruments, since they are essentially modular - and were assembled from a stack of bodies and necks and other hardware, with the dates usually ranging over a few months.

Next came the stripping process - to assess whether or not the factory 2-color sunburst would be feasible on the stained body. I decided to use my random orbital sander, a palm sander and a sanding block to remove the finish as I was worried a chemical stripper might actually soak the stain further into the wood. I started with relatively heavy 150 grit disks to cut down the brushed on finish, and then switched to 220 grit and 320 grit disks.

With the palm sander and sanding block I used 100 grit and 220 grit, plus some free hand sanding in places like the inside of the cutaways. I wanted to get rid of the stained scratches but of course not remove a noticeable amount of wood. In the end, the stain was only on the surface of the alder body and came off remarkably cleanly!

Traces of the original finish could be seen in the pickup and control cavity routings.

The pickguard was also stripped - using Citristrip paint stripper - which took the black paint off cleanly, requiring only a plastic scraper and then a rag soaked in acetone to get it completely clean.

Stripped guard - showing player's wear through to aluminum. Partially defretted neck at top.

I also carefully removed the first 10 frets - taking care to not chip the fretboard or finish as I pulled them.

Based on the results of the stripping, the client and I decided that a 2-color burst was the finish to go for and then I'd also refinish and somewhat "relic" the back of the neck, but leave the original finish alone on the fretboard and definitely on the headstock face (the logo was in surprisingly good condition!)

The 2-color burst is a little bit of a tricky finish - because though its just two colors, it can often look like a faded 3-color Fender burst - especially given the inconsistent reproduction of colors in some guitar books. The client and I searched the internet for various original 1958 and 1959 P-basses and also pictures of Fender's recent custom shop reissues. After agreeing on a few images I set about trying to reproduce the finish.

The base finish is a transparent ambered yellow - with a decidely more "orange" tint that the strong lemon yellow transparent color that serves as the base for a later 3-color burst. I also had some remaining finish in the body routings to refer to.

The dark edging is a fairly transparent dark brown, with a reddish element mixed in - which looks very red when it is "misted" over the amber base coat - thereby giving the impression of a soft 3-color burst.

Some of the ambering of the base color is from aging of the clear coat, so I decided to mix a base color from Stew-Macs "vintage amber" and "lemon yellow" dye and then a second base color that had more "vintage amber" and a tiny dab of "cherry".

For the edging, I mixed Stew-Mac's "medium brown" with some "cherry" and then a little "walnut" to darken it up more. I mixed this so that it would require several passes to get an opaque color - so that I'd be able to get the soft fade of the edge I wanted.

Before I started painting, I sealed the body with multiple coats of sanding sealer and sanded it, to get a smooth base to work from.

I then sprayed the more yellow base coat to get an even tint across the whole body - and then applied a coat of the more ambered color to darken it and give it more depth.

I switched to the brown edging color, first doing the edges of the body, and then working on the fade - trying to avoid the tendency to apply TOO much of the darker color. After carefully "dusting" off overspray dust from the center of the body, brushing outwards with my hand, I sealed the finish with a single pass of clear.

First pass of 2-color burst with guard in place

Notice blushing, which appears pinkish

I liked how the finish was looking, but it was too transparent on some of the edges, particularly around the horns of the body and there were a few areas that the fade needed to be a little wider - and there was also what appeared to be some "blushing" in the darker areas.

I realized the blushing was from the using too much "Smoothie" additive in the clearcoat and the brown tinted portion of the finish.

I mixed a new batch of the brown edging, but without Smoothie and tinted a little heavier - and did a very light overspray of the edging - evening it out in the process as well.

I also sealed this with several coats of clear gloss - and I was very happy with the results !

I also unmasked the control and pickup cavities, and the new finish matched the remnants of the old finish almost perfectly !

While the finish on the body was curing - I turned my attention to the neck. I refretted the first ten slots with narrow "vintage" fretwire, but the new frets were still substantially taller than the 53 year old original frets, probably more due to wear and dressing than a difference in size.

When installing the new frets, I was very careful in cleaning out the fretslots and not overcutting them. Even though it would be pretty obvious that the neck had a partial refret, I didn't want it to be TOO glaring !! I also made every effort to not damage the original finish on the fretboard. I trimmed the fret-tangs to the correct length for each fret before installation (using the Stewmac fret tang trimmer) - and then applied a small amount of glue to the tang before gently hammering them in and then clamping each fret til it dried.

Once the frets were all in - I had to level the first ten down to the level of the remaining original frets - which meant just going slow. I used a radiused sanding block with 80 grit Stickit paper on it to do the rough leveling - then switched to a finer grit before working on each fret individually.

The fret ends on the treble-side of the fretboard were particularly difficult to do in the areas where the wood was heavily worn. I didn't want to over file - but I also didn't want sharp edges to snag fingers. I ended up putting a small drop of thick cyanocrylate glue under the tip of the frets that were protruding (3 of them) and then gently and subtly rounding off the fret ends til they were comfortable. The little bit of glue under the end of the fret keeps the players fingers from snagging the bottom edge of the fret (where it SHOULD be meeting wood if it weren't worn away!).

All in all - I was happy with how the fretboard felt and looked when I was done.

I had already sanded the back of the neck bare - I even had to dip the tuners in acetone to strip shellac off them - someone had simply sprayed the whole back of the neck, with the tuners in place !! No wonder they were stiff !!

I did a multistep finishing process here:

- a clear gloss coat to seal the wood

- a tinted amber coat (a mix of Vintage Amber and some Brown dye)

- then I lightly sanded the finish and rubbed it with a water/pumice mixture

- I rubbed in a mix of black and burnt siena powdered dye

- sprayed another light clear coat

- dulled the clear coat with water/pumice mixture again

I probably could drop or combine a few steps here and there, but this allowed me to progress towards the look and feel I wanted. I have a '65 Jaguar with perfect neck wear and one day I hope to be able to replicate that finish !

Pumice/water in red bowl - powdered stain in cut tin can to right.

Finally came the time for wet sanding and buffing out the body - and reassembly. And here are the final results !!

Gretsch Corvette - Fender-style, Sonic Blue Refinish

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 22:44:00 +0000

Just a few pictures of a pretty simple refinish I did for a client recently.

He had a late-60s Gretsch Corvette, which had suffered the usual corrosive pickguard disintegration that these guitars are prone to - and had also been stripped and refinished sometime in the past, though not very well.

He had stripped the guitar and had a custom white/black/white pickguard and truss-rod cover cut for it - and asked me to refinish the guitar in Daphne Blue. After looking at a few paint samples and completed guitars, he realized he actually wanted to lighter and greyer Sonic Blue.

We did discuss the non-originality of the refinish he wanted, but he was not excited by the prospect of a stock cherry red or black/red burst finish - and really wanted to duplicate the color scheme of a 60's Fender guitar.

In keeping with this aesthetic, we also decided to paint the face of the headstock a matching sonic blue, instead of black as would have been stock on a Corvette.

I started by sanding and then sealing the mahogany body and neck - and then applying many coats of sanding sealer, so that the grain of the wood would be completely sealed by the underlying clear coat. I used a dark grain-filler too - as would have been used on a cherry finish originally. By doing this - I allowed for future stripping of the guitar without white primer or Sonic Blue colorcoat getting into the open grained mahogany - just in case someone wants to restore it to it's original finish some day.

As you can see - this guitar was made of some nicely grained mahogany.

Applying the Sonic Blue finish over the clear finish was pretty easy, since the surface was well prepped. I only had to do two coats of Sonic Blue, followed by three clear gloss coats. After about two weeks of curing - I wet sanded and buffed out the body and returned it to the owner.

He re-assembled and installed the guitar hardware (the Grover's are not original - this guitar would have had Van Ghent tuners like a Hagstrom) - and then brought it by for me to install a repro Gretsch logo (which I had been waiting for).

The gold lettering was a perfect little detail to top off a very pretty guitar !!

1965 Gibson SG Junior, Pelham Blue: Completed Finally !!

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 16:35:00 +0000

Roughly four years ago, I acquired a much abused Gibson SG Junior and set about repairing some fairly brutal body routing prior to refinishing it in Pelham Blue. After a few misteps in the refinishing process - I set the project aside. Meanwhile, I sold my house and moved the Guitar Garage to a new location in an old textile mill in Waltham MA and the poor old SG just sat leaning up against a wall.

This past winter I decided it was finally time to attack this project again and finish it up.

The initial steps in the repair of the body are documented in a prior post which you can read here. After doweling and epoxying in a block of mahogany - I used my router to cut a nice clean surface on the back where I could glue in a 1/4 thick pieces of mahogany to get a level smooth surface on the back.

On the front, the glued in block was actually pretty smooth so I just used some epoxy to fill some gaps and glued in a piece of mahogany where the pickup cavity had been over-routed.

Once the body was blocked up, I had to re-rout it for the correct control cavity and pickup cavity - as well as dowel and epoxy the oversized tuner holes in the headstock. I made a series of masonite templates to guide the routing of the control cavity and pickup cavity - tracing from an original Junior to get the correct shape and orientation.

I routed out the pickup cavity first - and you can see that some of the original "floor" and cherry finish was still present.

I traced the location of the control cavity routing ( I actually only had a tracing of the cover and cover location but used pictures I found online to define the cavity shape).

Here's the control cavity routed along with the repro plastic cover I fabricated.

With the repro pickguard in place.

Note the serial number 282371 - which places this guitar as an early 1965 production instrument. This guitar has some attributes that differentiate it from later SG Juniors - most notably the fairly fat neck which is also wider at the nut than later years. The 1963 through 1965 SG Juniors also had a smaller control cavity than later Juniors - which had the standard full size routing that was common to SG Juniors, SG Specials, SG Standard, EB-0 and EB-3 basses and Firebirds. I believe the transition to the larger control cavity happened in late 1965.

Despite the ridiculous routing to the body - this guitar had never suffered a headstock crack nor a heel crack - and had not been routed out for a neck position pickup, so the longer neck tenon was intact.

Once all the woodwork was done - I started using the standard procedure for finishing a mahogany guitar - which means filling the grain, sanding, then spraying several layers of sanding sealer and then sanding again until the grain is completely filled. I have detailed this process in other posts, so I didn't document it here.

Here's the body getting an initial coat of Pelham Blue - note that there is no primer coat, as Gibson didn't use primers for their custom color instruments.

After this step - I applied a tinted clear coat to the body and neck - which gave it more of an "aqua" color - a strong green tint. I liked the color, but I ended up having some clear coat pool at the bottom of the heel joint - which just did not look right. As I was getting very busy with other work, I put the project aside.

After revisiting the guitar a few months later - I could see that the color coat had fully cured - and shrunk - and now not only was the mahogany grain visible in places, but so were some of the seams from the fill blocks. In frustration, I put the project aside once again.

Fast forward 3 years later - and I'm in my new shop - and I decide its time to just "get 'er done" as Larry the Cableguy would say ...

I ended up using an oribtal sander with 320 grit to sand down the front and back of the body - and then a block to do the edges and neck - finishing up with a lot of hand sanding. In some places I went through to the clear sealer coats, in some there was still some yellowed topcoat visible - but I made sure that everything was completely level before spraying several more clear coats on the entire instrument followed by careful wet sanding.

I also finally sprayed the headstock face black and applied a repro decal and numerous clear coats to hide the decal film.

At this point I felt pretty certain that the mahogany was extremely well sealed and that the routing repairs were as invisible as they were going to get.

I applied two thin coats of Pelham Blue lacquer (from TCP Global) - and then immediately clear coated the finish. In my experience its NOT possible to sand a metallic color coat at all - you have to lay down a nice even color and finish - using lots of thinner and maybe a touch of 3M's "Smoothie" - and then rely on the clear topcoat for achieving the real glossy finish.

After a few days - I then carefully applied a tinted clear coat - which was clear gloss lacquer primarily tinted with Stew-Mac's "Vintage Amber" dye, with a small amount of "Brown" and "Cherry" added to so that the lacquer had the color of dark honey in the paint cup. I focused on getting an nice even tint- slowly building it up with a wider spray pattern. The tinted coat was followed with three coats of clear gloss lacquer - and then I let the finish cure for a week and a half before wet sanding and buffing it out.

The final product is pictured below - it has the original wrap-around "lightning bolt" bridge, some mid-60s Kluson tuners, repro knobs and pots and currently has a GFS P-90 pickup, though I may switch in a '64 Gibson P-90 once I find a cover that fits it correctly.

The guitar had not been strung up in 4 years, but the neck settled in place perfectly and the guitar plays great - and is easy on the neck at a mere 5 lbs, 12 ozs !! (compare that to my concrete bass !)

The SG Junior is pictured here alongside some contemporary "brethren": a 1967 Kalamazoo KG-2 (by Gibson) in its version of Pelham Blue; a 1966 Gibson Melodymaker in very very aged Pelham Blue; and the 1965 SG Junior.

Concrete Bass Prototype: What is heavier than metal ????

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 03:34:00 +0000

Last spring, while in the middle of creating some small concrete countertops for a tattoo shop build-out (Pumpkin Tattoo in Jamaica Plain) the question came up, "would it be possible to build a concrete body for a guitar"?

I decided to give it a shot as I've always been interested in alternate materials for guitars (fiberglass, acrylic plastic, aluminum) and I thought visually it might be cool.

I selected a simple but classic body shape - the 1959 Gibson Les Paul Junior double-cutaway - but decided to make a 30-inch scale length bass instead of a guitar. I used my own '59 LP Junior for a tracing.

Molding the basic shape didn't seem too challenging, but I was a little concerned about how to cast in the pickup and control cavities, neck pocket, as well as conduits for the wiring. I also knew I wanted to add in some metal mesh and rods for reinforcement, since I was worried about the whole body cracking if it took a hard blow.

I borrowed a book entitled, "Concrete Countertops" by Fu-Teng Cheng as a guide - and it was very helpful.

To start with, I cut out the body profile from 1 inch thick pine - then traced it onto a some 3/4 in. pine to get a full 1 3/4 inch deep mold - the same as a 50s Les Paul Junior. I decided to "borrow" a spare Dan Armstrong bass neck I had for the prototype body and used this to layout a neck-pocket.

The mold is an open top mold - with the top of the guitar body facing downwards, so that it would end up with a smoother cast finish. I used melamine bookshelves for the base of the mold. I intentionally left a middle seam as I thought this would make the finished body look more like a poured building wall - more of an "industrial" look.

I placed wooden blocks for the neck pocket and pickup cavity. The grey material is epoxy that was used to fill in some chips and rough spots in the somewhat crudely cut form (I used a jigsaw because my bandsaw wasn't operating correctly)

I also needed to cast in the holes for the bolts that would hold the Dan Armstrong neck to the body. I drilled holes for dowels in the neck block - using the Armstrong neck as a template and checking the placement against it

I built a similar block for the control cavity, with dowels through the melamine backing board for the control pot shafts and output jack.

I put a piece of three conductor wrapped wiring (yellow) to be cast into the body, to carry the signal from the pickup to the controls. I also added a short piece of shielded wiring from the pickup cavity to the bridge location to act as a bridge ground wire.

For reinforcement of the concrete, I placed two pieces of aluminum mesh as well as a piece of hollow steel tubing (a cut-off piece of IKEA curtain rod) under the neck pocket.

I should also point out that the body mold was cut into three segments - which were then screwed down to the backplate after being sealed with some regular black silicone caulk. I also put a layer of paste wax on the insides of the form and all of the wooden blocks that would be removed from the cast body.

Now I was ready to pour !!

For the concrete, I used "topping mix" concrete - which has no aggregate (pebbles) in it and is very smooth - with a liquid vinyl additive to make the concrete less brittle and less likely to chip or crack. These were both standard off the shelf items at Home Depot.

I mixed the concrete a little wetter than perhaps called for in the instructions - but it poured well. I used a square pad sander with rough grit sandpaper on it to vibrate the edge of the form as a means of making sure there were no voids in the pour.

Below is the form with the concrete poured and vibrated and lightly troweled.

After the concrete had started to harden - and some water had risen to the surface, I screened to surface to smooth it as much as possible.

Then I simply put the mold aside and let it cure for roughly 4 days. It is important to let the concrete cure before attempting to demold it - but its also important to demold it in less than 7 days, as the concrete continues to harden and will become very difficult to drill and/or polish after 7 days.

The mold was disassembled and the edge pieces pulled away carefully.

The casting actually came out cleaner than I expected !!

Once the sides of the form were removed - I had to drive the wooden form out of the body to leave the control cavity.

The control cavity form halfway out of the body.

Then came the step of prying the body up from the backing board - it required more force than I expected and I was being cautious. Since then I have realized that the body is nearly indestructible and I was probably a little over cautious!

And "voila!" - there it is !!

Here's the body free of the mold - with the ground wire and three conductor wiring visible.

The next step was to file off some of the rough edges and I actually sanded the back a little - but opted NOT to use a concrete grinder/polisher as I wanted to keep the raw concrete look of the body.

I brushed on a few coats of concrete sealer to the body - per instructions from the concrete countertops book. I followed the sealer several layers of paste wax - which I let dry and then wiped off thoroughly, to try to give a little bit of a sheen to the surface

I used a small hammer drill for pickup and bridge mounting holes, which I then filled with grey plumber's epoxy, before redrilling them for the actual mounting screws. This was a much easier approach than trying to use masonry screws.

I began to assemble and wire the components.

Here are some pictures of the completed concrete bass - it weighs approximately 25 lbs complete - but to be honest it actually feels HEAVIER !! The sound is pretty neutral - shaped more by the GFS-made "Musicman"-style bass humbucker than anything else. I eventually will replace the neck with a slightly wider fretboard neck (which I will make) so that the Dan Armstrong neck can go back to its rightful place.

Based on my experience building this body, I plan on building one or more follow-ons with the following changes to lower the weight:

- reduce the overall thickness to 1 1/2 inches from 1 3/4 inches (which should shave about 3 lbs off)

- place some foam blocks inside the casting, between the bridge and butt of the body and on the bass side of the bridge (could reduce the weight another 3 or 4 lbs).

I also would like to make a guitar version - both with a wooden neck and with an aluminum neck.

Hondo H-1 Death Dagger ... and family ...

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 19:36:00 +0000

During the mid-80s - at the height of the "pointy guitar" craze - a family of related guitars hit the market under the Hondo and Mako labels. For convenience, I'll refer to these as the "Death Dagger" family of instruments.

Hondo had an amazing catalog of guitars by the early 80s - with literally hundreds of models of guitars and basses available. A great number of these were copies of US vintage guitars, including of course the typical Les Paul, Strat, P-bass and Jazz Bass knock-offs, but also more obscure copies of Melodymakers and Danelectros, etc. But where Hondo really hit their creative stride was in catering to the blossoming metal guitar market.

Hondo not only started selling outrageously shaped instruments but also all sorts of wild finishes, including prism/hologram finishes.

Hondo's build quality also varied widely - with the cheapest instruments being bolt-ons almost guaranteed to end up with a warped neck within a year or so but with other lines having set-necks and Dimarzio pickups and even all mahogany construction. The cheapest models tended to come out of Korean factories whereas the better models were sourced from Japan. I'm not going into all the details on Hondo - there are various articles on the topic online - and its a big complex topic!

But the set-neck Japanese Hondo's are pretty fine instruments - and can be real bargains. I still regret not buying a set-neck Hondo Korina Explorer copy that had a loose pickup for $99 back in the mid-90s - later realized it was probably a VERY well built Japanese instrument.

The Death Dagger

The Death Dagger family was built in Japan - probably in the same Matsumoku plant where the better Aria and Westone guitars were manufactured - and were sold under the Hondo label as the one humbucker H-1 and the dual single pickup H-2. Initially, the H-1 was dubbed the "Death Dagger" - and the H-2 was the "Metal Master" - even though H-2's electronics and tremelo were better suited to playing surf-instrumentals!!

Here's an example of a H-1 Death Dagger in metallic blue - it also came in red and black - and perhaps other colors?

Here's a metallic red example - with blue trim - as pictured in the print ad.

There was also a Death Dagger bass - I missed buying this beauty on Ebay - it sold for less than $200 - and it looks to be built just as well as the H-1 guitar, with decent hardware and finish and a similar form-fit hardcase. This is the only example I've seen of this bass - I'd love to acquire one if anyone out there has a lead on one !!

The Hondo Sting

The Hondo Sting appears to be a further evolution of the Death Dagger but with a headstock-less neck. Maybe too many lead singers were getting impaled or blinded by the Death Dagger headstock ? Or more likely - Hondo was jumping on some sort of "Steinberger-bandwagon".

I've never seen one of these instruments in person but they appear to all be set-neck as well but with some very flashy paint jobs added - as well as body mounted tuners of course. "The Sting" was printed on the lower part of the body - and there was a bass version as well.

If anyone has more info on these - or other variants - please let me know!

Mako XK-4

The H-2 was also sold as the Mako XK-4 - which appears to be identical except for the headstock logo. The brand Mako doesn't appear to have anything to do with Hondo, so this was probably just an example of the manufacturer selling the same instrument to two different companies, who then applied their own brand. There's a more detailed write-up on this guitar in an older post, here.

Note the form-fit case - with a sheepskin-like lining material !!

Bolt-On Neck Death Daggers

A little more research (mostly via Ebay auctions) has revealed that Hondo also marketed bolt-on neck versions of the H-1 and H-2 - presumably a few years after the set-neck versions and I'd guess as a cost-saving measure.

These had the same body and headstock shapes but in both cases had the neck attached with 6-bolts.

The Hondo brand went into hiatus sometime around 1987 (though it did re-emerge a few years later) and I'd guess that these bolt-on models are from around the end of the Hondo's existence - probably 1985 to 1987.

And the bolt-on version of the H-2, which looks like its also had its "points" softened a little bit - maybe a safety improvement ?

1966 Guild Jetstar Bass: Bringing a "Peter Tork" bass back to life !!

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:38:00 +0000

The early Guild Jetstar Bass is one of the rarer and more unusual basses built by the Guild company during their Hoboken, NJ years. Guild was much more of a guitar company to start with - and the semi-hollow Guild Starfire bass was by far the predominant 4-string product during the 1960s.

Its difficult to tell how many Jetstar basses were actually built by Guild, but the numbers were not very large. Using Guild's serial number system and company records, it appears that there were 243 Jetstar Basses built between 1965 and 1967 - with serial numbers ranging between SD 101 and SD 243. There probably were some additional Jetstar Basses built in 1964 and early 1965 under an older Guild serial number system, but there is no way to break out how many from Guild's production records from that period. Does anybody out there have a Jetstar Bass with a non- SD serial number ?

The initial Jetstar Bass built between 1964 and 1965 had an asymmetric headstock with a 2 X 2 tuner configuration. A similar headstock was used on the Guild S-50, S-100 and S-200 guitars. This bass was also fitted with the large Hagstrom BiSonic pickup, as used on the Guild Starfire basses. It doesn't appear that very many examples of this style were built - probably less than 100 and maybe as few as 8. I have never seen one in person, though I do recall seeing a video by the band Cibo Mato where Sean Lennon (John's son) was playing one.

Below is a copy of Guild literature depicting the early model Jet-Star Bass

And here is a picture of the Jet-Star with serial # SD-101 from my buddy Joe O'Quinn - this bass has had the original Hagstrom Bi-Sonic pickup, knobs, Van Ghent/Hagstrom bridge replaced - but the sunburst finish appears to be entirely original.

Just needs a Hammon "Darkstar" pickup and some reissue Guild parts to set it right !!

In 1966, Guild switched to a 4-inline tuner configuration, more akin to the Gibson Thunderbird in appearance. Guild also switched to a simpler and smaller DeArmond single coil pickup, often referred to as the "Mickey Mouse pickup", though the initially the Jetstar basses were still routed for the much larger Hagstrom Bisonic pickup. Its not clear if any 4-inline Jetstar Basses came with Bisonics, but it's certainly possible.

Here is a picture of Peter Tork miming bass during a musical sequence of an episode of the Monkees - note the tuners on the headstock - a topic I'll revisit later on. Also note that the finish looks almost like a 50's Fender two-color burst - though this may just be due to the red being washed out in the film clip. The dark border is much wider though than in the example pictured above.

I saw my first Jetstar Bass in person at the Philly Fall Guitar Show back in November 2001 - an example with the finish stripped, but otherwise complete. I opted to buy a really beat and badly refinished '63 Precision instead (they were both $700) but kept my eye open for Jetstar bass.

About 4 years later, I finally found a completely stripped example on Ebay for a pretty reasonable price and bought it. The serial number on the bass was SD 320, meaning it was from late 1966. I fitted a bridge from a Hagstrom "bubble-top" bass in this photo, but it came with absolutely NO parts. Note the remnants of the original yellow undercoat in the pickup cavity.

One of the first things I tried to sort out was what kind of tuners were originally fitted to my Jet-Star. My 1965 Guild Starfire has Kluson tuners - similar to those used on Gibson EB-0, EB-2s and EB-3s, but I had also seen pictures of Jet-Stars with Van Ghent/Hagstrom tuners, identical to the ones used on Hagstrom and Baldwin basses during the 60s. Finally - the picture of Peter Tork's Jet-Star appeared to show cheap Japanese tuners - similar to the ones used on Teisco and Sekova basses, as well as some Gibson EB-0s and Melodymaker basses.

Fortunately, I actually examples of all three types of tuners around - and the alignment of the screw holes and relief cuts made it clear that this particular bass was fitted with Kluson tuners - though perhaps models with longer tuner shafts. Given the very limited production of the Jet-Star basses - less than 300 over a 4 year period - I'm pretty sure Guild simply installed whatever was around the shop or easily available on each bass.

My project didn't really take off though for another few years - when I acquired (from Joe !) another Jet-Star bass - which had at one point been modified to a 5-string (!!) and then unmodified back to a 4-string - leaving a pretty hacked up headstock. But the bass came with the original electronics, control cover, finger rests, knobs and case as well as a compatible Guild bridge - so basically all the parts I was missing for my initial project.

The first order of repair was the output jack area - which had been ripped out at some point. I glued in a fitted piece of alder, with a reinforcing piece of maple underneath it in the control cavity. I filled in the edges with some oak colored filler - and then sanded it smooth and redrilled it later.

After sanding, the light colored alder body is obvious in contrast to the mahogany neck.

Here's the bodied sanded and with a coat of sanding sealer on it - the jack repair is visible but much better than a gaping hole or fitting a cover plate.

Opted for a three-color sunburst in the Fender style, as opposed to a brown/red/yellow burst. I did this in large part due to a refinish I saw online, which was on a Jet-Star that had the original finish on the neck but not the body. That particular example had a VERY Fender looking 3-color burst on the neck - and the luthier in that case opted for a finish that I felt looked very consistent with the back of the neck. The blogpost can be viewed at here.

The truth is that once again these basses were built in very limited numbers - and as with the hardware - the exact finish applied probably varied from week to week if not example to example.

As with a Fender finish - the first step was a base of transparent lemon yellow. I had to go pretty heavy on the mahogany neck to even get a yellow tint - and it actually had a slight green cast to it, due to the mahogany showing through.

Next came the transparent cherry red - for a "sienna burst" look.

Finally - the walnut edging and detail on the heel and behind the nut on the neck.

The body then received some touch up of the red part of the burst - over the walnut - and then a number of clear coats to seal in the finish before a wet sanding and buffing out.

One last step was to transplant new rosewood saddles from a reissue Guild bass to the correct baseplate for the Jet-Star. Of course they didn't completely fit (too tall) - so I had to cut down the metal tabs that allow for each saddle to be adjusted for intonation, then grind down the individual rosewood saddles and assemble everything onto the baseplate.

But finally everything was assembled and setup ...

The result is a nice playing, VERY lightweight but balanced bass - this bass has the same compact 30-inch scale length as my Starfire bass and the neck has a very similar profile and feel to it. The bass sounds good despite the cheap little Dearmond pickup - fairly powerful and warm. All I need now is a suede vest, paisley shirt and a bowl haircut ...

So now I need to get started on the other "organ donor" Jet-star bass - which is all mahogany and will be restored to its original cherry red finish. Anyone have a Darkstar or BiSonic pickup for sale out there ??

1965 Danoelectro Shorthorn Bass Refinish

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 17:56:00 +0000

I have always had a special affection for Danelectro's - having grown up in Monmouth County along the Jersey Shore, right where Danelectro was based throughout the 1950s and 60s. The company was part of the local lore - seemed like every musician or guitar guy of a certain age had worked in the Dano factory in Neptune, NJ for a summer. Of course by the time I got interested in guitars, around the late 70s, Danelectro had been gone for over a decade and Kramer guitars had actually taken up residence in the old Neptune Danelectro factory.

I didn't buy my first Danelectro until I was in college, because they were actually pretty expensive due to their legendary status in the Jersey and New York City area. I also had my eye on a Dano Longhorn bass - because I'd seen pictures of John Entwistle playing one - and those were among the rarest of the Danos. When I was in high school you could pick up a 60s Fender Precision for the same price as a Longhorn bass .. and both were out of my range. The first Dano I got was a copper Shorthorn guitar (Model 3012) that was missing a few tuner parts and the aluminum nut - and I paid $80 for. My buddy Dave picked up a horribly refinished amp-in-case model (Model 1448) for $40 - no case and no tuners. At the time we both felt we overpaid by a bit ...

Since then - really beginning about 18 years ago - I have managed to slowly but surely build up a collection of roughly 15 Danelectro guitars and basses - some labeled as Silvertones - and I have really come to appreciate what simple and reliable instruments they are. I have NEVER had a bad Danelectro neck - no twist and always flat - and all the frets in securely. Can't say that for Fenders and Gibsons that have passed through my hands.

I also have fully restored and refinished a few Danelectros - a six-string shorthorn bass, a doubleneck bass and guitar (Model 3923), a 12-string Bellzouki (Model 7010), another amp-in-case Silvertone - and scratchbuilt a fuchsia sparkle, maple board Longhorn bass. Through my restoration work, I have found how to match the metallic copper color used on many Danos, how to replicate the white edging (vinyl wallpaper), how to replace a caved-in top (masonite board from Home Depot) and of course, how to cut those little aluminum nuts from standard barstock aluminum I bought at Ace Hardware!

The instrument that this post describes is a Model 3412 Shorthorn bass, which has a body nearly identical to the Model 3012 guitar, but with the bridge repositioned towards the back edge to accomodate a 30 inch scale length on a very compact body. The bass neck is also identical in dimensions to the guitar neck, but with 15 fret fingerboard and only 4 tuner holes drilled in the headstock. If you examine the picture above, you can see that the only real difference between the shorthorn bass and guitar is the fingerboard, the positioning of the bridge and the tuners - making it very easy and economical to mass produce the two instruments. The 6-string bass Shorthorn simply is the 4 string bass fitted with a 6-string guitar bridge and drilled for six guitar tuners. VERY efficient !!

This particular bass was purchased at a lawn sale quite a few years ago but the owner finally decided he wanted to have it restored to its original finish. The bass was in decent shape, but the body had been refinished with some sorta of thick bumpy finish in a dark tan, vaguely metallic color. The only parts missing were the two distinctive plastic control knobs (someone should make reproductions of them !) and the original plastic strap-buttons.

This Model 3412 was a later example (these basses were made from 1958 until 1968), with the "seal guard" replacing the earlier small plexiglass and vinyl guard - and with a tilt adjustment on the rear of the neck pocket. The tilt adjustment is a threaded mount for a small allen head screw that pushes on the heel of the neck to adjust the neck angle once the two neck mounting screws are loosened up. The allen head is accessible through the back of the body - and can be seen in the picture below.

This bass needed to have the neck angle increased (allen screw driven inwards to push on heel of neck) to raise the string height at the bridge, so that the bridge could be set at the proper height and angle to lock the string ends into the bridge string slots AND to make sure that there was good downforce from the strings on the rosewood bridge saddle. This is a key part of setting up any Danelectro bass or guitar for best playability and tone.

Most of the copper finish had worn off the back of the neck from playing - and the setup was much less than optimal - with the action way too high.

Most of the original headstock decal was intact but some areas of the headstock were "touched up" with the brown paint unfortunately.

The owner decided that he wanted the entire instrument refinished to as near to "factory" as possible. I did suggest leaving the headstock as is but the appearance really bothered him, so we decided on that first I'd try to mask around the original logo and match the finish - and if that didn't work, I'd use some home-made silkscreened Dano decals I had left over from the restoration of my double-neck about 10 years ago.

I began with the body - working on cleaning the edging material, which appeared to not only be dirty but also to have maybe picked up some overspray from when the bass was repainted. Since the material is a pretty tough vinyl, I simply used a stiff dishwashing brush and some soap and water to scrub the edges clean.

Came out pretty clean !! After this I masked off the edges to protect the vinyl, and then sanded the front and back surfaces of the body using a random orbital sander.

As you can see, the back of the body wasn't completely flat - I think there was some very slight bowing from years of pull from the strings. Most Danelectros are basically hollow-bodies - with a pine frame forming the edge and neck pocket with a masonite front and back glued on. The picture below illustrates the construction of a typical 60s Danelectro. Often there was a separate "bridge block" as well. Note that the piece of cardboard in the pickup area is simply a label for the photo.

Once the body was sanded smooth, it was primed in light grey color (white primer with a touch of black added), which is what Danelectro typically used, though I think I have also seen examples with white primer showing.

The next task was to figure out a pigment mix for the copper-bronze color that Danelectro used on many of their instruments. The pigment was obviously copper-based - probably as a bronze powder - the greening on the worn back of the neck is from oxidation of the copper in the finish.

Prior refins I had done had been more of an "orangey" copper than I wanted - so I decided I'd blend in some other powdered metal pigments into the same copper base I'd used in the past to try to get a closer match to the original color. I decided to match the color that was on the heel of the neck, as the lacquer had oxidized the least there.

After a bit of trial and error, I settled on a mix of the following metallic powders: Pearl-Ex Super Copper, Pearl-Ex Super Bronze and a small amount of Super-Brite Aluminum to lighten the overall color. I compared the test panel to my other Danelectros .. both with and without a slightly tinted clear coat. It appeared that the Danos had a clear coat on the neck but not necessarily on the body - meaning that sometimes the necks appear a bit darker with age than the bodies.

The test panel below has a tinted clear coat on the left hand side.

The body was given several coats of the copper bronze color and then clear coated with a slightly tinted clearcoat to get the slightly duller color of a vintage Danelectro. The neck was painted at the same time and given more topcoats to achieve a slightly more tinted look and assure a smooth surface on the poplar wood. Note that in both cases there was NO wet sanding of the color coats - metallic colors do not respond well to sanding in general, with the metallic pigment particles showing a scratched or brushed look afterwards. Just something to keep in mind when doing metallic colors !!

After color coating and clear coating the body and neck, I put the instrument aside for a week or so to cure. When I looked at the parts again, I saw areas where the finish or the primer appeared to have shrinkage lines or cracks. These lines had not been apparent in the primer nor color coats initially, and I was pretty mystified by their appearance, especially since I had refinished several Danelectros in the past and never had a similar problem.

I consulted with Jim Mouradian and he speculated that maybe the glue in the masonite board had reacted with the finish in places where I had sanded down the body more. The other possibility is that the remnants of the metallic tan "refin" had reacted with the nitrocellulose. I'm not sure still, but in order to prevent this from happening in the future, I will probably give Danelectros more time between the primer coat and color coats, to make sure that I am painting onto a stable finish base.

My fix was to simply wait for several weeks for the finish to cure some more - and then to wet sand the front and back - and apply a small amount of Bondo scratch filler to the cracks that didn't sand out - before respraying the front and back in copper again. This time the finish remained stable and there were no cracks.

Note that I did spray the edge "bevel" of the masonite, as it was already painted the "tan" color and had a few edge dings that were filled and would have shown. Factory finishes generally had some slight overspray onto the bevel, but it was not fully painted.

As mentioned above, the original logo was on the headstock, but the headstock finish was chipped and worn and then owner wanted to make it look as "factory" as the rest of the instrument. I decided to attempt masking the original logo and just refinish around it. Note that the original logos are either silk screened or sprayed onto the headstock using a template or screen. Sometimes its obvious because there are light or bare spots around the bottom of the logo.

Here I have masked off the logo carefully along the silver outline box.

Despite the color being a very good match near the heel of the neck (see picture below) - the color just didn't match well on the headstock face. I could have gotten closer with some tinting of the overcoat, but in my judgement it was still going to be off and look strange in the end.

In the picture above of the heel, the area closest to the butt of the neck is the original finish, with the new finish starting about half way along the heel - a pretty good match.

Visible is the date code - first two digits represent the week of the year, last number is the last digit of the year (the third digit's meaning is unknown)" - 11th week (March) of 1965. Note also the rounded metal insert on the heel of the neck - this is the surface that the neck tilt adjustment allen head screw pressed on.

I went back and sanded the headstock smooth - and resprayed the headstock - applied a tinted clear coat and then one of my homemade Danelectro decals. The lines on my decal are not as sharp as the original logo, but the even color is much better in my opinion and pretty convincing.

Here are a few detailed pictures of the tuners - which are a variation of the "skate key" tuners that Danelectro first used on the Model 1448 amp-in-case Silvertone, but then later used on various shorthorn guitars and basses.

As you can see - the boxy tuners consist of a two piece elongated box, that hold the tuner buttons in place, with the tuner shafts and gears mounted to one side of the box. There are two square nylon inserts, one at each end, to seal up and align the two halves of the box - which are also held together by the three mounting screws that go through the tuner body and into the back of the headstock.

I'm not sure if Danelectro made these tuners themselves, using sourced gears, pegs and buttons, or if they sourced them from some manufacturer. I have never seen them used on anything but Danelectro produced instruments. The come in two peg (for 2 X 2), three peg (for 3 X 3) and six peg (for six inline) configurations.

An interesting note is that unlike almost all electric guitars and basses, Danelectros don't have a ground wire running from the bridge to the electronics. The Danelectros rely instead on what was advertised as "Total Shielding" - the "totally shielded" electronics of Danelectro comprised of a box of copper and paper shielding material, taped together to surround the controls. The pickup itself was shielded by the trademark lipstick cover. This approach does work fairly well, though I have added a bridge ground wire on a few Danelectros to further reduce any electronic buzz.

Note the nifty bent brass spring that allows for height adjustment on the pickup. The seal pickguard is made from the same masonite as the top and back of the body and then painted a semi-gloss white on the front.

Finally - the bass was completely assembled, though still missing two control knobs - and it not only looked great but also played and sounded great, just like most Danos !!

My next Dano project will be a 12-string Bellzouki that is currently repainted Foam Green and missing its vinyl trim and other details.

1968 Fender Jazz Bass: Sonic Blue Regret and Restoration

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 21:36:00 +0000

This project represents an unfortunately common scenario from the 1970s, where an instrument's owner decided that the "natural" look was preferable to the original factory custom color. Guess the attitude was that "wood was good" - during this era a substantial part of Fender's instruments came in clear finish from the factory.

This 1968 Jazz Bass was purchased new in Madrid, Spain during 1969, with a factory Sonic Blue finish - a very rare finish for the late 60s. The owner later moved to the US and sometime later decided to strip the bass to a natural finish. Later on, the bass was also modified to have an active P-bass pickup and a battery compartment. The matching headstock was also stripped - and had a rectangular sticker on it for many years prior that a repro Fender decal being applied. Unfortunately the sticker left a lighter colored area on the headstock.

The owner decided to restore the bass to its original finish and mailed the bass to me last fall from his current home in Florida. After some discussion and research online, we decided to go back to the original Sonic Blue finish, with a matching headstock - with some mild yellowing of the finish to make it look slightly aged.

Traces of the original Sonic Blue were visible in the control cavity, pickup routings and neck pocket - notice how deeply yellowed the finish in pickup routings is - probably because the clear coat collected in those openings and was thicker and therefore yellowed more.

In the neck pocket, the finish was covered up by what almost looked like Lake Placid Blue paint. After being puzzled by this, I believe that what I was actually looking at is residue from the paint stripper that was used in the 1970s - since the Sonic Blue is UNDER the darker blue. The factory numbers - the black 3 and the red 2 - are actually UNDER the residue - which is probably a combination of stripper and sonic blue lacquer that has aged for the past 30 years.

Note the reddish plastic neck shim - this later popped loose after my refinish - revealing a patch of unyellowed Sonic Blue underneath !

The first step was to plug the additional routings that had been done - which meant cleaning them up and squaring them off for alder wood plugs.

The plugs were fitted with any gaps being filled with plasticine-like plumber's epoxy.

After some sanding and a few coats of clear nitro to seal the body, especially the wood plugs - the body was primed with flat white nitro primer. Note that I skipped dyeing the wood yellow, since as far as I know, by the late 60s Fender had stopped this practice on non-sunburst instruments.

The body required a number of touchups with some Bondo glazing putty - various dings and some filled extra screw holes. But then after some wet sanding, as second coat of white primer was applied and the body was ready for the color coats.

The headstock fadce was sanded bare - clear coated and then also primed with white nitro primer.

Here are the body and headstock after several coats of Sonic Blue lacquer and a few clear coats.

Now came the time to age the color coats slightly - and as I have done in the past, I masked off areas that would have been covered so that they would not be yellowed - namely the bridge, control plate, pickguard and neckplate area.

Though these pictures aren't very well lit - you can see the difference between the aged and unaged clear coat areas.

A similar treatment was given to the headstock - taking care to match the aging as close as possible for an even color. Several final clear coats were then applied over both the body and headstock prior to wet sanding and buffing.

The final step was the application of the repro decal - which is a water slide decal - and which was applied ONTOP of the finish - as would have been the case in 1968. Later on Fender started clearcoating over the decals - which made them much more robust.

The darker color here is due to me not using a flash for this picture - Sonic Blue looks radically different in pictures depending on the light source used. As an example, the two pictures below were taken at the same time - one without a flash - and one with a flash.

Perhaps I'll need to get a better camera and lights !!

The neck and body were shipped back to the owner - who will be assembling it - and sending me pictures of the complete instrument in the near future. Check back soon !!

Dean MEL "Melanie Dion Special": Tangerine Dream !!

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 22:13:00 +0000

Here's a project I did for one of my favorite "rock chicks", my friend Melanie Dion.

Melanie has "pointy" tastes when it comes to guitars, probably a reflection of her musical tastes (METAL!!) and her desire to be armed with an instrument that can also serve as a weapon on stage :)

She and I also share an affinity for the color ORANGE - as anyone who's been to my place knows - there's A LOT of orange around my house - walls, vases, clothes, coffee mugs, etc. etc. - a loud yet warm color. About a year ago, I did a simple refin on a Vantage bass Melanie had gotten for free. I mixed up a batch of color, using some yellow and red pigment in a clear lacquer base - with Mel telling me "more yellow - more red" .. until we got the brilliant orange color she was looking for - now dubbed "Melanie Orange".

After some sanding and a primer coat, I shot the orange onto the Vantage body and headstock. The paint job, combined with swapping a Dimarzio pickup into it and regluing a loose neck joint turned it into a cool looking and decent sounding bass for not a whole lot of effort.

I'll also admit that Melanie has managed to influence my instrument tastes such that I'm also more than a little fascinated with some of the pointy instruments that are out there - especially from the crazy days of the 80s - when some real insane designs came out. The mid-80s Hondo catalog alone is worth a dedicated blog !!

With the resurgence of metal in the last 10 years, some of the classic designs have been reissued, including one of my favorites, the Dean ML - which was originally produced in the late-70s by Dean Zelinsky - and was essentially a Gibson Flying V crossed with the prototype Gibson Explorer/Futura.

Which resulted in a HUGE body and a VERY distinctive look!

Dean has released several different versions of the ML - some with bolt-on necks, some with set necks - with a range of finishes and binding options. I'm very fond of the Blueburst Dean '79 ML - amazing looking guitar!

Fast forward to this past November - and I came across a much played Dean ML X on Craigslist for sale at a VERY reasonable price. It was a dinged up, didn't have a case and was a bolt-on neck model as opposed to one of the set neck versions - but I thought it would make a nice basis for customized "Melanie Dion" guitar - even if I had to maybe do some rebuilding and swap out the electronics. Since the guy selling it had already sold his amp, I bought it on good faith without plugging it in.

When I got home, I was astounded at how massive the guitar sounded going through my Sovtek Big Muff pedal and my old Ampeg B-15 - and how evenly the neck played. Also realized that the guitar had a nice set of Grover tuners installed - seemingly from the factory. I dropped the idea of replacing the "Dean" labeled humbuckers with reissue Gibson PAFs because the stock pickups had a great metal and hardcore sound to them.

The guitar was also very light for its massive size - I assume the body is made of basswood or agathis - with a maple neck. Unfortunately the lightweight wood and lack of case meant there were some decent dings and slashes to repair around the edges as well as some small stress cracks near the neck pocket - but nothing major.

The first step was to disassemble the guitar and then start sanding down the finish to get a good even surface. The headstock face was carefully masked off to preserve the Dean logo as well. Some of the worst dings are pictured below

The dings were rouged up with a coarse file - and then filled with plumbers epoxy - which was then filed and sanded to shape to restore the edge contours.

The body was now ready for priming with flat white nitro primer - the few remaining small flaws were filled with a little red glazing putty to get the body ready for the color coats.

As I related before, Melanie had mixed up a tint of orange with me a while ago - I had a small amount of it left over in a paint jar but I knew I needed to mix more for this project. I mixed up a larger batch of the color in a new jar - by putting them side to side it was pretty easy to match the colors exactly - especially since it was a simple mix of a little red added to a yellow base.

And we get .. MELANIE ORANGE !!

Now comes the fun part - when the color goes on ..

First, a spray around the edges to build up a thicker color coat there to guard against sand throughs when I wet sand later.

Then building up to a solid color coat on both the body and the neck. I ended up spraying three or four color coats - with a little heavier spray on the bottoms of the two "legs" of the body - as I knew the guitar would end up standing on floors that way.

I like this color so much that I may eventually have Easter Chem-Lac mix me a gallon of it in nitrocellulose - I have a few projects in mind ..

Roughly 5 coats of clear gloss nitro followed the color coats. For the clear coats, I unmasked the edge of the fretboard on the neck so that the edges of the fretboard would get clear coated too - thereby minimizing the sanding I'd have to do to get rid of any paint "ridge" along the edges of the neck.

Once the clear coats were set, I wet sanded with 800, 1000 and 1500 grit paper - before buffing with two different grits of silicon-free automotive compound.

I had decided that the orange color would really "pop" if the guitar had a white pickguard - the question was what shape would be appropriate? Once the paint had set for a few days, I got out some paper and started doodling and cutting out different guard shapes - some inspired by the Gibson Flying V, and going under the three controls - and some more Gibson Firebird like.

Extending the Firebird-style guard to follow the lines of the lower horn but with a slight upward curve towards the bridge ended up looking good. The paper pattern was then used to cut and shape a masonite form - which I then used with a router to cut and bevel the actual pickguard.

Next came some further minor customization - namely - making this guitar into a "signature model" !!

I was inspired by the "ML X" lettering on the truss-rod cover - figured I could find some white rub-on lettering and change that to "MEL" - just to be cute. But while searching for rub-on lettering online, I found that I could buy water-slide decal material that was ink-jet printable - which meant that I could then add a matching orange logo to the guitar !! Micromark has some amazing products for custom work.

I printed several different logos and sizes - clear coated them - and then cut them apart to try them out against the pickguard. You can see that the electronics and hardware have been installed at this point - though I didn't drill the mounting holes for the pickguard until the last step.

The printed decals were actually very hard to apply - as they tended to curl up - perhaps I put too many clear coats on the face of the material - or maybe the material is just better suited for wider decals. I ended up going with a simple solid orange logo that was just Melanie's name.

I also had to replace the output jack and some wiring - but eventually the guitar was completely together - I even tracked down an "extreme" gig bag that was designed for the larger bodied metal guitars, such as Flying Vs and MLs.

And here is the final product ... double-click on the pictures to open up full size images !!

And .. Happy Birthday Melanie !!! Can't wait to see you playing this thing on stage somewhere ???

Rare Bird: Oasis guitar, Built by luthier Gary Cooper

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:11:00 +0000

Over the years, there have been countless brands of American guitars built in small numbers - with many of them being high quality instruments that simply did not have the marketing or broad distribution to become long lasting enterprises.

The subject of this post is an Oasis electric guitar that belongs to my friend and former bandmate Eric Tucker, who is also the chef at Millennium Restaurant in San Francisco. I've had the pleasure of playing and even recording with this fine instrument, many years ago.

The Oasis brand existed from around the mid-70s until the early or mid-80s and the company was headed by luthier Gary Cooper, who worked in the San Francisco Bay Area. I haven't confirmed it, but I believe Cooper may have been an alum of Alembic or had some association with that Bay area firm. I have no idea how big the Oasis operation was - given the rarity of the instruments it may well have been a one-man operation.

This particular Oasis is built from what I believe is korina - a blonde mahogany - made famous for its use in the original 1950s Gibson Flying V and Explorer.

Eric's recollection is that he got the guitar in 1982 at either 48th Street Music or Stuyvesant Music in exchange for a Guild and a Yamaha acoustic. The guitar is probably from the late 70s or 1980, judging from some other posts I've seen around the internet.

The guitar was originally equipped with two humbuckers with solid black covers, which may have been Bartolinis - and were according to Eric, low-impedance and fairly low output units. Currently, Eric's guitar has a 1983 Dimarzio Super Distortion in the bridge position and a 90s Seymour Duncan Jazz pickup in the neck.

The guitar is very well built - and I remember it having nice even action - I used this guitar to record almost all of my guitar tracks on the one Crucial Youth album - playing through an early 70s Marshall stack that belonged to producer Nikki Garratt (UK Subs).

The information available on Oasis and Gary Cooper is sparse at best, but Eric did send me a link to a cool Youtube video that edits together parts of two interviews that Cooper did for cable TV. During the first part of the interview, which I believe was done around 1980, Cooper is holding a guitar that appears identical to the Oasis in this post. During the second part, Cooper is showing off some more mid-80s looking designs, complete with locking tremelos and "droopy" headstocks.

Interview with Gary Cooper of Oasis Guitars

Sadly, Gary Cooper was killed in a car crash around 10 years ago - if anyone has an exact year, please let me know!

Also, if you have an Oasis guitar or other pictures and information - please let me know and I'll add to the post.

Addendum: Another Oasis guitar from a few years earlier, courtesy of Jerry Campbell

Jerry was kind enough to share a picture of his Oasis guitar, which is a prototype for Oasis guitars, and dates to 1975/1976.

This guitar differs from Eric's in having what appears to be an arched and bound flamed koa body, a different tailpiece and off-the-shelf pickup surrounds (see below - these are not original). The overall body and neck profile appear to be the same as Eric's korina wood example.

To quote Jerry:

"This guitar was developed for me in mid 1975. Gary let me choose the woods for it and let me help design it. Serial #018, it is the prototype guitar for his Oasis line. After the NAMM Show in 1976(winter show), Gary built a matched set (electric guitar and mandolin) for Seals and Crofts based on this guitar. I have recently been in contact with his original building partner, Louis Armstronger(no kidding)."

"The body is solid bookend matched flame koa. The neck consists of two pieces of maple,two strips of rosewood, two strips of alder, and vermillion down the center. The fingerboard is vermillion. The headstock has a veneer of flame koa. Neck and body are bound with white-black white binding. The control cavity on the back of the guitar is matched flame koa. Tuners are Schaller. This guitar originally came with Bartollini Hi-A Beast pickups. It now sports a Seymour Duncan JB at the bridge, and an original D'Marzio PAF at the neck. The Les Paul pickup switch is from Owsley Stanley III's '53 Les Paul.....a little San Francisco Ju-Ju."

Watch for some additional photos of this beautiful instrument in the near future.

SOLD!!: 66 Fender Jazz Bass, Lake Placid Blue

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:12:00 +0000

I have owned this bass for over a decade - I bought it from a guy in New Jersey, with the body completely stripped and clear coated but with an original Lake Placid Blue headstock. My plan all along was to restore it to its original finish - a couple of false tries and I put the bass away in pieces for nearly 10 years.

Finally, over the past few months, I pulled the bass out again and made a serious effort to give the body a refinish that would match the aged Lake Placid Blue headstock and restore the bass to its original appearance.

I used acrylic lacquer from TCP Global - who specialize in products for restoring vintage automobiles. Fender did use acrylic lacquer for custom colors from sometime around early 60s, when car manufacturers switched from older nitrocellulose based colors to acrylic lacquer.

Lake Placid Blue was originally a 1958 Cadillac color, but was no longer being used by GM by 1960 when Fender began using it as an optional custom color. When Fender switched to acrylic colors, new formulas were developed for the older automotive colors.

While I feel pretty confident that TCPs colors ARE accurate representations of the original nitrocellulose colors of the 1950s, I am not confident that the colors Fender used during the 60s were always accurate representations of the original 1950s colors.

So why is this whole discussion relevant ?

Well - when I initially tried refinishing the body of this 1966 Jazz Bass, it became obvious that the headstock was a lighter and more silvery blue color than the new Lake Placid Blue finish on the body - especially once I "aged" the clear coat by yellowing it.

I then pulled out my Pelham Blue (Gibson's 1960s metallic blue) lacquer - and began color blending - shooting test pieces of masonite and then applying a yellowed clear coat until I got a mix that looked like the headstock. The final mix was roughly 2 parts Lake Placid Blue to 1 part Pelham Blue.

Even though it may be hard to tell on a computer monitor and with different flash angles, these two pictures should show that the color ended up being a nearly perfect match after I carefully tinted the clear coat to get an "aged" effect.

The obvious difference is that lack of finish checking, chips and wear on the refinished body. However, I used a very low plasticizer content nitro for the final clear coat, so the body should begin to check subtly within the next few months.

If the next owner plays this bass like it should be played, I'm sure in a few years it will be hard to tell it's a refinished body.

So now for the details on this bass.

Besides the body refinish, the parts on this instrument are close to 100% original. The exceptions to originality are the following:
- volume knob for neck pickup is a recent reissue
- the original tone pot froze and was replaced with an identical 1967 tone pot (the original pot is included)
- the original cloth-covered wiring in the control cavity has been spliced due to the wires being cut by a previous owner, and the ground wire to the control cavity shielding is new cloth covered wire
- the pickup cover is probably not original, but I honestly don't remember if it came with the bass or not
- there is a nitro overspray on the back of the neck but not the headstock or butt of the neck
- there is a small repair to the plastic of the original nut next to the slot for the g-string (see picture below)

Everything else - down to the screws for the pickguard and the thumbrest - is factory original to this instrument. And it also comes in the original 1967 hardshell case, which is in very good condition.

This bass was actually shipped during early 1967 - I refer to it as a "1966" because of the Dec 1966 neck date.

However the pickups have handwritten dates of "1-8-67" and "12-30-66" on them. The neck and bridge pickups measure at around 6.8 K Ohms and 7.3 K ohms, respectively.

As you can see, I also masked off the area under the pickguard and controls so it is less "aged" than the rest of the finish - as an original finish would be.

The control pots date to the 13th week of 1966, with the exception of the replaced tone pot, which dates to 1967.

The pictures below show some of the details on this bass:
- the back of the original white pickguard, which has no cracks or chips
- the proper "paint stick" mark in the neck pocket
- the highly desirable "lollipop" tuners, which were only used for a brief period by Fender
- the all original bridge
- the original nut with a small repair outboard of the g-string
- the back of the bass
- the original late-1966 "F" neckplate and neck screws.
- the back of the neck, with a nicely worn and ambered finish

The bass plays very well - with low action and just a slight amount of neck relief and still a bit of travel left in the truss rod adjustment. There is NO lift of the first pearl block inlay, which can be a problem on some of the block inlay Jazz necks. I have only done a very rudimentary setup on the neck, but that's because it felt great to me. The intonation is pretty much perfect all the way up and down the neck.

The electronics sound great - with the neck pickup by itself providing some THUNDERING bottom-end, while the two pickups together sound more P-bass-ish.

The bass weighs what a typical 60's Jazz Bass weighs, at a little over 9 lbs - making this comfortable to wear and play.

I will ship internationally, but be aware that to some locations the case may be TOO large for usual shipping methods - leading to either exorbitant shipping prices or the need to ship the bass with the neck off and without the case.

This is an opportunity to own an excellent and beautiful example of a mid-60s Jazz Bass, in its original case.

Please contact me via my email (krishna at guitargarage.net) if you have any questions or would like more pictures - or if you want to BUY this bass !!

Thanks to Rainer - enjoy the bass !!!!!

75 Jazz Bass: 3-bolt Fender Neck Pocket Tightening

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:08:00 +0000

In the early 70s, Fender switched from a traditional 4 screw or 4-bolt neck attachment to a 3-bolt attachment(actually 1 bolt and 2 screws) on the Stratocaster, the Jazz Bass and the Telecaster Bass. This new three-bolt attachment also incorporated a tilt adjustment, that could change the set angle of the neck in the body slightly.

While the tilt adjustment must have seemed like a good idea to someone, the net result was a much less secure neck attachment which could result in the neck having substantial side-to-side play. As a result, many instruments from this era were converted to 4-bolt attachments, through plugging and redrilling of the attachment points and removal of the tilt adjustment apparatus.

Over the past year, I have worked on two different 3-bolt Jazz basses - one a 1977 very clean condition, and one a 1975 that had been stripped of its finish and most of its parts.

The 1977 Jazz was the first time I realized what the true problem with the 3-bolt attachment was: while playing the bass and literally, wringing it out - I kept hearing a little "click" - that sounded like it was coming from the base of the neck. I eventually realized I was hearing the neck shifting left and right in the neck pocket - certainly not a good thing!

The shift was big enough that by pushing the headstock all the way to the "treble" side, I was able to have the G-string be at almost the edge of the fretboard - so that it rolled off during playing!! Definitely not good!!

I also noticed that the very end of the neck pocket - where the neck butted up against - was not the smooth curve that matched the butt of the neck, but rather just touched the neck at the very centerline.

Since the 1977 Jazz had a perfect original finish and I was basically just prepping it for shipment to a friend overseas, I decided to take a kind of short cut approach to take the play out of the 3-bolt mount.

I doweled the holes in the body - and also glued some splinters of maple into the neck screw holes, just to tighten then up. Then I attached the neck with the single "bolt" - and aligned the neck using string between the nut and the bridge - clamping the neck in position using a clamp with soft rubber clamping surfaces.

I redrilled the holes in the body with a smaller diameter drill bit (sorry - I forget what size) - small enough such that the screws would have to be threaded through the body AND into the neck.

Then, while the neck was still clamped in position - I installed the two neck screws and tightened them down.

The results was that the shifting of the neck disappeared - even if the neck to body fit wasn't very good - because the play around the neck screws was gone. A simple fix that at least stabilized the bass.

Then, a few months later, I received another 3-bolt Jazz Bass - this time a stripped 1975. The owner wanted to convert to a 4-bolt attachment, but I convinced him to let me try to stabilize the neck with a more ambitious approach - rather than drilling a number of holes through the body and into the neck - which in my opinion would greatly reduce their "vintage" value down the road.

What I proposed was to shim the sides of the neck pocket and then to fill in and re-rout the area of the pocket that butts up against the neck - as well as tighten up the two screw holes through the body.

This combined approach would then result in the neck making more contact with the body plus it would tighten up the whole connection so there would be no side to side play in the neck.

Since the body was going to be refinished anyway, any added would would be pretty well obscured by the finish.

The body had originally been Walnut - the reddish brown color that was available from around 1974 through 1979 or so. The original finish was visible in the neck pocket and the bottom of the pickup routings.

What I initially did was fit the neck onto the body - align it - and then measure the gaps on the long and short sides of the neck pocket. I then glued in in tapered shims cut from ash (which is what the body was made of.

The sides required a little filing and sanding to get the neck into the pocket, but the fit was good, with still some side to side play, but at least better contact.

I then cleaned up and straightened the butt-end of the neck pocket with a Dremel MotoTool and a mini-router attachment - and glued in a fitted block of ash - which was clamped securely in place.

I then used the same router attachment - plus some small files and sandpaper - and lots of test fits - to get the best fit I could for the neck pocket to the neck. These pictures with the neck in place show that the fit while not perfect, is MUCH improved.

Next came the plugging of the two screw holes in the body and neck - and the re-drilling at a smaller bore - for which I once again bolted the neck in place with the single bolt, and then clamped the neck to align it properly, before redrilling with a drill press.

With the neck attachment tightened up all around - it was now time to refinish the body. I sprayed a piece of sanded ash with a nitro that was heavily tinted with a blend of medium brown, cherry red and a little walnut dye - until I achieved a color that looked like the finish that was in the neck pocket and pickup areas.

As with any transparent finish - I had to build up the color gradually - and I alternated between doing vertical passes on one coat and then horizontal passed on the next, to avoid getting subtle "stripes" in the finish.

This is a very difficult color to photograph - as it looks radically different depending on whether neon light, sunlight or a flash is illuminating it - the three pictures below are all of the same finish!

Eventually - I did set up the bass with some of my parts - a 70s bridge and tuners - to set up the truss rod properly and insure that the alignment of the strings was correct - before shipping the neck and body back to the owner for final assembly with the parts he had.

While this mod is a little tedious, in my opinion its a better option than converting a 3-bolt Fender to a 4-bolt - in terms of preserving the originality and vintage value of an instrument. I plan on doing the same mod to a 1976 project Fender Strat I have lurking in my basement as well.

SOLD: Nonreverse Gibson Firebird 3, Cardinal Red

noreply@blogger.com (Krishna) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:56:00 +0000

SOLD: currently listed on Ebay

This 1965 Firebird has a repaired headstock crack and the headstock only oversprayed in matching Cardinal Red - and is now a rock solid example of one of these very cool guitars.

The repair and headstock overspray are documented in this blog post.

The only non-original parts on the guitar are the tuners and tuner ferrules - everything else is 100% original.

Opening up the back control panel, it's very clean and none of the joints have ever been unsoldered. The pots date to the 39th week of 1965 - making this a late 1965 Firebird. The serial number is barely visible through the finish, but it is 5191XX, which also corresponds to 1965.

This is a fine bird!! I love how P-90s sound - and the middle position, which I believe combines the neck and middle pickup - just sounds great. Fairly high output which can even overdrive my Ampeg B15N, which is a fairly low-gain amp.

The headstock repair and overspray came out very well - the overspray is most apparent because of the lack of finish checking on the headstock vs. the rest of the guitar. The repaired crack is visible as a fine line under the finish, but it is not prominent and it is solid.

A great playing instrument with a dead straight neck - and the neck set is actually deep enough that the tremelo works and the bridge doesn't wander ! The Cardinal Red finish is quite rare - I haven't seen an original finish example for sale in a long time.

The guitar comes in an excellent condition "thick" 1963 - 1965 Gibson Firebird case, which is what Reverse Firebirds shipped in.

This guitar is currently listed on Ebay - with a start price of $2950 - though you can contact me directly as well about purchasing it.

I do ship internationally, though because of the size of the case shipping may be prohibitive to some countries. Payment can be via Paypal, cashier's check or wire transfer, though there may be some fees involved for the latter.

If you're interested, please do contact me: krishna@guitargarage.net