This was a fun project to take a fairly recent and "modern" Fender bass and modify it to give it more of a 1960s vibe.



The bass was a 1994 Japanese made Fender Precision Lyte, with a red photoflame sunburst finish on a super lightweight basswood body. Photoflame was a goofy finish gimic Fender used during the 90s in which some sort of printing process was used to print wood grain patterns into a transparent finish, such that a cheap piece of unfigured wood (such as basswood) would have the appearance of a piece of carefully cut flamed maple.




Besides the whole cheeziness of the idea, it also appears that the use of a thick brittle finish on a soft wood body can result in some really pronounced finish cracking - as the pictures below show, the finish was cracked all the way down to the bare wood and had actually fallen off in some areas.



The owner and I discussed some options - he was fairly sure that he wanted Surf Green as the body color and asked about matching the headstock - I suggested adding a custom white pickguard and a repro 1967 Fender Precision headstock logo to really give a 60s Fender look to the whole thing.

I showed the owner a sample panel of surf green with a white P-bass guard against it to give him an idea of what the final bass would look like.


I optimistically hoped that the existing finish would easily flake off - of course that wasn't the case - in fact the finish proved remarkably tough. I resorted to using aircraft stripper - the most potent paint stripper I had access to - and the nastiest stuff too! Even with the aircraft stripper, I need to use a lot of force with a scraper to get the finish off - which was a problem with the soft basswood body - the stripping process unfortunately resulted in a few chips and gouges on the body.



After a great amount of effort - the body was relatively clean - though some of the red pigment from the finish and the solvents from the stripper had actually soaked into the soft wood on the edges of the body, particularly inside the cutaways - which would add another challenge down the road.



After scrubbing the body with steel wool and paint thinner (mineral spirits, followed by lacquer thinner), I applied a small amount of wood filler to the gouges and some glazing putty to the smaller scratches.



The body looked pretty good, so I decided I'd rely on a few primer coats to get a smooth working surface for the color coat. As the primer dried - I noticed that the finish around the cutaways was not drying the same as the rest of the body - and after a while a slight reddish orange tint showed. This was remnants of the solvents and the red dye in the original finish leaching through the primer. I ended up letting the body dry for a week and then priming it with several thin coats over a few days - eventually there was no leaching of color - and the finish on the rest of the body was looking very good.

Then came the surf green color coat, which was actually white nitrocellulose that I hand tinted using two different Tintsall pigments - a blend of Pthalo Green and Grass Green. The nitro went on very nicely - I applied two coats, without any sanding between coats.


I also sprayed the headstock to match at the same time - the headstock had simply had a light sanding done since the headstock finish was not exhibiting any of the finish cracking seen on the body. Two coats of white nitro primer were applied prior to the color coats.

After some wet sanding, I resprayed a final thin color coat before applying a few clear gloss nitro coats to the body.

I then got to work on making the custom guard. I cut a paper template that was loosely based on a standard P-bass guard, but smaller in some areas to fit the smaller P-bass Lyte body, but expanded to fit around the four control knobs of the two pickup P-bass Lyte.


The body got a wet sanding (800, 1000 and 2000 grit) and then buffing with two grits of compound plus scratch-x swirl remover. I also applied a repro 60's "transition" P-bass headstock decal to the surf green headstock before sealing it with two thin coats of clear lacquer. It looks pretty cool with the gold hardware installed !


I cut the pickguard - carefully aligning the cutout for the staggered pickup - and then trial fitting the guard with the neck in place before I drilled any mounting holes in the guard.

I also waited until I had the guard mounted on the body before I drilled the four holes for the controls, which I did from the back (through the control cavity) to ensure that the holes would line up accurately. The came the assembly and rewiring - which was a bit tedious with the two pickups and active electronics - but finally the bass was done - and it was radically transformed!

This is a fairly straight forward refinish of a stripped Fender Precision bass body in one of Fender's classic 1960s custom colors, Lake Placid Blue.

As with all of the Fender custom colors of the 60s, Lake Placid Blue was originally a car color for the 1958 Cadillac model year, and was formulated as a Lucite brand acrylic lacquer. For this project I actually used Duco acrylic lacquer because its what was available - I don't believe there's any difference in appearance.

The bass itself was a "frankenbass" - it started out as a 1976 Fender Precision bass, but the owner swapped out the body because it was ridiculously heavy for a more recent Fender alder body (from the 90s I believe). The pickups were custom made grey bottom pickups and the rest of the hardware was a mix of original and reissue parts.

Lake Placid Blue was last available during the 1973 model year from Fender, but 73 and 76 Fender P-basses are generally very similar in appearance (the thumb-rest moved) - so a 76 P-bass in Lake Placid Blue isn't "correct" but the look wouldn't be glaringly incorrect. And give the mix of parts on the instrument, originality wasn't really a concern.

The alder body had been stripped but had a worn clear coat on it, with a deep area of buckle rash on the back, as well as the usual assortment of gouges and dings.

After a sanding of the front and back using a random orbital sander and a 150 grit pad, I used unthinned nitro lacquer to fill in the area of buckle rash as much as possible. I also applied lacquer to some of the other scratches and edge dings.





It took about three applications of lacquer on the back to fill in the buckle rash, but once it was hardened, I sanded the entire body down with 220 grit paper and a 220 grit pad on the sander. I applied a heavy clear sealer coat of nitro cellulose after this, in preparation for primer.


After another light sanding - the body was ready for white nitro primer. The body required a two coats with wet sanding between coats - and a little glazing putty on a few spots here and there. But after the second coat, the body was ready for the color coats.


Lake Placid Blue has a fairly heavy metal powder content (I believe its aluminum) - which not only requires very thorough mixing of the paint before use, but also means that the paint is very unforgiving if the paint pools or runs at all, as the silver powder pigment will not dry evenly within that area of the finish. If this occurs, its necessary to wet sand the area down and then respray - usually just best to do the whole back or front over again to ensure an even color.

The way to avoid this problem is to gradually build up the color - which requires patience, since the impulse is to get the color as deep as possible as fast as possible. The pictures below illustrate the first misting coat (sorry they're a little blurry!)



Gradually the color was built up - two more coats of color were applied, with each coat consisting of about 3 passes with the spray gun.



The final step was to add several clear coats to not only protect the color coat, but to also deepen the color and gloss of the finish.

Two coats of clear gloss lacquer with an amber tint were applied, to slightly "age" the finish. I did not yellow the finish to the extent that a true 60s finish would have aged - this would have made the guitar turn to a greenish-aqua color.


Finally, two more coats of clear untinted nitro was sprayed on the body. Once everything had dried and hardened for roughly a week and a half, I wet sanded and then buffed out the body, with my usual procedure - finish off with a vigorous hand buffing using Meguire's Scratch-X.

I assembled the bass with the black guard the owner had on the bass, though when he showed up we installed an aged white guard, which looked much much better. Unfortunately we were in a rush and I forgot to snap some pictures (I'll try to get some from him eventually).




Watch for an upcoming project in which I refinish my 1966 Jazz bass to match the original aged Lake Placid Blue headstock.