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.

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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. read more →