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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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 !!

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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 !!

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