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 !!

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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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Updated this post to a three-some - a 1971 Fender Precision Bass refinished in Sonic Blue, a 1966 Fender Mustang guitar, refinished to its original Daphne Blue, with aging (see the post on that effort in my archive) - and an all-original 1966 Fender Mustang bass, in its factory Dakota Red finish.

Wish I had my Sea Foam Green 66 P-bass and Henry's Fiesta Red 64 P-bass to add to the picture !!!

The Mustang guitar is for sale .. see my post dedicated to this instrument.



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Another Fender Precision Bass project - an older maple board P-bass that has been through some changes, namely, the body has the classic added Jazz bass pickup at the bridge route, plus a route to sink a BadAss 1 bridge into the top and of course, a route for an added control pot or two. The body was also refinished in a metallic sparkle red - pretty nice job actually, but not what the owner wanted. The bass had been sold as a 1971/72 Precision, but the current owner wasn't certain of the originality of the body.

After some the decision was made to refinish the bass in one of the custom colors still available in 1971 - a number of Fender's classic custom colors were dropped after 1969 for the P-bass - but a few remained, such as Candy Apple Red, Lake Placid Blue, Olympic White, Black, Shoreline Gold, Shoreline Silver and Sonic Blue.

Digging through my paint collection, I discovered that the PPG Sonic Blue acrylic lacquer I had mixed by Kwik Autobody of Medford - about 13 years ago!!! - was still in excellent condition. Here's to quality packaging. After showing the owner a paint stick of the Sonic Blue, he decided that Sonic Blue with a white pickguard would be a very cool, retro looking combination.

But before spending the money on a complete refinish, we decided to confirm that the body was in fact of the correct vintage. To do this, I sanded the finish in two areas on the back of the body: one on the centerline near the butt end of the body and one between the centerline and bass-side cutaway. This revealed the two distinctive doweled pin marks that are on Fender P-bass bodies from between 1967 and the mid-70s. Combined with the bridge position and the lack of a route from the pickup to the control cavity, I confirmed that the body did match the neck, which was dated Dec 1971.

The first task was to remove the existing finish, and see what I had to work with underneath - I also was concerned that the 80s looking finish would be some polyurethane or polyester finish that would be impossible to get off. But a few hours later, courtesy of some zip strip, plastic scrapers, stripping pads and my random orbital sander, I had the majority of the finish off the entire body.





The came the task of filling in the extra routes before starting the refin process.

I cut a piece of hard douglas fir (aka "pumpkin pine" - a popular material for flooring) the a thickness that matched the depth of the bridge "sink" - and then cut it to shape so it would fit into the squared off hole exactly.

For the jazz bass route, I first cut a piece of alder block to fill the cavity, using split hardwood dowels to fill in to screw reliefs - and then routed a shallow (1/8th inch) rectangle so that I could cover up the repair with a smooth even piece of douglas fir, as with the bridge sink.

For the control cavity route, I simply cut and shaped a block of fir to fit into the route and glued it securely in - I wasn't as worried about hiding that route since it was going to be under the pickguard.




Once the blocks were glued in - and had dried and any small gaps were filled with wood shavings or minimal wood filler - the body was sanded down to prep it for staining, as would have been done by Fender. There were a few slight remnants of yellow stain on the guitar body, even after all the refinishes and sanding and stripping.




The yellow does show where some of the staining from the brown undercoat that had previously been on the guitar still was showing. Even without the extra routes, this body would not have been a good candidate for a Fender 3-color sunburst refin.


Following the staining - several vinyl sealer coats were sprayed on, to seal the grain and prepare the body for primer and paint. The vinyl sealer coat is more or less the same as the Fullerplast material Fender used throughout the later 50s, the 60s and into the early 70's until the thick "poly" finishes came about. Both sunburst and custom color Fenders during that era would have had the yellow stain/Fullerplast treatment as an undercoat.



After a careful block sanding, the body was now ready for its white primer coat. An initial coat was sprayed, which revealed some dings and scratches and rough spots. A small amount of red glazing putty and liberal wet sanding was used to even out these areas and the filled-in routes. Then a second white primer coat was applied and wet sanded to prepare for a color coat.
I didn't take any pictures of the priming process - instead we will jump right to the first color coat!


As I said above - I found that the near vintage Sonic Blue lacquer I had was still in excellent condition - so I thinned it about 1 to 1 with regular lacquer thinner - and started spraying. I sprayed several coats on, without any sanding between - to build up a color base. The picture below is shortly after spraying - note that the finish is fairly "flat" - as it has not been wet sanded yet and I was spraying with a bit thicker paint and higher pressure to build up a good base.








This coat will be wet sanded, which will undoubtedly result in a few sand throughs to the primer, but then a second "wet" color coat will be all the color needed. I expect to finish the color coats and have a clear coat on the bass by the end of this week - check back then. This will deepen and strengthen the blue in this finish.



(Update May 16th, 2008)

I have completed the bass - it took a few extra color coats on the front of the bass to get the routing fills level with the rest of the surface, but after a few untinted clear coats, the bass was ready for wet sanding and then buffing.

The electronics were then switched to a new white pickguard, which is appropriate for a 1971 custom color P-bass, as opposed to the reissue tortoise shell guard that was on it. A little soldering, and the bass was finished and strung up. A Fender-style bridge replaces the BadAss bridge that was on the bass - which required setting the action and intonation.

This color has a very cool look to it and it will probably start to look a lot like surf green as the clear topcoat yellows in a few years.








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