A bit over a month ago, my buddy Henry called me up one morning - he had a line on a much mistreated 1968 Fender Telecaster Bass with a rough Barney Purple spray can finish, missing a bunch of the parts and with a few extra holes and badly in need of a complete makeover. He sent me links to a few pictures and asked me if I thought I could rescue the bass - I told him that the
the price was right and I was confident I could do something nice with it, without getting TOO extravagant in terms of price.

Henry brought the bass over pretty much as soon as he got it in the mail. The purple refin was in fact VERY poor - and it appeared that there were some pretty deep scratches under the finish too. The body had an extra route for a p-bass pickup, the original pickup hole was filled in with bondo - and there were several chips around the edges of the body. The neck had worn frets, the incorrect headstock decal and a loose skunk stripe on the back of the neck.




The pictures below show the surface of the wood a bit better and nice divot out of the edge of the body. Notice how nicely the string ferrules have been painted over as well .... sweeeeeeet ..... NOT !! ...



One the plus side - the bass did come with the correct and very rare lollipop tuners, which were also used on Jazz basses in 1966 and some Precisions in the 1966 - 1968 time period. The correct neckplate and the original control plate were also included - and it all came in the slightly crushed original case.


After some discussion - there were a lot of options for colors in 1968 - Henry decided on Candy Apple Red for his Tele Bass - a color I have seen on at least a few original examples. Candy Apple Red consists of a transparent red finish applied over a metallic silver or gold finish - Fender used silver, while Gibson used gold for their "Sparkling Burgundy" - their version of C.A.R. Its possible to do Candy Apple in any number of colors - I've seen green and yellow and about 1 1/2 years ago I did a G&L ASAT Bass in candy orange.

The first step was to disassemble the bass and strip that purple paint off and see what was underneath. Fortunately, the paint was indeed spray can paint and stripped off using Citrix stripper. There were many layers and lots of primer, but slowly the bare wood was exposed.


Notice the nice big hunk of white Bondo filling the original Tele pickup routing.

After many applications of Citrix and lots of scraping and fine steel wool, body was scrubbed down with lacquer thinner and then allowed to dry thoroughly for a few days.



Once the body was dry - I used a random orbital sander with a 150 grit pad to sand the front and back of the body, while I used 220 grit paper to sand the edges of the body. The body still showed some of the scratches from prior stripping - probably from someone using a screwdriver or chisel to scrape off the finish - but the scratches weren't as deep as they had looked at first.

Before I went too far with sanding the body, I decided to do the wood repairs - namely plugging the P-bass routing, filling in the big missing chunk in the edge of the body and a smaller missing edge on the bass side of the neck pocket. I routed out the P-bass hole to an even rectangle, so that I could glue a single piece of maple in place. I used some small chips of ask from the area around the P-bass routing to fill in the other two smaller repairs.

The picture below is the maple block clamped into place - I used Titebond and left it clamped for about 24 hours.



Once everything was set - I filled in some small gaps around the edges of the maple plug and a few other small dings here and there - and then sanded down the body again with the random orbital sander and a 220 grit paper for the edges. The scratches are still visible, and there is a bit of purple paint still in the fairly open grain of the ash.


I then began the process of sealing the ash - I brushed on two heavy coats of Parks nitro based sanding sealer. The sealer really brought out the color of the wood and started to make the body look good - but the grain was still showing.




Since the grain was still showing, I applied some oil-based grain filler - much as I would on mahogany - followed by sanding. Though the body wasn't as shiny and the wood didn't show its color, the body was now fairly well sealed and ready for priming. Notice that I did not dye the body yellow for this bass - I've realized that Fender stopped that practice around 1966.




As always - I used a white nitro-based primer - spraying on a fairly heavy coat - I got a few runs on the edges, but I knew I'd be sanding the body quite a bit and I was still concerned about the grain showing through the finish. Once the primer was dry, the grain was indeed showing through the primer. I eventually primed the body three times, wet sanding after each coat. As you can see - I also had to fill in a few small areas with some glazing putty.



Finally - time to start the color coats - beginning with the underlying silver coat for the Candy Apple Red. The silver color I used consisted of fine "bright silver" powder dissolved into clear nitro lacquer. I applied four coats of silver - with some wet sanding of a few uneven areas in between. The final silver coat I did sand - I just carefully and lightly sprayed it to get a very even color - since any flaws would be visible through the transparent red "candy" coat.



Several clear coats of gloss nitrocellulose will seal in the silver layer.


(UPDATED: May 20th, 2009)

After a few coats of clear nitro to seal the silver undercoat, it was time to apply the transparent red "candy" coat.

I am using my 1965 Fender Jaguar, which has an original Candy Apple Red Finish, as a reference.





The picture below shows how the different layers of the finish have worn through over the years - and reveals something pretty common apparently on C.A.R. Fenders - a "do over" on the finish, most likely because of a run or dark spot in candy layer.



The layers of the finish are as follows:
- bare wood
- white primer
- silver undercoat
- some sort of yellowed clear coat
- another silver coat
- a transparent cherry red coat (presumably with a mistake)
- another silver coat
- the final transparent cherry red coat

Two things to note
- there is NO Fullerplast sealer coat nor any yellow dye on the bare wood
- there appears to be no clear topcoat, or its very very thin


So back to the Tele Bass - for the candy coat, I used Stew-Mac's Cherry Red dye mixed into my standard clear gloss nitro, mixing in some lacquer retarder due to the kind of humid conditions lately, and thinning with straight acetone. I started off cautiously - because I didn't want to have to re-shoot the Tele bass like the guy doing the Jag 44 years ago !

The key is to get an nice even color on each surface - the surfaces can differ slightly from each other (the sides and back on my Jag are definitely a little darker though that could be from exposure to light), but variations in the density of the red on teh front or back will show up pretty prominently.

The first coat was basically a "misting" coat that made the bass a kind of pink champagne color.




As I felt more confident, I used a more strongly tinted color and slowly built up the density of the red.




Finally, after four coats of cherry red - the color had the depth I wanted.






UPDATE:

Shortly after my last update to this post, I ran into a classic lacquer finishing problem - but one I hadn't encountered before: "fisheyes".

Fisheyes are the nickname for small ringed marks in the finish left when small bubbles form in an underlying layer of the finish - pushing up the overlaying layer - and then collapsing as the finish "gases off". The resulting marks do indeed look like fisy-eyes.

What happened on the Tele Bass was that there was still a significant amount of solvent in the silver coat - and I had quite rapidly built up many layers of candy red ontop. Because of the high humidity, I had been adding some lacquer retarder to the finish - which slowed up the entire drying process. I brought the Tele Bass body upstairs and hung it outdoors once it was dry to the touch - as my basement was still pretty cool and humid - and it had warmed up outside. Mistake !!

After a few hours, I checked on the body and was horrified to see a cluster of small bubbles UNDER the finish in the area on the back of the treble horn. DOH !!!!

The picture below shows the back of the Tele Bass after it had dried a few more days and the "fish-eyes" are plainly visible.


I did try sanding out the fisheyes - but since they were actually in the silver layer, they were still very prominent even after they were flush with the surface.

As with the factory finish "oops" on my 60s Jaguar, this left me with one option - sand the body smooth (not strip it) and respray both the silver and candy coat. I resolved to do the respray in fewer coats by more heavily tinting the red coat - and I also didn't use lacquer retarder, instead waiting for lower humidity days.


I set the body aside to set up thoroughly - and meanwhile turned my attention to the neck - which required some attention: the headstock had an incorrect replacement decal (for a Telecaster guitar) and the walnut "skunk stripe" was slightly loose on the back of the neck and actually sticking out a little.

After consulting with John Mouradian, I fixed the skunk stripe by first backing off on the truss rod adjustment, and then using my finger to work some Titebond glue into the small gap between the skunk stripe and the maple neck. I then clamped with skunk stripe down, using a small clamping caul to just clamp down on the walnut skunk stripe instead of the surrounding maple.

With the skunk stripe secured, I stripped the face of the headstock to bare maple to get it as clean and level as possible. I tried to force apart the E-string tuner crack, but it was very securely glued so I left it alone.


I then applied several coats of clear lacquer - lightly sanding between - and then used ReRanch's Amber Neck Dye blend to tint the front of the headstock and blend the edges into the existing finish on the back of the headstock. I sealed in the tint with a light clear coat, and then applied the repro 1968 Telecaster Bass waterslide decal. Once the decal had dried onto the finish thoroughly (24 hours), I protected it with a very light coat of clear lacquer.

After carefully pressing in the tuner bushing using wood blocks and a bench clamp, I installed the tuners and string tree.



Now that the neck was done, I returned to the body - wet sanding it thoroughly to get a flat smooth base again. I then started over with a light spray of silver, which I followed with a heavier coat an hour later to get a nice even silver base again.

Here's a little bit of the redundant respray ..



And here it is - after drying for a week - with NO fisheyes !


I thought I'd illustrate the wet sanding and buff out process in a few pictures.

To start with, I used a sanding block with 800 grit wet and dry paper for the front and back, and a folded over piece of 800 grit for the sides and edges. I wet the paper often and replaced it when it got any build up on it. The 800 grit was followed by 1000 grit, and then a final wet sanding, just by hand without a block, using 1500 grit wet.



This got rid of all of the orange peel or other uneveness in the clear coat - I was careful to sand JUST enough to get everything smooth and flat. The guitar now had a dull matt finish and was ready for compounding and buffing.

I started off with the regular grit compound and a clean pad on the automotive buffer I use - applying plenty of compound to start with and buffing it evenly for a several passes, then wiping most of it off and buffing it again with just a light glaze.



Then I switched to a lighter grade of a cream like compound and a pad thats more of a synthetic lambswool type of pad - and using a light glaze buffed the body further.





Now the shine was starting to come out - but there was one more step - and that was to use Meguir's Scratch-X to clean and further polish the finish. This part of the compounding was simply done by hand - using a soft cloth to polish and then clean, and working a fairly small area at a time. This resulted in a nice gloss - though what still looks like a vintage finish that's been polished - a very fine pattern of finish marks is visible in the right light.



Eventually the finish will also check - since I used a blend of non-plasticized and plasticized clear nitro for the clear coats.

Finally, the bass was ready for re-assembly!

The bass was fitted with an original control plate and a set of 1968 pots, capacitor and output jack and a reissue 3-ply pickguard, bridge and covers. The pickup is a Rio Grande pickup, with oversized pole pieces that I happened to have around. Some trimming was required around the pickguards neck cutout and the area where the control plate fit, but otherwise the bass went together nicely.

Henry and I had some doubts about how well the neck would play, given the heavily worn frets and the skunk stripe issue - but after a little setup, the neck played very nicely, with low action and a great feel. The bridge saddles had to be set up fairly high, but this put a great deal of downforce on the saddles, giving very good tone transfer and sustain. The neck to body fit was also excellent.



Here it is in the original slightly crushed hard case !




And finally, a few outdoor shots on a sunny Saturday:

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This project belongs to a customer who found this 1968 Telecaster that had been through a lot of changes but offered the basis for an excellent restoration. The guitar body had been stripped and routed for humbuckers. In addition, the body had some serious dinging/denting on the rear from being played with no finish. On the plus side, the body is probably the lightest Fender guitar body I have ever come across.

The remnants of the finish in the neck pocket and control cavity revealed that Telecaster had the classic blonde finish originally. I showed the owner my long dormant project 1966 Telecaster and we agreed I'd try to replicate its blonde finish. The Tele blonde finish differs from the Olympic White finish Fender used during the 60s in that it was translucent, so that some of the grain is actually visible through the finish. This also obviously meant that this finish uses no white primer coat - and just a thin color coat, with a clear topcoat that yellows to give the characteristic buttery look of 60s Teles.

Below is a picture of my 66 Tele - one day I'll fix those routes on this baby and post its story - which is pretty wacky !!



Note how much lighter the color of the body is under the guard. A look at the edge of the body where there has been wear reveals that this Tele was probably almost white when it was new, but aging gave it the classic Tele look.




The first step was to clean up the routes to allow for gluing in of clean plugs prior to re-routing for the neck pickup and the diagonal wiring rout. I decided to plug the routes with maple, since I didn't have any ash for plugging and the color of the maple was similar to the light colored ash of the body.



Once the routing was complete, the plugs were cut and glued in place. A few small pieces were also glued in to fill in some gaps, also of maple.






With the body plugged, it was time to layout the re-routing of the body. The owner decided to install a strat pickup in the neck position and requested I rout for the slightly larger size pickup. Other than that, I tried to make the routing as close to stock as possible.



The rear of the body had some dings and grooves pressed into the wood - presumably from someone's huge ZZ Top belt-buckle during the 70s! I used the classic dent steaming technique - in whish the wood is first wetted with water, and then a soldering iron with a wet cloth is placed against the dented area to swell the wood back up. This approach successfully popped out some of the dents and grooves on the back, though one area along a grain like appeared to actually be worn away, maybe during the stripping process years before. As I noted - this Tele had a very lightweight - and soft - ash body.



The body edges were then block sanded and hand sanded with 220 grit paper - and the body was finally ready for a vinyl sealer coat.

Two heavy coats were applied - with some light sanding of the front and back faces of the body with 320 grit paper afterwards. The body was now ready for its first color coat.



To mix the color coat, I started with standard gloss white nitro lacquer (from my friends at Eastern Chem-Lac) and added a small amount of Sheffield's Tintsall Medium Yellow, which sort of an ochre color pigment paste. A little goes a LONG WAY .. so just add a little at a time - mix thoroughly - and then add more if needed. Otherwise you may end up in a Pee Wee Herman-esque "Ice Cream Soup" situation (look it up on YouTube if you have no idea what I'm talking about ...).

Once I had a small jar of the buttery color I wanted (I compared it to paint that was in the pickup routings of my 66 Tele), I mixed it 1 part color to 2 parts clear gloss nitro, and then thinned it for spraying. I mixed up plenty so I'd have enough for any resprays I'd have to do on the guitar.



The key is to be patient and build up the color slowly - again, the goal was to achieve a translucent finish that left the grain of the ash just barely visible.

I sprayed the routing repair area first, since I wanted to do as much as possible to hide the patches in that area (though they will be under a pickguard) - and then I applied an even light coat over the entire body - spraying each surface with 3 or 4 passes. As you can see - the grain is very prominent, but the color is getting there.




After letting the first coat dry for about an hour, I added a second heavier coat - I planned on this being the final color coat - any additional darkening will come from an aged/ambered clearcoat.

The opacity ended up much higher after the second coat - which was accomplished with about 4 passes over all the surfaces, including the edges. However, the second picture below, the close-up, reveals that the grain is still visible - this is probably very much what a 68 Telecaster looked like new from the factory IN 1968. But a nice aged topcoat will give this Tele the familiar "old Telecaster" look when I'm done.




(Update - October 17th, 2008)
The open grained ash of this light-weight Telecaster required many clear coats - followed by wet sanding - to level the grain with the rest of the surface. In retrospect, the body should have probably received several extra coats of sealer BEFORE the color coat, but the difficulty is seeing the grain when using a clear sealer coat. One of the many reasons solid-color finishes are so much easier - the white primer really highlights any imperfections and open grain.

But finally - a nice smooth finish was achieved, and the Telecaster was reading for the "aged" clear coat that would darken the finish to a more vintage look. The owner and I decided to simulate the uneven yellowing that occurs between areas on the guitar body that are covered by hardware and those that are not.

I once again used my 66 Telecaster as a guide - the picture below illustrates the difference in color between covered and uncovered areas.



I then cut cardboard forms out to cover the areas I didn't want to tint - fitting them to the 66 Tele as a check.



The next step was to come up with a good level of tinting for the clear lacquer coat - its easy to overdo it at this stage and give the guitar a very bogus look - or to get a run in the clear coat and ruin a paint job right near the end (this is one reason I generally don't offer to do aged clearcoats - though I may start offering it as an option).

I had sprayed a test piece of masonite with the buttery-tinted white finish I used as the color coat on the Tele - and I used this to test out my tinting to see if I'd get the desired results and make sure I had a mixture that was controllable in terms of the stregth and depth of color.



Then I attached the cardboard forms to the Tele body - using small pieces of cardboard as spacers to slightly raise the forms off the surface of the guitar body - this gives the untinted areas a slightly soft edge - which is what is seen on genuine vintage finishes. Note how you can still just see the grain of the ash through the blonde finish (click on the image to see a full-size view).




Now the spraying ! I did it in three light coats - doing the front, back and edges - waiting a few minutes - and then again - trying to make the tinting as even as I could. The lighting is a little off in this picture, so the body looks darker than it is.




But for a real impression of the results - the unmasking !

Compare this to the picture of the 66 body further back in the post - its a similar effect, though not tinted as dark. The final step will be another clear coat over the tinted coat to seal it in and allow me to do a final wet sanding and buffing of the finish without cutting into the tinted coat inadvertently.



It will be possible for the owner to get a more "relic'd" look by taking sandpaper to the edges of the body - which will reveal the untinted blonde color and eventually the sealed ash underneath - much like on my 66 Telecaster.

(Update Nov. 1, 2008)

The owner has assembled the Tele and given it a workout - and been kind enough to snap a few pictures of the complete instrument. Note that these are all original parts he's managed to gather up - including the case I believe !!

I have to get my '66 put together .. someday ...








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