1962 Fender Jazz Bass Redemption: Refret & Refinish

Another challenging project - a very rough 1962 Fender Jazz Bass - a rare and potentially valuable instrument that's been put through the wringer over its 47 years of existence. The bass had been defretted many years ago - had the neck stripped and stained - and the body refinished.



This project came to me through my friend Shai in Israel, who purchased it on Ebay and had it sent directly to me, primarily for a refret. The bass appeared to have a nice finish on the body in the Ebay listing, even though the headstock was stained very dark - so we thought the work would be limited to refinishing the face of the headstock and refretting the neck - a fairly easy project.

When the bass arrived, the true magnitude of the work required became apparent.


The headstock was simply ugly - and the back of the neck looked even worse - an untalented 5th grader could have done a better staining job that this.


The body was in very rough shape - though the paint had been applied nicely, the wood underneath had not been prepped in anyway - and had been very roughly stripped.

The fretboard had also been heavily sanded down after defretting - and was very very thin at the butt of the neck. It appeared that someone had actually tried to paint a line to make the fretboard look more substantial at some point. And there was a nice divot out of the corner of the neck.



The 1 and a half missing clay dot markers had actually been SANDED THROUGH - to give an indication of how much rosewood was removed at some point.


However ... on the good side - ALL the parts of the bass appeared original - including the pickups, bridge, tuners, covers, pickguard, pots, knobs, etc., etc. In my assessment, the value of the original 1962 parts probably equaled or exceeded the price paid for the bass.





John Mouradian of Mouradian Guitar Repair pointed out that the bridge pickup was in exceptional shape, with the lacquer still present on the ends of the pole pieces - meaning the bass had probably always been played with the bridge cover on.


After many emails back and forth with Shai, I convinced him that a total make-over was the best idea and probably a good investment considering the vintage of the bass. After much consideration, we decided to refinish the bass in an aged Olympic White, with a natural headstock - a classic look with the tortoise guard.

The first order of business beyond general disassembly - was to strip the headstock face to see if it was in fact possible to get the finish AND stain off the wood. I wasn't very optimistic, since it appeared that the neck had been roughly sanded and then stained, so that the stain was in the scratches.

I used the relatively gentle Citristrip product to soften the finish - leaving it on for a few hours - and then scraping with a plastic scraper. The finish did peel off, but a lot of the stain remained on the wood.

I then used fine steel wool, dipped into Citristrip, to gently work the stain out of the wood - wiping the wood clean with denatured alcohol between passes. I worked in the direction of the grain, except for a few spots where there were scratches diagonally across the grain. In these areas I carefully, gently used the steel wool to pull the stain/finish out of the scratches, without making the scratches any deeper. All of this got the wood fairly clean.

After letting the wood dry out over night - I then switched to sanding - first using a random orbital sander with a 220 grit pad - and then switching to a sanding block and small piece of 220 folded over. I was trying to minimize how much wood was removed and just get the headstock to an even color and not round off any edges. I worked down to 400 grit paper, and the headstock was looking very clean now - surprisingly so!

I gave the wood a good scrubbing with a clean rag soaked in naptha - and this is what I had - far better than I could have imagined!


I went on to use the same approach on the rest of the neck - masking off the fretboard and neck date stamp to protect them - and the results are pretty remarkable - this will be a nice looking neck with an ambered finish on it.




After spraying a protective clear coat of lacquer on the neck, I turned my attention to the sad sad fretboard.

After consulting again with the Mouradians - I decided to use a type of epoxy-putty to replace the two missing clay dots.

The dots are exactly 1/4 inch in diameter, so I used a 1/4 brad-point bit in a drill press to get accurately placed flat-bottomed holes for the inlays.



The epoxy putty is kneaded together to start the hardening reaction - you have about 10 minutes of work time after that. Its a great material to work with as it doesn't shrink and is strong enough to actually be drillable. Available in most hardware stores.



I formed two small balls of putty - and then pressed them forcefully into the holes I'd drilled - leaving them as blobs above the fretboard.



About 45 minutes later, I used a razor blade to cut the inlays roughly even with the fretboard surface. I waited an additional hour before I sanded the inlays completely flush with the fretboard.



The color of the inlays was lighter than the other inlays - though probably very close to what the factory color was - so to add in 47 years of aging and staining, I used a tiny bit of Old English scratch polish on a cloth to tint the dots and blend them.


At least all the markers look right now !


As I was working on the neck, I began to also work on the body.

I sanded the front and rear of the body with a random orbital sander rather than stripping it since I wanted to leave the the finish in any low spots since I'd have to fill those areas anyway before refinishing. I used the Citristrip for the edges and relief scoop.

The areas that remain bluish are low spots and will have to be built up to get an even finish on the body.



Some of the scars left from previous rough treatment can be seen on the inside of the horns.


And a little trace of the original sunburst finish remains under the control ground plate.


I used an acrylic automotive grey primer, unthinned, to build up the low areas - spreading a thick coat on the low areas on the front of the body. The lowspots on the back of the bass weren't as deep, so I figured they'd get filled in by the sealer coat and the thinner white primer coat I'd spray on later.


Once the filler dried, the body was sanded again. Note the features that identify this body as being a pre-1963 Jazz Bass - the lack of a drilled ground-wire path from the bridge, the four holes for mounting the mute assembly, and the two small filled pin marks on the back, from where the routing template was attached to the body.




At this point the body still needed some dabs of glazing putting to fill in some chips and dings and some of the deeper scratches on the body edges.

Once the glazing putty was sanded, the body was ready for yellow dye - which is actually a blend of lemon yellow and vintage amber in a base of denatured alcohol. Despite the filled areas, I still wanted as much of the body to wear like an original 60s finish - which means exposing the underlying yellow-dyed wood when a chip happens.



Once dyed, the body is mounted on a paint stick that will leave an outline in teh neck pocket similar to the one on Fenders from mid-62 on.

The next step is to apply a heavy sealer coat and then move onto white primer so I can really see if this body is starting to look better!


( UPDATE 7/2/2009)
The finishing has moved along quickly !

I had to apply two coats of primer - with some spots of glazing putty and lots of wet sanding after the first coat.



But after the second coat of primer, the body only required a minimal amount of sanding and really was starting to look good. There are a few areas - on the edges - where a contour line has a little wobble or dip - not really obvious, but holding the body up to a light will reveal it - but all in all the body has turned out exceptionally well!



Once the body was primed, I applied two coats of Gloss White - which was hard to distinguish from the primer other than the glossier finish.



A light sanding of the second coat and the a clear gloss coat was applied to seal the finish prior to the application of tinted clear coats.


The tinting was done in two stages - first the entire body was lightly tinted with an amber clear coat. In this picture I've sprayed about 2/3rds of the front and the edges - you can see the untinted portion of the white base color.




Then the areas that would be covered by the bridge, pickguard, control plate and neckplate were masked off - and a second tinted coat was sprayed over the entire body to darken it further.



When the masking was removed - this is what the body looked like. The color balance is a bit off in the first picture - the finish is actually about half way between the two images.



The final step will be two clear gloss top coats, which I will spray with a non-plasticized nitrocellulose lacquer, so that the just top coat should check sometime in the next year or so.

SOLD!!: 1976 Fender Precision Bass, Olympic White

The mid-70s Fender Precision bass in Olympic White with a black pickguard was the weapon of choice for the one and only Dee Dee Ramone - I remember seeing the Ramone's countless times in New Jersey and New York - and Dee Dee had as many as three identical Olympic White P-basses lined up and ready to rock - along with a couple of big old Ampeg SVT rigs.

And despite their ash bodies - you can see that Dee Dee was pretty agile even with those P-basses around his neck!


The bass I'm selling was assembled over several years as parts came my way and I had some time between other projects - and has turned out as an exceptional example of this 70s rock workhorse.

I originally acquired the neck as a project piece that had been defretted and had the fret slots filled with Bondo. I found the body a little later on Ebay - it had numerous refinishes capped with a horrendous blue spray can paint job on it and an added rout for a Jazz Bass pickup and an extra pot.

I refinished the fretboard,refretted the neck, stripped the body, plugged the added rout and began a refinish. A few pictures from this initial work are below. The router table pin marks, the ground wire rout under the bridge, the hand rest and bridge position, and the wiring rout for the pickup all identify this body as being from between 1974 and 1977.



I went as far as priming and putting a coat of Olympic white on the body, but then put aside the project for a few years.


Recently, I revisited the project and realized I had most of the parts I needed - including a 70s Fender bridge, a 1976 P-bass pickup, the bridge and pickup covers, and a complete set of late 70s Schaller-made Fender bass tuners. I hadn't plugged a small rout for an added control pot, so I plugged that and then reprimed the body.

For the finish - I applied a straight white nitro base coat, followed by a cream-tinted white coat, to replicate the aging of the color coat on 70s Olympic White Fenders. This was then followed by a few clear coats to protect the color coats. This will cause the finish to wear slightly differently than a typical 60s Olympic White Fender, where most of the yellowing happens in the clear coat. Note how the yellowed Olympic White contrasts with a plain white piece of paper!




Also note that the Jazz bass routing repair is invisible - I expect since this repair was done several years ago it will stay fairly invisible.


My observation is that the 70s polyester finishes weren't even clear coated - the yellowing happens in the top part of the actual color coat. I'd love to know if this is what others have observed as well ??

But even if that is true, this body will wear differently due to the thinner nitro finish, as opposed to the thick polyester finish that would have been applied at the factory.

The bass fit together beautifully - with a good tight neck pocket fit. Once it was set up, the frets did need some dressing here and there, but the neck flattened out almost perfectly once the truss rod was tensioned up. The neck now has about 1/64 inch of relief around 10th fret - with near perfect intonation and fairly low action.

The pickup sounds a little brighter than the pickup in my 1970 P-bass, but has the classic grey-bottom pickup sound. The pickup resistance was a little over 11K Ohms. Note that the original grounding plate and weather-stripping material "pads" are in place as well.



The tuners are correct for 1976, though I do believe that some early 1976 P-basses came with the Fender produced tuners before the switch to the Schaller-manufactured tuners later in the year. The tuners were acquired from two different sources - two of them are in near mint condition and two of them were heavily machine polished to the point where the plating is gone from the top of one of the string pegs. The ferrules in the neck are new, as is the nut.




The bridge is an original 70s Fender bridge in excellent condition, with the crease visible on the string anchor portion of the neck.




Finally, the bass comes in a rare brown-burgundy lined original Fender hardshell case. The brown-burgundy lining was used only during the 1975/1976 era - most cases were lined with the familiar orange material. The case is in excellent condition as is the exterior Fender logo.



The inside of the bridge and pickup covers bear remnants of what appear to be red or burgundy ink inspection stamps - very faint.



Ready to rock in front of my beloved Ampeg B-15N !!


The following parts are not original 70s Fender parts:
- 3-ply black-white-black pickguard
- black thumbrest
- new CTS pots, capacitor, jack and knobs
- pickguard screws, neck screws and bridge screws

All in all a really nice bass that plays great, with near-perfect intonation and low action - with a total weight just under 9 lbs with the covers on - not bad for a 70s Precision; this isn't one of the late 70s "boat anchor" Precisions (I have one of those coming up for sale soon though !!).

UPDATE: SOLD! Thanks to Eoin of the Emerald Isle - hope you enjoy the bass !!

Completed 1968 Telecaster Bass: Candy Apple Red Restoration - UPDATED

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: