Some of you may have seen this before, but I figured I could make a small log of the process of modding my newest bass. I didn't think of posting pictures before today, so there isn't any pictures from the early stages. The bass is made from parts bought from Ebay and consists of: 2011 Fender Precision Bass body 2011 Fender Jazz Bass neck EMG P/J picup set Hipshot FM2 Bridge Hipshot HB7 Tuners And some other small bits and bobs. The picups I ordered of Ebay were supposedly used, but arrived in a new box with the shrink wrap still on. The bridge I ordered was actually the wrong type. The body originally have 5 holes for mounting the bridge. The one I ordered were made for bodies with 3 holes. This meant that I had to plug two of the original holes and drill some new ones. I had to plug them because the new holes were just a few millimeters to the side. The process is the same as I did on the neck pickup and pickguard. (Described later) And now some pictures! This is after assembling everything. In this picture I have already routed a new hole for the bridge pickup and for the batteries. The batteries are located under the pickguard. There are two batteries wired to supply 18V to the pickups. I doubt I'll notice any difference between 9V and 18V, bus I figures I could just as well route a cavity for two batteries while I was at it. The original screw holes for the neck picups wasn't 100% straight. The screws didn't go straight into the wood, and one of them was about 1mm too close to the bridge in relation to the three others. This made them look crooked in all directions, and made adjustments difficult as the picups would get stuck on both the screw shafts and the pickguard. Re-entering the screews into the original holes wouldn't work. The soultion was to simply drill the original holes up to 6mm and plug them with wood plugs. Here is the result: Filing the plugs smooth is very difficult to do in the cavity so i filed them smooth before i plugged the holes and carefully hammered them to the correct depth. It worked very well As you can see I did the same with the holes for the pickguard: The battery cavity can be seen to the left of the pickup cavity (near the top in the picture). It still needs some cleaning up, but that will be done when I do the tear-down before painting. I also ended up making a new pickguard from 3mm aluminum (Freebee from a local metal shop ). There are several reasons for not making the one I already had: 1: The original one didn't really fit. The cavity for the volume knobs was almost visible under one of the edges of the pickguard. 2: Plastic pickguards feel flimsy. 3: Aluminum is stiffer so it will be able to compress the foam I will put around the batteries without bulging. The foam is there to prevent the batteries from rattling. 4: The pickguard will most likely end up being all black, and painting aluminum is easier than painting ABS plastic. The pickguard is now (almost finished) and ready for paint. It just need a very slight adjustment of the hole for the neck pickups. I have about half a millimeter too much material on a couple of the edges. Everything crooked shows up very well as the edge is very close to the pickups. it's easy to fix as soon as everything is disassembled again. You can just about see where the edge is crooked right over the left neck pickup. (Edge over the right one is perfectly straight) Oh, and that pickguard is made using mostly hand tools. With the exception of a drill, everything is made using a coping saw and a few files. And a small piece of sandpaper for smoothing the edges. It doesn't look pretty now, but after a few coats of paint it should be OK. The big decision now is what paint scheme I should choose. The choices now is: 1: Silver sunburst (Silver metallic base color with black edges) 2: Graphite sunburst (Graphite gray metallic base color with black edges) 3: Blue sunburst (Blue metallic base color with black edges. The blue will be something along the lines of the color used on the smileys here on BT) There may be some lightning bolts airbrushed on the pickguard, but that bis is very uncertain. I fear it will look way too tacky. (Although musical instruments are allowed to look slightly tacky. ) Opinions are welcome. (No, I won't paint it white. )
I loved the Antigua finish on mine so Graphite sunburst sounds good http://www.oliviasvintageguitars.com/bass/guitars/280/
Oh! That's jawdroppingly pretty! My fear is that Graphite will be too dark along with all the black hardware, but if I painted the pickguard in a Graphite/ black sunburst as well it could work That's a very good tip. Thank you! This is the inspiration for the graphite sunburst, BTW: http://ibanez.wikia.com/wiki/RGD320 The colors will be very similar to that.
Im normally not a fan of flame tops, but it looked incredible in that first picture. Reminds me of a Jason Newsted one with the EMG's in there..
good I did the same kind of project a few years ago. http://public.fotki.com/cc3d/fender_bass_rebuild/ Let me know how you handle painting the aluminum. I had another project where I had to paint aluminum and found it to be a real pain. CC
What did you use for clear coat on that project, and did you do anything to the neck? Painting aluminum shouldn't be very difficult. Just remember to sand it with some medium-fine sandpaper (about 280-400 grit depending on the paints ability to fill in scratches.) before painting. Using a good primer will also help the paint to stick better to the surface. It will also help fill inn she scratches left by the sandpaper, allowing you to use coarser sandpaper for better adhesion. Wet-sanding the primer before applying the color coat may also be necessary. It all depends on how smooth the primer flows and how high you standards are. No matter how you do it, the paint will be more scratch resistant than ABS plastic. I plan on coating the paint job with some 2 component clear coat, which should be even more scratch resistant. I will also be applying the new paint over the original paint. I'll just sand it down a little, but not down to the wood. I see no reason for sanding down to the wood since the original paint is in good condition. Also, grain filling sounds like a PITA.
Not myself, no. Making a setup to anodize a part that large at home probably won't be easy. And I have no idea who can do anodizing around here. I guess I could emulate the effect using paint and some light sanding/media-blasting.
A small update: I did some color samples a while ago and tried taking a few pics of them today. Taking pictures of gradients of gray on a glossy surface is more or less hopeless so there are no point in posting those. Still need to decide on the headstock logo, though. These are 3 of the versions so far: The alternative is a black Precision logo: (Keep in mind that the logo will be all black, and the edges of the headstock will be black. I also did some texture tests to figure out how I should treat the headstock. I like the feel of the satin finish that is originally on the neck, so I'll try to emulate that. (Can't find any satin two component clear coat... ) It seems like a bit of sanding with 1200grit sandpaper will do the trick. Doesn't dull down the black all that much either which is nice. I may need to even out the finish with some 2000 grit, but that will be decided when I get the actual clear coat on. The two component stuff will react slightly different to sandpaper since it's way harder than normal acrylic clear coat.
Managed to get some work done again. The holes I routed needed some cleaning up. Two reasons for that: 1: Waterproofing. I will at some point have to do some wet sanding, and while I don't plan to drench the whole thing in water, some of it will probably make it's way into some of the cavities. Some paint will help to prevent the wood from absorbing the water. 2: I want it to look nice. Not that it will be visible, but that doesn't really matter. First I brushed on a coat of white paint to fill the grain slightly. The white paint were slightly thinner, and I was low on black paint. And then it was covered with black. It's messy, but the top will be sanded anyway, so that doesn't matter. I also replaced the stock chrome tuners with black Hipshot tuners. The "grommets" on the new tuners are slightly smaller than the stock ones. That needed to be fixes, so I figured that filling the holes with some Epoxy should do the trick. Since The grommets are conical I could use them as a template. I just wrapped them in cling film (To prevent the glue from sticking to the grommets) I also masked around the holes in the headstock. ... And stuck the grommets in. I didn't push them all the way in because I wanted the hole to be tight. I then removed the grommets and cling film before the glue got rock hard So that I could cut away the overflow in the hole with a knife. Test fit. Everything looks perfect. I also made the decals today. They were simply made by printing out the design on decal paper using a laser printer. To aid with the positioning of the decals I also made a template from some transparent overhead film. Just line up the lines on the film with the edge of the headstock, and position the decal according to the print on the film.
I used a polyurethane that was 'resistant to yellowing' and I saw it turn towards yellowing. Bad idea on my part. There is a specific primer for aluminum. Read the label as it is serioulsy dangerous stuff. C
A picture heavy update this time: This is the paint I'm using. Left to right: Primer, base color coat (Graphite metallic), 2 component clear coat and the black used for sunburst effect. Primer laid down: Primer on pickguard. To the left you can see a test piece and some small bits that will be painted satin black. Base color added. As you can see I did not paint the sides and the entire neck because they are going to be black, and I was running low on paint. Here the faces are masked of to lay down most of the black. The masking is to prevent overspray. As it turns out, this method was slightly flawed. What I did was to spray the base color, then a layer of clear to protect the metallic flakes followed by the black color. The clear was sanded slightly to aid adhesion. The problem with a matte surface is that it is very difficult to lay down the sunburst color evenly because one can't really see the difference between the matte black and the matte clear coat. When the next clear coat is added afterwards everything that is uneven will show up again. To do the black gradients I used an airbrush. The paint was the same paint used for all the other black. The problem is getting it out of the can. I made a special nozzle from an old spray can nozzle and a straw: The straw is poked through some cling film stretched over a glass jar to prevent the paint splashing around: It's important to let the paint sit in the jar for a while to let all the propellant vent, and to let the paint reach room temperature. (The paint is freezing cold when it comes out of the spraycan) This caused some problems later in the process. (sorry, no pictures of that.) I started spraying with the airbrush a bit too early. The result was that the paint started boiling in the reservoir of the airbrush. Eventually the paint fount it's way out the went hole on the top of the reservoir. Of course one of the drops landed on the headstock. Turns out that the black paint easily melts through the clear coat, so I had to sand it down and repaint... The same thing happened when I was going to do a last touch up on the pickguard. The pickguard ended up being stripped down and completely repainted. (Acetone is very effective, as it turns out). Anyway, back to the neck. On the side of the neck there are some dots. They are positioned right where the light maple wood meets the darker rosewood on the fretboard. Since the black color coat stops right over the rosewood, the dots had to be scraped from behind the paint. After scraping. It looks a bit uneven, but looks much better in real life. This is after doing the airbrushing and a coat of clear. As you can see the surface is very rough. Since the paint is added in very many thin layers it will be very bumpy. Sanding down the bumps will ruin the fading effect. A clear coat will "glue" everything down and the surface can then be sanded smooth. Today I have sanded down everything and done some touch up with the airbrush to even out the black. I have also added a thick clear coat. I will take some pictures and post later.
So... I had another small setback. I applied the decals yesterday for the second time. Turns out that the decal setting solution I used caused the clear coat to be slightly hazy. I thought the coat over it would cover it up, but it didn't. You can just about see it along the peg holes in that picture. It was only visible from certain angles, but it was very visible when it first showed up. I knew this would bug me at some pint, so I ended up sanding down the front and back of the headstock for yet another repaint... I'm also thinking about changing the decal at the same time. I may remove the "custom" part so there is only a Fender logo. The cleaner look may fit better. What do you think?
Thanks. I had another setback yesterday, though. I had just finished the headstock again, and had applied a new set of decals. When I applied the clear coat over the decal all the paint underneath melted for some reason. I still don't know why, but I suspect that it somehow reacted with the clear coat from the first layer (remember, I clear coated the metallic paint before laying down the black on my first run). Moral of the story: Don't take shortcuts! Only solution was to sand it down completely and start over. Luckily I had a oscillating sander attachment for an electric oscillating saw I have. I have never used the sanding part, but it turns out that the sander attachment works way better than I thought it would. (Not surprising. The saw is made by Bosh, whose equipment always work better than expected as opposed to Black and Decker equipment which never works as intended... )
I dont suppose i could pay you to do similar amazing things to my american jazz bass deluxe? It is a bit heavily used and as such the finish is getting a bit thread bear! Pretty please
Spent last night and this morning doing some polishing and assembling: (Sorry about the bad picture. I'll take some proper pics later.) It was all sanded down using some 1200 grit sandpaper on a small sanding block (Made from a piece of rubber and a small block of oak). It was then rubbed down with some S17 rubbing compound on a polishing wheel. I tried applying the compound by hand, but that didn't work very well. My initial idea was by hand, and my backup plan was to use the polishing machine you can see to the right in the last picture. However, the speed controller in the machine packed up and would only run at full speed. Not the best thing to do on fresh paint. I did find a small buffing wheel for my drill that worked pretty well. The inside of the horns were polished by a small cloth wheel on a Dremel. I finished up with some ScratchEx and a car wax to give it some proper shine. I must say that I'm not entirely happy with the finish. There are some very tiny scratches that's visible when I inspect it closely under a sharp light. Not sure how it will look under normal light, but I don't think it will be visible at all. In fact, both of my other guitars that have gloss finish also have these scratches to a certain degree. If it bothers me in a couple of months I'll take it apart and repolish. The neck have now gotten it's first clear coat. HOPEFULLY this run will be more successful! It's not really silverburst. It's a bit darker than that. In sharp light it looks like a warm silverburst though. If you had asked when I started, then yes, but not after the 4th run with the neck... edit: I now have a slight problem again. The hole for the string tree on the headstock have been filled with paint, and isn't visible any more. Should be interesting trying to figure out where it is now.
I found it! The paint sunk together enough to reveal a slight dot where the hole is. Just poked it open. But thanks anyway.
