Refinish MIJ Fender Jazz

[P&WBassMan]

Howdy all,

I've got a 07 Geddy Lee Jazz Bass Made in Japan. It's a great looking guitar, but not only do I not want a black guitar, I really like natural wood.

I want to strip the black body, clear coat the wood and swap the white pickguard for a black one to tie the black pickups to the black trim in neck.

I need to make sure the wood is presentable. It would suck to strip the mirror-black finish to find ugly knots or patches

Does anybody know if I'm likely to find surprises in the wood if I remove the paint? It's an ash body. Does that mean it's a single piece of ash?

Thanks in advance

[joeyl]

Originally Posted by P&WBassMan

Howdy all,

I've got a 07 Geddy Lee Jazz Bass Made in Japan. It's a great looking guitar, but not only do I not want a black guitar, I really like natural wood.

I want to strip the black body, clear coat the wood and swap the white pickguard for a black one to tie the black pickups to the black trim in neck.

I need to make sure the wood is presentable. It would suck to strip the mirror-black finish to find ugly knots or patches

Does anybody know if I'm likely to find surprises in the wood if I remove the paint? It's an ash body. Does that mean it's a single piece of ash?

Thanks in advance

wrong forum.

I would not do it because it is not ash but alder, so the grain pattern will probably not be attractive, I have a natural alder Fender bass, and it looks ok, nowhere as pretty as my natural ash Fender
And there is a reason why they choose a piece of wood to be painted, I would not do it. I did it once and got lucky. You will be better off selling it and buying another one

[fenderhutz]

Sell it and buy the bass you want. You never know what pattern/wood/imperfections lies under a solid coat. You could have a really unattractive slab of wood.

[P&WBassMan]

OK, thanks. It is the bass I want, and I couldn't do any better than break even if I sold it. I bought it used, and it has some significant scratches on the back that I can't buff out. I might strip the back first and look at the wood. If it's not what I want, I'd refinish the back to the stock black/gloss clear coat and live with it.

If and when I do that, I'll post results. Again, thanks! I'm glad I've found this forum.

[P&WBassMan]

I took my time and went ahead and stripped the whole body. The wood was not presentable, so I primed it, then painted a base coat using the natural wood color I wanted. Then I used a faux woodgrain rocker tool to simulate graining with a lightly darker paint. I kept wiping it off and re-doing it until I got it perfect. After drying, I lightly wet sanded it and then sprayed 10 coats of clear poly on it, sanding between every third coat. It came out awesome, exactly what I want, but I don't like the polyurethane. It's too soft. I'l look into nitro lacquer and probably redo it again before fall.

By the way, I'm a professional house painter, and I've done woodgraining on doors and cabinets for quite a while. That's why I went ahead.

Thanks for all advise!

[Valerus]

Pictures!!

[bassteban]

Yeah, pics. I wanna see faux-wood grain on wood.