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1981 Gibson Victory Artist - restoration

neepheid

neepheid

Mar 30, 2007
85
248
Aberdeen, Scotland
#1
Hi folks

I've just reassembled this bass after getting it back from being refinished and I thought you'd like to see what happened.

This is what I started with:

mess01.jpg

mess03.jpg

mess08.jpg

mess11.jpg


This poor bass had been rather abused:

Refinished badly in dark blue
Pickguard and truss rod cover painted silver
The neck burned for some obscure reason
Daft battery cut switch added to the back
and a broken D string tuner

A total refinish was in order. The only good things were the state of the hardware, no pitting anywhere on the chrome and the 5-0-5 numbered speed knobs not gone walkies.
 
#2
First job was to strip the old finish off. Good old sanding for me - I don't trust chemicals.

01_emerging.jpg

01_front.jpg

02_back.jpg


Lovely bit of maple there, however I decided to go with an antique gold finish. Once the body and neck were fully stripped it was off to my good friend Rich to work his magic. I am hopeless at spraying - I can just about do a neck but I decided that I couldn't do this justice.
 
#3
While Rich was working his magic, I got to work on sorting some of the annoying problems.

Schaller were absolute stars - it turned out that the screw which attaches the capstan to the pinion had snapped inside the capstan. I asked them if I could buy a replacement, they sent me 4 new capstans, screws and pinions free of charge!

I made a new battery cover, as the old one had been ruined because someone fitted a battery cut out switch through it:

battery_cover.jpg


I removed the silver paint off the truss rod cover and found to my dismay that the "Artist" logo was gone. To get round this I made a water slide decal and applied it to the TRC. Despite melting the first one because it reacted badly to a nitro clearcoat I got it OK in the end:

03_enamel_ahh.jpg


I had the original pickguard copied in traditional Gibson 5 ply b/w/b/w/b and loaded it up:

victory_loaded_pg.jpg

victory_loaded_pg_back.jpg


Big thanks to Gibson Restoration and Repair - who managed to find me a pair of NOS Posi-Lok strap buttons. The bass came with one Posi-Lok and one regular - that really annoyed me!

posi-lok.jpg


That sorted out most of the finicky annoying bugs.
 
#17
Those are cool!

Great work on the refin/rebuild, man!

There was a local guy here trying to sell a nicely worn one (in that same Gold color) for a while. I hope you didn't pay too much for the beat-up one...I've seen them in great condition going for under $1000, sometimes even around $600 or so...

Still a VERY cool project. She looks like a keeper for sure.
 
#18
Thanks for sharing!
That's a beautiful restoration of great under appreciated bass.
I'd love to have one in my collection.
 

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