Fendowsky build

[DEbassist]

Hello fellow TBers.

I recently had the opportunity to trade my USA Lakland for an all original 1977 Fender Jazz. When my lead singer found out, he made the comment that I would never be able to touch the tone of a Lakland with a Jazz.

Challenge accepted.

So here we go, Fendowsky build.

 

[DEbassist]

The bass will be Lake Placid Blue, strung with Sadowsky Black label nickels with Nordstrand Big Singles and a sadowky preamp. Maple Mighty Mite neck.

 

[DEbassist]

Here's the body before I sanded it. Fender MIM jazz bass. It's already been stripped of the poly finish with a heat gun. I will be using the process outlined on the reranch website and refinishing her Lake Placid Blue.

 

[DEbassist]

Finished body sanding. Hit her with 150, 220 and finally 320 grit sandpaper.

 

[DEbassist]

And here we come to the wood grain filler. Let me preface this by saying that I am an idiot and apparently can't read directions. Instead of rubbing the grain filler into the areas that needed it, I used a brush and slathered a nice thick coat on the whole thing.

Fail.

By the time I realized my mistake, the grain filler had already hardened and I had to spend a day with the power sander removing all of it and redoing it.

Lesson learned.

 

[DEbassist]

Okay, once I finally got the grain filler redone, I shot it with 3 coats of sand and sealer then sanded it with 220 and 320 grit sand paper to prep it for priming.

 

[DEbassist]

Ah, thats starting to look better. Here is the bass after the primer coat. I also have it sitting on top of one of my wife's Twilight books (I knew I'd find a use for those things one day) so I can keep it from sticking to the newsprint.

 

[DEbassist]

Here is a shot of the bass after color and 3 coats of clear. After this, I started hanging the bass from a coat hanger off an eye hook in the ceiling of my garage. Just stick the hook of the coat hanger through one of the bolt holes in the neck joint. This allows me to shoot the entire thing at once instead of one side at a time. The trade off is that I get more issues with overspray.

When using this method, the cutaways and sides are going to get nailed with overspray. It will look shiny but feel rough. To combat this I've been told to work from bottom to top and get a fan going for ventilation. Do the back and front first, then the sides, ending with the cut aways. Go from the horns towards the neck joint. I've yet to try this and will keep you all posted on how well it works, but it makes sense in theory.

 

[Lakai]

Excellent, keep it up. I'm about to start a similar project. Subscribed

 

[DEbassist]

Awesome Lakai! I'll make sure and document all of my mistakes so you can learn from them.

 

[DEbassist]

Okay, so here is another issue I ran into while wet sanding between clear coats. Check out the pickguard holes. See how it looks like I sanded through to the primer? What was happening is that when I would wet sand, the water would get down into the screw holes and cause the wood around the holes to swell up creating little hills. When you would sand over the top of them, you would take off the clear coat and paint. The solution is take a candle (I know, real hi tech) and fill the holes with wax. Once the wax has set and cooled, use your exacto knife to remove any excess from around the holes and continue on.

Also at this point, I've got about 10 coats of clear on there. I'm doing 2 light passes 30 minutes or so apart, followed by one heavy coat that I let dry over night. I get up in the morning and wet sand with 800 and 1000 grit wet paper. I do the two light coats before I leave for work and do the heavy coat when I get home.

It's starting to reflect now.

 

[DEbassist]

Initially when I was thinking this up, I wanted to go vintage with a set of SD Anitiquities and the fender 60's concentric volume and tone pots. However, this is a MIM body and it is routed for two neck pickups of the same length instead of the now standard long bridge pickup and the smaller neck pickup.

This made a real headache of trying to find replacement pickups. Especially in the vintage sound market. Bartolini does it, but the other don't. You can buy two neck pickups of course, but the pole spacing would be off in the bridge mounted pickup and it wouldn't be wound any hotter than the neck pickup, also an issue.

My solution; bypass the jazz pickup design alltogether and go with nordstrand big splits. They are essentially single coil pickups and are housed in bigger shells so I can just have my repair guy enlarge the pickup cavities and pickguard to accomodate the larger pickups. (BIG shout out to Tom at L.S. Electronics here in St. Louis, btw)

Also, since I'm having the bass routed, I've suspended all clear coating until I get it back as I'm sure I'll have a little repairing to do. We'll see.

Here is a mockup of the bass with all the parts. Obviously, I won't have that control plate or the pickup covers, but you get the idea.

 

[DEbassist]

Alright, I finally got the pickups in and the body has been dropped off at the shop as of yesterday to be routed for the pickups, a side jack for the preamp and a battery box.

In the mean time, I will be working on the neck. This came to me with a nice Fender logo on the headstock and a light oil finish to seal it in. I got a can of tinted clear coat and a can of clear gloss from reranch as well as some white block inlay stickers (I know, I know, I know) and I'm ready to go to work.

I started off using the clear gloss on the neck. This allows me to use a laquer thinner on the tinted coats if I go too dark. I don't personally believe in something as rediculous as an "over ambered Fender neck" but hey, the option is nice to have should I be proven wrong.

 

[grinx]

where do you get your 800+ sandpaper?

how do you keep the candlewax going into the hole and not on to the body of the bass, is there a trick like a paper funnel?

thanks for showing/discussing failures as well as successes

 

[DEbassist]

Ok, Here's a shot of the nec with the first coat of tinted gloss on it. I plan on doing 4 more passes on the amber to really darken it up followed by 5 or 6 heavy coats of clear. I'm wet sanding between each coat reshooting to build up a nice gloss.

I'm also running into the issue of the clear gloss building up on the frets. My frets literally look orange. I've looked around for a solution to this and I've found a couple. If it was a rosewood neck, the general consensus is to tape it off and spray away. As it is a maple fretboard the options are to tape off the individual frets or use the old fender method of scraping off the clear gloss with a nail and dress the frets during set up. As I can't find any tape thin enough for my frets, I'm going the nail route. I'm also finding that you can wet sand it off as well, but you run the risk of over sanding the fret board around the fret. The nail is much more precise.

One note on the wet sanding. On the final pass, I will only wet sand the back of the neck with 1200, 1500 and 2000 wet paper. The 2000 grit wet paper leaves a REALLY nice satin feel to the back of the neck.

 

[DEbassist]

@grinx - The sandpaper I ordered through reranch. I was having a devil of a time finding anything higher than 600 grit at the hardware store. They will send you a pack with 600, 800, 1000, 1200, 1500 and 2000 wet paper.

As for the wax. Very, very carefully. I actually wish I would have thought of a paper funnel when I did it. I actually held the candle over the hole and just dropped it in. Some got on the body and I had to scrape it off very carefully with the exacto knife. you might knick the body with the blade, but wet sanding will remove most of that and once you clear coat it again, you won't even notice.

 

[DEbassist]

Also a note on the clear gloss. The reranch stuff is $15 bucks a can. It says on the site that you can finish an entire guitar with one can. Not true. I went through 3 cans and still wasn't happy with the finish. It's great paint but the stuff gets expensive after awhile. A compatible and much cheaper alternative is Deft's Clear Gloss wood finish. You can find it at Lowes and Home Depot for about $5 bucks a pop. I switched over to that after I ran through the reranch stuff. It's also nice to be able to take a 5 minute drive to get more than waiting a week for new paint from reranch.

 

[GBassNorth]

This thread has been fantastic and very helpful. I've been thinking about going the Reranch route on one of my basses, in essence removing the gloss black body finish and replacing it with surf green, maybe also doing a vintage tint on the neck as well.
If I've counted the major steps you've taken on the body refin it looks like:
Paint removal - then sand 120, sand 220, sand 320
Sealer - then sand, sand, sand
Primer - then sand, sand, sand
Color - then wet sand 800, wet sand 1000
Color - then wet sand, wet sand
Color - then wet sand, wet sand
3 coats of Clear - wet sand, wet sand
3 coats of Clear - wet sand, wet sand
3 coats of clear - wet sand, wet sand
More clear and wet sand as needed if routing impacts the finish.
How many hours do you think you have in the body finish and what duration has that been over (i.e. 40hours work over the last month)?
I'd really like to give this a try but will need to fit it into my busy schedule.

 

[DEbassist]

I won't lie, it's pretty time consuming. Especially prior to the color and clear coating. I've been working on it for about a month or so. It's very time intensive at the begining when you are sanding after the paint removal. I got lucky and didn't have to do that first step.

Once you get it all sanded and primed and start shooting color and clear coats, it's not so bad. It only costs you the 5 minutes of going out to the garage and spraying a coat and waiting for it to dry.

All together, I wouldn't be surprised if I had 2 entire days worth of time invested in this bass so far. It's just not a process that can be rushed.

Once I get the body back, I will probably have another 4 or 5 hours more being put in to 3 more clear coats on the body and one more on the neck. I'll put a final polish on the body and then assemble it as much as possible before I hand it over to the tech to install the pickups.

 

[Gord_oh]

i knew that old jazz body still had some life in her.
turned out great, glad you put it to use.