I recently acquired a '75 Natural P-bass with some issues and I'm trying to bring it back to spec. It came with a tortoise pickguard that looked cool, but had the wrong number of holes, and a previous owner put new holes in the body to make it fit. I found a good repro black guard, made by using an original 70s pickguard as a template. I put it on and it looks great, but some of the holes still don't line up correctly. Mostly you can see part of the hole in the wood through the hole in the pickguard. Anyone have any advice on this? I'd rather not have to get a custom pickguard made, it seems like it'd be hard to get that done accurately anyway. But if I force the screws into the holes that don't line up exactly, will the pickguard crack? Or will the screws go sideways and look bad? Should I plug the old holes with dowels and just drill new ones? This bass has been stripped and given an oil finish, I think it was black originally. So it's not a collector's piece, but it's also the nicest bass I've ever owned so I want to do the right thing.
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Fitting a repro pickguard to a 1975 P-bass
- Thread starter Zombie Zonkey
- Start date
Turnaround
Commercial User
There's nothing magic about the holes that are there now, and the instrument could not be considered "original" now. So plug those holes and re-drill.
Thanks guys. Is it bad if I just use wood kitchen skewers or any other wood I have lying around, vs. trying to match the alder? And should I use regular wood glue, superglue, gorilla glue, DAP plastic wood or some other kind of filler to fill in around the dowel?
For pickguard screw holes, a lot of people use precision micro-dowels, aka toothpicks. 
Regular wood glue is also the way to go.
Regular wood glue is also the way to go.
Always wood glue for replacing wood that will be drilled at or near.
Gorilla glue and plastic wood have no place within 20' of an instrument. NO PLACE. So remove those from your lexicon when talking instruments.
Superglue has some great uses on instruments, but not in this situation.
Gorilla glue and plastic wood have no place within 20' of an instrument. NO PLACE. So remove those from your lexicon when talking instruments.
Superglue has some great uses on instruments, but not in this situation.
