(long post, so bear with me. TLDR, please send pictures or experiences/reviews of your reranch, gracey, or oxford finished bodies so i can see how they look when painted onto a body)
so, about a week away from the end of the year-in-the-making p bass project i’ve been doing, i had a hand full of cash and the realization that the neck i’m using for this bass is really just too darn good for the shoddy natural body i’m planning to use for it. so, now i have an all parts unfinished p bass body on its way and i’m wanting to finish it in a 1965 accurate fender finish.
i’ve researched and come up with a few different vendors i can use colors from, and below is a list of the colors i’m considering to know what i’m talking about and looking for. but for the life of me, pictures of the colors i’m wanting from the vendors i’m looking at just aren’t very abundant. so please, if you have any basses with the finishes below please send some pics! thanks.
1: lake placid blue. since it was an acrylic lacquer in those days, i would go with duplicolor bahama blue. though if push came to shove i might go with reranch nitro. i believe that acrylic lacquer would require strictly vinyl under coats, with nitro clear coats on top. this is the most ambitious choice but probably could yield the coolest result.
2: sherwood green. this metallic actually never was an acrylic lacquer, and up until it was phased out in mid-1965 it was nitrocellulose. so i’d go with reranch on this one. i’ve seen some really nice pics of this finish, and it seems very accurate to the unfaded finishes of the 60s
3: fiesta red. here’s where it gets tricky. fiesta red, which i’d use reranch nitrocellulose lacquer for, is a very strange and seemingly chameleon-esque color. some fenders have a nearly dakota red look, some look like barbie pink, others have that iconic shrimp glow. it’s hard to know what exactly reranch fiesta red looks like, and that’s disappointing.
and lastly 4: dakota red. this one is kind of the last option, from reranch, just because it’s sort of a basic nitro red. but i suppose the issue with that is that if it isn’t an accurate dakota red, it just seems like a lame red nitro finish on an otherwise super accurate bass. i’ve seen this finish go from fire-engine red, to bright blood red, to the color of a big doomsday button.
if you’ve gotten this far, i hope you can give either a picture or any experience you have with any of the listed or maybe unmentioned nitro sellers in the US who sell fender color nitro. thanks.
so, about a week away from the end of the year-in-the-making p bass project i’ve been doing, i had a hand full of cash and the realization that the neck i’m using for this bass is really just too darn good for the shoddy natural body i’m planning to use for it. so, now i have an all parts unfinished p bass body on its way and i’m wanting to finish it in a 1965 accurate fender finish.
i’ve researched and come up with a few different vendors i can use colors from, and below is a list of the colors i’m considering to know what i’m talking about and looking for. but for the life of me, pictures of the colors i’m wanting from the vendors i’m looking at just aren’t very abundant. so please, if you have any basses with the finishes below please send some pics! thanks.
1: lake placid blue. since it was an acrylic lacquer in those days, i would go with duplicolor bahama blue. though if push came to shove i might go with reranch nitro. i believe that acrylic lacquer would require strictly vinyl under coats, with nitro clear coats on top. this is the most ambitious choice but probably could yield the coolest result.
2: sherwood green. this metallic actually never was an acrylic lacquer, and up until it was phased out in mid-1965 it was nitrocellulose. so i’d go with reranch on this one. i’ve seen some really nice pics of this finish, and it seems very accurate to the unfaded finishes of the 60s
3: fiesta red. here’s where it gets tricky. fiesta red, which i’d use reranch nitrocellulose lacquer for, is a very strange and seemingly chameleon-esque color. some fenders have a nearly dakota red look, some look like barbie pink, others have that iconic shrimp glow. it’s hard to know what exactly reranch fiesta red looks like, and that’s disappointing.
and lastly 4: dakota red. this one is kind of the last option, from reranch, just because it’s sort of a basic nitro red. but i suppose the issue with that is that if it isn’t an accurate dakota red, it just seems like a lame red nitro finish on an otherwise super accurate bass. i’ve seen this finish go from fire-engine red, to bright blood red, to the color of a big doomsday button.
if you’ve gotten this far, i hope you can give either a picture or any experience you have with any of the listed or maybe unmentioned nitro sellers in the US who sell fender color nitro. thanks.
I don't believe Sherwood Green was available in 1965, so that one might be less "authentic". Another point is that the modern look of a vintage finish is really unlike what they looked like back then. Nitro yellows a LOT and hence the modern appearance is quite changed by this process compared to what they looked like new. I guess my point is that there will be a range for this reason and because of that, nothing's really "wrong" unless it's way, way off. It's probably worth finding versions of colours that you like from the manufacturer's swatches and then go from there. In addition to the range that exists due to aging, you also have so many photographic factors that can make things look different than they are in real life and it's really hard to control for that. Perhaps this is not a helpful post after all! 
