Here's Pete's 1963 Fender Precision Bass, apparently originally olympic white when he bought it in the '70's, that lasted only a few weeks before it was refinished black.....as you did in the '70's, that finish lasted a while before it was removed and was replaced by brushed on clear Ronseal varnish...as you do. Sadly the original tortoise shell guard fell to pieces (as they often do) and was replaced with a WD '70's type (note extra screw below G string). The pots have been replaced at some point, the neck finish is also non-original, having been resprayed with some sort of thick orangey treacle type finish. The decal is a sad attempt at a precision logo.....which is definately going...

Other than the parts mentioned, everything else looks to be original with no nasty routs to the body and a pretty straight neck. The frets have been replaced with bigger than standard but they are perfectly OK and have plenty of 'meat' left on them.

So, off I go......

First job is to simply take everything off the bass and then get the paint stripper out, since this is Ronseal varnish, the stripper made pretty short work of it and the bass was soon down to the bare wood. Several previous sandings had left the surface of the body little uneven so I carefully block sanded the front and back to get it to a fairly level surface.
It was while stripping the paint I came across an interesting find in the neck pocket and other cavities. Under the black paint, which hadn't been removed when the Ronseal went on, was what looked like the original olympic white and beneath that was a white primer, pretty typical of what you'd expect to find.....but interestingly under that is what looks very much like daphne blue with an undercoat of 'desert sand'. Desert sand was a colour used in it's own right, particularly on the student models Fender offered, but also turned up as an undercoat on some custom colours.

Since the original guard on this bass was tortoise shell, this might point to this guitar being an example of one custom colour being sprayed over another due to some sort of fault with the finish, as a daphne blue finish should have had a 'white' (mint green) guard. Clearly the very visible join of the two pieces of alder that make up the body would have nagated any chance that this would have been used for a sunburst, so I believe it was originally sprayed daphne blue over a desert sand undercoat, then for some reason (probably a 'buff through') it was sprayed olympic white and had a torty guard attached...and off it went to the shop to be sold.....Pete and I had already discussed the finish to be (olympic white) and whilst this was an interesting find......Pete didn't change his mind.

I cleaned out the paint from the neck pocket and pickup cavity but left the paint in the control cavity, just in case future generations want to have a poke at it to see what the original colour was!

Next it was time for some finish to go on...
 

The pic on the left shows the body after the sealer coat has been applied, to the right the olmpic white has been sprayed. The sealer coat has highlighted just how different the pieces of alder that make up the body are in colour, no sunburst there for sure!
Below I have applied a tinted clear coat to give the finish a nice aged look, this will further be enhanced by some subtle distressing later.

So, onto the neck.....it had been resprayed at some point with a slightly 'milky' looking vintage tint, the finish was quite thick and didn't really look particularly vintage, so I stripped that off and resprayed it. The decal was a strange attempt at a precision logo, the spaghetti script was the same size as it would have been on a vintage strat and the 'precision bass' part was where it would have been if it were a strat decal...the correct precision decal has a larger script and the 'precision bass' part below it, not next to it!

The last dot (heel end) had fallen out and been replaced by some sort of filler, I drilled that out and replaced it with a more convincing dot. That above picture shows the neck refinished, the new decal hasn't been applied yet, I'll do that after the distressing stage.
 

The tortoise shell guard also needed to be replaced, whilst the WD guard that was on it certainly isn't the worse tortoise shell I've ever seen...it could be bettered. The picture above (on the left) shows the WD guard (also on the left) and the replacement I made (on the right) using a full celluloid 4 ply tortoise shell sheet, the closest stuff I've found to the original '60's material. The colour is very close to what you'd expect to find on a vintage bass and I've found through experimentation a method of fading the material yet further to produce an even better match to the originals.
The picture on the right shows the wider bevel that I cut on the pickguards I make (top guard) compared to the usual repro type beneath it, vintage guards (particularly tortoise shell) often featured a wider bevel which allowed more of the layers to show and gives the edges a softer look and feel.