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1965 fender Jazz bass

Here's Keiths 1965 Fender jazz bass. Refinished in fiesta red (colour looks better than the picture shows), it has an original finish (unbound) neck with 'butter bean' tuners and pearl dots.
The pickguard is a replacement but is a nice colour and is certainly better than most repros you see. Several bits have been changed, the pots are not original and the saddles look to be the later '70's type although the bridge plate itself looks to be correct.
Keith wants a black finish, distressed to match the neck......here goes.......
The paint was incredibly thick on this instrument and took several layers of stripper to remove most of it. The triangular divets you see have screws inserted diagonally, this was to stop a split (visible from the neck pickup rout to the bottom of the body) in the body from getting any larger.
The back seems to have suffered some sort of damage in the past as well. There is an area of filler (sawdust and wood glue by the look of it) and black filler primer around it, perhaps severe buckle rash that'd been repaired?
The body was sealed and sprayed with a white primer ready for the black top coats.
The black nitro had now been applied and a couple of clear coats to give the finish some 'depth'. The mottled appearence is due to the reflection of clouds.

The finished article

The body has been distressed to 5/6 out of 10, so that it looks gigged but not totally abused. Addition work included replacing (non-original) pots with 1965 originals, replacing the plastic coated wire that had appeared on the pickups with the cloth covered type, a replacement shield plate was made for under the bridge pickup, the original was no longer there for some reason. The '70's bridge saddles were replaced with aged vintage style threaded types.


Note how the repro pickguard has warped naturally giving it a realistic look...

Before...

and after.......