Another 1965 Jazz Bass

Here's another one of my eBay purchases, a 1965 Fender jazz bass. The issues here are a body refinish, some under pickguard routing, a filled rout between the pickups and of course...it's been converted to a fretless. The original pickguard was in the (original) case but had been cut to accommodate the 'between the pickups' mod that has since been repaired, the guard you see here is a late 1964 tortoise shell which I already had. There's a mini switch drilled into the control plate but fortunately I have a pre-CBS replacement. All the other parts are completely original.
 
The plan of action is to fill in the under pickguard rout, improve the repair job between the pickups, refret the neck and refinish the body. 

The body has not been over sanded and features all the correct contours, etc.
Removing the paint revealed a little surprise I was not expecting, I knew about the under pickguard/control plate rout, I knew about the 'in between' pickup rout but I didn't realise that at some point in it's life someone has engraved a 'coachline' around the edges of the instruments body and pickguard, etc.

Fortunately this is not deeply cut and although I don't want to sand it out, it will be relatively easy to fill as it had been prior to me stripping the paint. 

The downside to this is that I was expecting to do a good enough job of repairing the rout between the pickups to enable the body to be refinished in a mid-'60's style sunburst (as it was originally), this engraving has completely scuppered that idea, it'll have to be a solid colour now, probably olympic white...oh well...does kinda make you wonder why some people think stuff like that looks good...?
The routs have now been repaired and the first sealer coat has been applied. I decided to rout out a complete section between the pickups as a filler plug running with the grain is far less likely to show up under paint than a filled area across the grain. I made a tightly fitting plug, tapped it into place and once the glue had dried out, used a bearing guided router bit to trim away the excess wood in the pickup cavities using the bottom of the original rout as a guide.....perfect. The only giveaway is the change in colour on the bass side of the plug, the other side is totally invisible.....since it's going to be painted a solid colour anyway, it doesn't really matter!

I removed the old filler from the engraved coachline as the paint stripper had softened it and caused some of it to fall out. I used a mixture of superglue and alder dust to fill this again, I have found that to be a good method of filling small areas as it doesn't seem to shrink as wood filler or putty can.

Once painted, it'll just be a memory......!
The primer coats and top coats have now been sprayed. All the dodgy routings, etc., have completely disappeared. I opted for olympic white, there's not a great deal of options when you have a tortoise shell guard. Sunburst was out of the window due to the engraved coachline, blonde really needs to be done over (undamaged) swamp ash, can't say I'm overly keen on black.....so that only leaves olympic white.....I have seen other custom colours with torty guards but to my eye it never looks right.

I will be tinting this with a vintage amber/brown mix to give the appearance of an aged top coat. Although there are exceptions, I believe that it generally accepted that early '60's olympic whites tend to stay whiter looking than mid '60's examples. This is due to the earlier guitars not having a clear top coat sprayed over the colour coats, whereas later examples tended to.
I have attached some of the parts here and subjected the body to 'UV acceleration' which is a term I've heard some companies using to say 'left it out in the sun for a bit'

Nitro-cellulose yellows incredibly quickly in strong light, the idea was to get a 'shadow' of the components into the lacquer, it has worked well, though a bit too subtle to show up in these jpeg images.
I removed the filler from the slots in the fingerboard but found a few of them were a little more enlarged than I would have liked, I therefore refilled them all with Brazilian rosewood strips and recut the fret slots to the correct size. I sanded the string marks from the fingerboard that years of fretless playing had worn into it, luckily I didn't have to remove too much wood.
That's one problem with the curved join board, the veneer is thin so you don't have a lot to play with during restoration...
I opted for vintage style frets for the correct vibe. I also installed a new bone nut, the old non-original nut was badly cut and quite useless.

Here's a snap of the neck date, 7 AUG 65 A
Here's a pic of the original pickguard (left) next to the late '64 one I already had, the original is a bit beyond repair but the replacement is exactly the same colour and type (nitro top with plastic backing).....ideal 

Assembly...
As with some other restorations, I have put this together ahead of any distressing to allow the laquer to really dry out well before I attempt to 'age' it. The laquer on the neck is completely original and nicely worn, when the time comes I will distress the body to match.


Thumb rest is a replacement but it is a vintage one...


 

Original decal, note small hole where another string guide was attached...

Original Klusons, smooth and solid. 1 of the original 16 tuner screws was missing, replaced with a repro...


The drilled control plate has been replaced with a pre-CBS replacement, bridge and pickup covers are original...


Sitting on its original case...nice

Before and after.....