Bravewood Guitars
Vintage Guitar Restoration

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Due to my current workload I will not be taking on anymore vintage guitar restoration for the forseeable future, I will leave this page up as I know many people find it interesting to browse around...enjoy...

1957 Fender Stratocaster

1962 Fender Jazz Bass

1963 Fender Precision Bass

1964 Fender stratocaster

1964 Fender jazz bass

1965 Fender jazz bass

Another 1965 Fender jazz bass

1965 Fender stratocaster

1965 Fender Jaguar

1968 Fender Precision bass

I was sent the bass and work began. First the bass was disassembled and the parts carefully stored away. The next step was to strip the body, chemical stripper had no effect on whatever finish had been used so it was back to the old fashioned method.....sanding. Previous sanding and refinishing efforts had already thinned the body by a millimetre or two so I was careful to remove as little wood as possible during this process, why do people always go mental with electric sanders?
 

This photo shows most of the finish removed and the extent of the damage to the body that the various modifications had caused. Also note that under the blue paint in the pickup cavity, the original colour, burgundy mist, is clearly evident.

The extra holes in the body were filled with wooden plugs, firstly the holes were routed to a uniform size and then alder plugs were made to fit snugly into the cavities
 

These plugs were glued in place with Casamite, a wood glue that dries rock hard unlike PVA glue which always remains a little soft. The thinking behind this was vibration from the strings and bridge would transfer to the body much better with a hard glue as opposed to the vibration inhibiting soft PVA. The alder fillets were sanded flat and the body sealed and primered.

Starting to look like a P bass again...

Using the colour in the pickup cavity as a guide, a nitro-cellulose burgundy mist was mixed and the body was sprayed. Several coats of clear lacquer were then sprayed to give the burgundy mist some 'depth'.

Getting there now.....

As the above photo shows, all evidence of the extra pickup and routed in bridge has disappeared.

Whilst this work was going on I was also working on the neck, as mentioned earlier, it had been converted to a fretless and the entire neck had been brush painted with some sort of varnish (over the tuner bushings too).
Firstly I made a fret slotting jig to accomodate the entire neck and set about re-slotting the fingerboard

The slotted neck...

I then sanded the fingerboard to remove the string marks that years of fretless use had worn into it, I'm pleased to say that it was not badly worn and therefore very little wood was removed during this process. The next stage was to refret the neck, I used my fretting arbour press with a 7.25" caul.

The fret ends were trimmed and superglue was wicked into the fret slot ends to solidify the frets into place.
I decided instead of completely removing the brushed on lacquer from the neck, I would flat sand it and apply a thin coat of nitro, this would preserve the overall patina the neck had developed in the 20 or so years since this 'refinish' was done. The decal was lost in this process but since it was a repro anyway, I didn't lose a lot of sleep over it.

Once cured, the frets were leveled, the neck was buffed and a new decal applied...
 

All that remained to be done was a little distressing to the body and final assembly. It was decided to go fairly light with the distressing, used but looked after.
 

Marcus, the owner, was absolutely delighted with his restored bass, indeed, it plays as good as it looks and sounds fantastic. Marcus has played sessions for many notable artists, amongst them Mark Knopfler, Marcus was working with Mark at the time he received his bass back and he tells me that Mr Knopfler was most impressed with the restoration.....