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Currently refinishing a Jazz bass (lots of pics)


Steve the Hero

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Refinishing a bass for a friend. I didn't want to post my process on here until I knew how it was going to look. I guess I'm just self conscious like that. It's been rough work since I ordered my paint from ReRanch (Surf Green) because I'm in Buffalo and it's currently 6 degrees. I had to wait a full day for the paint to warm to room temperature before spraying. He wanted a matching headstock too (couldn't talk him out of it)

 

Here is the bass stock:

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More photos of the process in the next few posts..

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Hey, nice job! Make sure you post this also on the Bass forum here as the guys over there will get into this.

 

They're about to get in on making a kit tube amp all together over there also...they're getting a deal on the kits and they're going to put them all together step by step. Should be fun.

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Hey, nice job! Make sure you post this also on the Bass forum here as the guys over there will get into this.


They're about to get in on making a kit tube amp all together over there also...they're getting a deal on the kits and they're going to put them all together step by step. Should be fun.

 

 

 

Awesome, I'll be sure to do that. Guys here eat up threads on refins so I wante to share here first as I am not much of a bassist.

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Excellent job, and great color. Dont worry about being self conscious. MOST people want to see youy succeed. There are always a fw nay sayers. I think they are mostly blowhards.

 

Here is a thread I did about refinishing a strat with rattle cans. Similar c0lor. Came out fantastic. If you notice, in the thread, a couple people kept insisting it was impossible to get a professional finish with rattle cans. As the thread progressed, and the thing started looking better and better, they kinda up and dissapeared. Funny thing that is.

 

Anyway, really enjoying the thread.

 

http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1894708

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Excellent job, and great color. Dont worry about being self conscious. MOST people want to see youy succeed. There are always a fw nay sayers. I think they are mostly blowhards.


Here is a thread I did about refinishing a strat with rattle cans. Similar c0lor. Came out fantastic. If you notice, in the thread, a couple people kept insisting it was impossible to get a professional finish with rattle cans. As the thread progressed, and the thing started looking better and better, they kinda up and dissapeared. Funny thing that is.


Anyway, really enjoying the thread.


 

 

Great job in that thread. I'm running into a few problems with dust but everything is running very smoothly once I get to wet sanding. I'm actually on my way to buy some more wet sanding paper and to look for something for my clear coat.

 

Yours turned out great and is a good model for my work. Hopefully this ends up almost as good as yours. I think after this I'm going to look into a better work space to keep things clean and everything but until then I'm not getting paid enough haha.

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Come on, a refinish thread. A lot of views and no one has anything to say?

 

 

Go figure. These threads are usually quite popular. I think it may be just because there have been SO many of them lately.

 

Anyway, dust is the enemy, but it is not as bad as it appers. You can actually work with the dust if you cant completely avaid it. One thing I do is wet down the floor. THis is where alot of the dust is and it gets stirred up the most by allthe tracking and walking. Dont know if you hasve that option in your shop.

 

Anyway, because you are using a nice opaque solid color, the dust shopuldnt be too much of a problem even if it gets in the paint. When you wet sand, you are leveling off the dust so that you really cant see its texture, and as long as the particles are small, you dont really even see them inb the paint unless they are just a VERY contrasting color, but it seems most tiny dust particles are a somewhat litish grey color which really dont show up too bad once you wet sand, if at all. Same thing even goes for clearcoating. They will distort the surfacve if you are not planning on leveling the clearcoat out by wet sanding, but if you are planning on wetsanding the clear, thew particles should all but dissapear.

 

I am not saying you shouldnt worry about dust and try to eliminate as much of it as possible, but I am saying if you have less than ideal conditions and you still have a significant amount odf dust around even after trying to get rid of it, I wouldnt let it stop me from refinishing AS LONG as I am planning to wet sand the final coats of whatever they may be. Then procede to polish it. You wont see anty dust particles unless they are just HUGE or unless you pull out a magnifying glass.

 

Great project.

 

I am going to keep watching.

 

Love the bass, it looks great, but I agree with you, that if it was up to me, I wouldnt have painted the headstock, but I guess that is what the dude wanted.

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I'm confused why you didn't just take the neck off to paint the body...
:confused:

 

If it was a guitar, I would have but I'm not comfortable adjusting bass necks and I have a history of having to do little adjustments to the neck once removed to make the instrument playable again. Plus it made it easier to do everything at once when painting the headstock

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Hey guys, sorry I haven't updated yet. Here is the final product. I skipped a few steps because we all know what clear coating looks like. If the owner gave me a little more time with the bass I would have put on a tinted clear but what's done is done.

 

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This is only the second refinish I have done so there are some imperfections. It also doesn't help being 19 and doing all this work in your parents' dusty basement. All turned out fairly well though and everyone is happy.

 

Onto my next project which is my tele that I butchered before..

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Nice color! I've bookmarked this thread along with Dave Aronow's for reference as I'm going to attempt my first rattle can refinish of an Epiphone telecaster sometime this spring, God willing, when the weather is warmer.

 

 

It's really quite easy if you do a good job getting prepared for the paint with the sanding and not everyone uses primer but I chose to which helped the paint stick better. Be sure to make a thread when you start your project!

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