Alanko

Some vintage pickguards end up like that, with the bevel shrinking back. I guess the old tort material looks the way it does due to tinted, volatile plastics being partially mixed together and poured out into big sheets. This makes it all inherently unstable, hence all the shrinkage and fading going on.

I've found a couple of places locally to me that do it. Their stock-in-trade appears to be car wheels, so some bass parts presumably wouldn't be an issue. Sand blasting appears to be part of the service for both. Phone a few local independent garages and they might recommend the same few names for doing the work. You might need to know the RAL number for black. 😀

The Spitfire chap seems barely in control of the process of making the tort, then passes off the results as something unique and interesting. If it has a giant unmixed yellow blob in the middle then he will come up with some marketing blurb and a cute name for it. The Avantguard offerings look better with a slightly wet, suspended animation look to the tort. It also looks like they over-buff the pickguard once completed, however, melting don't of the details.

I own one of these in white, which I wrote about in the vintage Fenders thread. I've shielded it, swapped out the bridge for a high mass Fender and fitted a Sadowsky pickup (I reckon Dimarzio is the OEM). It is a nice, light and resonant bass that is a delight to play. Very inspirational. I have built various parts basses with P Bass body and Jazz necks over the years, but it is nice to be able to buy one off the shelf!

The downside was finding one! I ended up buying two. The first seller sent me the wrong model. Both sellers were tiny guitar shops in the Netherlands. Essentially one-man operations. One needed payment via bank transfer, which made my banking app a bit jittery. I couldn't find a UK seller, but contemplated noising up these guys: https://themusicalliance.co.uk/en/product/158481/pickguard-puncher-bass-standard-4-ply-tortoise-intense?view=newproducts

The pickguard chat in this thread was enough to make me sign up. The red tortoiseshell pickguard on the Fender Hama Okamoto Precision Bass is pretty good. A cut above the standard dark maroon modern Fender tort or the various lurid tortoiseshell pickguards on eBay. This is mine: The tort layer is thin, but is the right mix of red, darker and lighter shades. The white sub layers are more parchment than stark white as well. I am 99.9% sure these same pickguards are sold separately under the 'Boston' brand, part number PB-415-TI. I bought one of these pickguards from a Dutch seller and put it on my AM Pro-II P Bass: It isn't a Spitfire or Lavaguard pickguard, but a few tweaks to the colours used puts them well ahead of other cheap pickguards.