NBD: 60's Jazz, Surf Green relic

[Phil_T]

Just finished putting this together using a warmoth body and neck.

 

Warmoth Alder body with 60's pickup spacing

Warmoth maple neck with ebony fretboard

Vintage Gotoh reverse tuners

Tonerider pickups

Nitrocellulose lacquer finish in surf green with a light tint top coat to simulate ageing.

Light relic with plenty of good old lacquer checking.

 

I'm waiting for the neck pickup cover to arrive but both covers will be fitted, at least temporarily, once I have them.

 

It sounds fantastic but weighs a fair bit due to the steel rods in the neck and the vintage tuners. It's manageable though.

Edited August 14, 2021 by Phil_T
added photo

[Old Horse Murphy]

That looks lovely. I have it's cousin.

 

 

Edited August 14, 2021 by Old Horse Murphy

[Phil_T]

6 minutes ago, Old Horse Murphy said:

That looks lovely. I have it's cousin.

 

 

 

Sonic blue is my favourite colour for a bass but I have a precision in it that I did a couple of years ago so this one is in my next favourite colour.

[Kevsy71]

Great job Phil, looks amazing with the ebony! Back of the neck looks very easy to move around thanks to the light sanding of the varnish. 

[TheGreek]

I like that green bass a lot!!! 

 

[Phil_T]

the pickup covers arrived, so one more shot for completeness:

Edited August 15, 2021 by Phil_T

[JohnDaBass]

As I live and breathe that is a work of beauty. A fine product to satisfy an individual need.

Outstanding. 

Love it.

Enjoy. 

[RaNoFuNkY]

Amazing build - well done. Do Warmoth offer that light relic + tint service? Or did you do that yourself? Tastefully done

[Jus Lukin]

-

Edited March 15, 2022 by Jus Lukin

[Phil_T]

50 minutes ago, RaNoFuNkY said:

Amazing build - well done. Do Warmoth offer that light relic + tint service? Or did you do that yourself? Tastefully done

Thanks - I did it myself using rattle cans from Manchester Guitar Tech. I'm no expert painter but it's fairly easy and obviously the relic finish hides any less than perfect paint. I was inspired by following this thread a while back:

 

 

[rubis]

That looks lush Phil, love the headstock and the little 'clean' patch by the bridge pickup. 

It's a lovely colour, I did a cheap 12 string Tele copy in surf green, but it didn't look as good as this, it came out somewhat brighter. 

I,m going to re-do it Sherwood Green and see how that looks. 

 

You must be very proud and please with your efforts, it's stunning 

[Waddo Soqable]

I'm not usually into  "bright" colours, but that looks absolutely fab !

Did you over spray the Surf Green with the tinted clear nitro ( like they use on necks) to get the nice grubby look ?

[Phil_T]

3 minutes ago, Waddo Soqable said:

I'm not usually into  "bright" colours, but that looks absolutely fab !

Did you over spray the Surf Green with the tinted clear nitro ( like they use on necks) to get the nice grubby look ?

Yes, the base colour is pretty much what shows through on the worn patch above the bridge pickup. Everywhere else is mellowed down with a fairly thin coat of the tinted lacquer which is then sealed with clear lacquer so you don't sand through the tinted stuff when you're flatting it. The grubby look comes from using slightly more tint around the bridge area and also - and I kid you not - slathering the whole thing is black liquid shoe polish which then gets wiped off but it seeps into the hairline cracks in the lacquer. The lacquer checking is done by heating up a bit of the body at a time with a hair dryer and then spaying it with pipe freeze. You don't have much control and it tends to create very fine crazing but it looks quite effective

 

It's an enjoyable process and I'm spraying in my garden to avoid being poisoned (nitro is nasty stuff) so it's difficult to perfect paint and this relic process just takes all the stress out of it - you know that if you get a blemish during spraying you can easily disguise it when you come to do the relic treatment.

[Waddo Soqable]

18 minutes ago, Phil_T said:

Yes, the base colour is pretty much what shows through on the worn patch above the bridge pickup. Everywhere else is mellowed down with a fairly thin coat of the tinted lacquer which is then sealed with clear lacquer so you don't sand through the tinted stuff when you're flatting it. The grubby look comes from using slightly more tint around the bridge area and also - and I kid you not - slathering the whole thing is black liquid shoe polish which then gets wiped off but it seeps into the hairline cracks in the lacquer. The lacquer checking is done by heating up a bit of the body at a time with a hair dryer and then spaying it with pipe freeze. You don't have much control and it tends to create very fine crazing but it looks quite effective

 

It's an enjoyable process and I'm spraying in my garden to avoid being poisoned (nitro is nasty stuff) so it's difficult to perfect paint and this relic process just takes all the stress out of it - you know that if you get a blemish during spraying you can easily disguise it when you come to do the relic treatment.

That's a great run down there with some cool ideas 👍

I was also looking at the Manchester tech guy's nitro paints, tho I assume pretty much any of the available nitro rattle cans, NW gtrs, ebay, etc etc, are more or less the same stuff?

 

[Phil_T]

26 minutes ago, Waddo Soqable said:

That's a great run down there with some cool ideas 👍

I was also looking at the Manchester tech guy's nitro paints, tho I assume pretty much any of the available nitro rattle cans, NW gtrs, ebay, etc etc, are more or less the same stuff?

 

Yes, certainly NW Guitars is basically the same stuff. I went with the Manchester guy because he was the only one who had the surf green and the light tint lacquer. I think NWG only do an amber tint which would have been too strong for my purposes. If you're thinking of giving it go, my advice based on very limited experience would be to get two cans of both colour and clear for a bass body and puts on lots of clear coats - it is very easy to sand through the clear even if you're careful, particularly on edges. You can just about get way with one can of colour if you're only doing a body but if you c@ck something up and need to respray an area you'll soon run out.

[Reggaebass]

Excellent work Phil, cool looking jazz, and I’m really liking the neck with the ebony fretboard 

[Waddo Soqable]

21 minutes ago, Phil_T said:

Yes, certainly NW Guitars is basically the same stuff. I went with the Manchester guy because he was the only one who had the surf green and the light tint lacquer. I think NWG only do an amber tint which would have been too strong for my purposes. If you're thinking of giving it go, my advice based on very limited experience would be to get two cans of both colour and clear for a bass body and puts on lots of clear coats - it is very easy to sand through the clear even if you're careful, particularly on edges. You can just about get way with one can of colour if you're only doing a body but if you c@ck something up and need to respray an area you'll soon run out.

Cheers for that 👍

I've had a can of red from NW a few years ago to do just the back of a Rick type neck that someone had attacked with sandpaper !

So a couple of cans of each is good advice, bloody annoying to run out just before the end of a paint session no doubt !

[SlapbassSteve]

Beautiful job! I've been considering putting a bitsa together for a couple of years and this has been the nudge I needed to start properly speccing one up!

 

Finish work is brutally hard to get anywhere close to right, so relic or not you've done a cracking job.

 

Nice choice with the Toneriders too, we sell a lot of them in work and I've a set in one of my Jazzes- amazing they can put together a set of pickups that good for the prices they charge. Hoping they one day branch out and offer 60's and 70's voiced sets though... they have guitar pickups based on all major eras so would be nice if there was as much choice for the bass ones... 👀