Advice please - cracked, Flaky Lacquer headstock restoration

[Bassfingers]

Hi,

 

I'm looking for some advice on a headstock I'm trying to restore. 

 

I picked up a cheap old Hohner P Bass with a maple neck. It looks like it has been stored in a damp area and the headstock lacquer is cracked, and flaking off.

 

The fretboard also has a lacquered finish and has a couple of small patches where the finish has lifted off. I could probably live with that. 

 

Any advice on how to remove the lacquer?  In an ideal world I wanted to retain what's left of the decal. This would rule out sanding it down. 

 

I heard that acetone would remove the lacquer - after which I could re-apply a fresh layer or two? 

 

Any help gratefully received... 

 

 

 

 

[fleabag]

This may not suit you, but i would find the same bass with intact logo somewhere on the web, and save it as a .jpg.  Get a decal man to make you

a waterslide Hohner decal copy, then you can do a proper job sanding the laquer off,  re-lacquer a coat or 2, apply decal, then lacquer till the decal edges disappear

 

PS there's a chance that acetone will disolve the ink that your current decal is printed with so dont use acetone

Edited April 20, 2023 by fleabag

[Bassfingers]

Sound advice Mr Fleabag, thanks. 

 

Yes that's probably the sensible route to go down - I quite lie the distressed logo but now you mention it, I'm not sure it would survive the acetone. 

[Matt P]

if you have a half decent printer it's not difficult to make the decals at home, the transfer paper is cheap enough on ebay, I've done a few and it's not too hard to get a good result, and speaking from experience it wouldn't be difficult to get a distressed/worn look either, i managed it without even trying (had to sand it back and start again as i wanted a pristine finish)

 

the difficult part is getting the digital image in my experience.

 

Matt

[BigRedX]

1 hour ago, Matt P said:

the difficult part is getting the digital image in my experience.

 

This should do:

 

 

The typeface used is a pre-digital version of Bookman. I haven't been able to find an exact match with the flourishes from any of the digital foundries but Bookman JF Pro made slightly bolder will get you very close.

[Bassfingers]

Brilliant - That's exactly the logo - thank you 👍

[TheGreek]

Personally I would smooth off the lacquer with varying grades of sandpaper but NOT replace the logo. 

[Bassfingers]

Thanks - In the end that’s more

or less what I did. It’s an old bass and the neck is nicely aged and worn. I just flaked the worst of it off. And smoothed it down a little. It is naturally distressed, I’m just going to leave it as it is. 

[JPJ]

I’d use a sharp razor blade to take the loose flaking lacquer off and then leave it alone to age nicely.