From Junky to Funky – Part 2 – My DIY Low-Budget Bass Makeover

In Part I, I explained how I went about defretting the neck on my bargain-basement bass, and converting it to a lined fretless fingerboard with some wood filler, superglue and a bit of elbow grease.

The fretboard

While the neck came out to my liking, I wasn’t exactly tickled by the cold, deep pink of the body. I’m a fan of the classic auto-body paint colors that Fender used in the early days, like Sonic Blue and Surf Green, so I was happy to find at a local hobby store an aerosol paint that looked reasonably close to one of the rarest of the retro Fender colors, Shell Pink. This fleshy-pink color is what I had in mind when I thought of a “pink bass.”

One advantage to working with opaque color on a previously finished body is the relative ease of preparation. The wood is already filled, sanded and sealed, and the finish doesn’t need to be stripped if it’s in good condition. The old finish can serve as a base layer for the new paint, but it should be primed to ensure good adherence of the old and new.

With this in mind, I sanded the old finish with a medium grit (#220) dry sandpaper to take off the gloss and give it some “teeth.” I then masked off the cavities with painter’s tape to ensure that the neck and pickups would fit back in their respective spaces during reassembly.

Sanded and masked

The next step was to hang and spray the body with a white-pigmented shellac primer. Shellac is useful because it will adhere well to both the old finish and the new paint, avoiding any bonding problems that might develop. I used BINS brand, which seems to work well for this type of application and is readily available at my local hardware store at a reasonable price. I also made a backyard spray tent out of a very large cardboard box to help prevent dust from settling into the paint while spraying.

Now’s a good time to add a safety warning: with any product you use, be sure to read and follow the manufacturer’s instructions. When using spray paints and finishes, it’s important to have adequate ventilation (work outside if possible) and to use a respirator rated for spray paint.

The shellac primer may feel rough when dry. I sanded it smooth with 320-grit dry paper, wiped it clean with naptha, then resprayed, resanded, recleaned. At this point I had a smooth, even, opaque white surface. Time to add some color!

Primed with BINS and ready for action

Some refinishers will tell you to use very light passes when spraying paint, while others say heavy coats are better. In a previous project, I found through trial-and-error that too light of a coat could lead to overspray (paint drying before it reaches the surface) or “orange peel” (paint drying before it flows completely flat), requiring me to sand the surface smooth and start over. On the flip side, too heavy of a coat could lead to runs in the paint, also requiring time-consuming repairs. The trick is to get the flow just right, so that the paint flows smoothly but doesn’t run. I recommend practicing on a piece of spare wood until you are comfortable and confident with your painting technique.

I also recommend checking out the good information at the Guitar ReRanch site, particularly the ReRanch 101 article which goes through the painting process in great detail. I found it very helpful. You can order lacquer-based paints from them as well, though I found the hobby-store spray paint worked just fine for me and cost less.

After each coat dried, I checked for dust and sanded out any rough spots with #600 wet paper. Even with such a fine grade of sandpaper, it’s important to be careful not to sand through the color coats. I applied four coats of paint overall, allowing each to dry for about three hours. Drying times may vary with the amount of paint you use in a coat and with air humidity.

For the clear coats, I decided to use nitrocellulose lacquer. I find “nitro” relatively easy to work with, primarily because of the way it seems to flow smoothly into the underlying layers, and any blemishes can be quickly sanded out. Nitro was reportedly popular with automotive repair shops for these same reasons, back in the days when it was used on auto bodies.

Following the ReRanch “rule of threes,” I sprayed three coats of lacquer per day, letting each dry a minimum of three hours between coats, over a period of three days – nine coats in total. As with the color coats, I checked each clear coat for dust and sanded out any problems with #600 wet. I then let the lacquered body cure for two weeks before getting started on the final polishing. (With nitro, the longer it cures, the better.)

For the polishing, it is common to use progressively finer grades of wet sandpaper. An alternative solution is “micromesh,” a range of very fine abrasive papers and pads. I had read about micromesh on a guitar builder’s website, and was told that it lasted longer and finished better than regular sandpaper; it could also be used wet or dry. I decided to give it a try, and bought a package at a local woodworking shop with sheets ranging from #1,500 to #12,000-grit. I soaked it overnight in water with some Murphy’s oil soap and was ready to finish the job. (Note: When working with wet finishing papers, it is important to keep water out of the screw holes and other cavities – the water can make the wood swell up and possibly damage the finish.)

At first I was worried, because the 1,500-grit micromesh seemed more abrasive than 400-grit wet paper, leaving fine but noticeable scratches in the finish. But as I progressed through the finer grades, the scratches became smaller and soon disappeared. By the time I hit the 12,000-grit micromesh, the finish had a nice warm glow to it. Overall this product seemed to take much less effort than regular sandpaper, and the sheets definitely last longer – they can actually be cleaned and reused. The end result was factory smooth.

Sanded to #12000 micromesh

As a last step, I buffed out the finish with a fine automotive polishing compound and then some liquid car wax. This brought out a mirror-like shine.

Mirror image in the finish!

Then I put it all back together, with some additional features like a vintage finger rest and a homemade headstock decal. As I mentioned in the first article, excluding the cost of new tapewound strings, the overall project came very close to my $200 limit, and I’m really pleased with the results.

Pretty in Pink!

Head with strings

Also check out… From Junky to Funky – Part 1