1959 Jazzmaster Project

[bencrit]

Just got that 1959 gold guard Jazzmaster project guitar in the mail today.

The amazing thing is that it actually looks pretty nice as it is, and is fully functional, playable, and sounds nice.



The body has obviously been stripped and oversprayed with some kind of clear coat. The neck is also over sprayed, but with a nice dark patina.





Upon taking it apart I had two surprises. One good, and one bad. The good one is that the original finish is still in the neck pocket. The bad is that there looks to be some damage to the wood around the screw holes. Thankfully, the neck holds together as is and this should patch up nicely. Thankfully it will not be visible :-)




The thing I'm most excited about is that the electronics are all original and they are all there!



There is also a body date of 4-59 underneath the bridge pick up cavity. But I'm not sure if that is left over from the original finish, or if it was rewritten after the body was stripped.

The cracks in the body are going to take a little finessing, but they all look like they will squeeze back together and hold well with good quality wood glue.

The neck will be off to my Luthier here soon, and I will get to work on the body!

The best summer project and offset fan could ask for!

[marqueemoon]

Very cool. I bet that will clean up nicely.

[otis]

very nice, a '59 with the original guard and wiring in this rather rough condition; must be a surprise indeed!
Have you decided on the color( was that originally 2-tone sunburst?)?
what a splendid restauration project!

[bencrit]

very nice, a '59 with the original guard and wiring in this rather rough condition; must be a surprise indeed!
Have you decided on the color( was that originally 2-tone sunburst?)?
what a splendid restauration project!

I think I want to custom color on this one: fiesta red. Terry Foster posted a picture of one on his instagram feed and I don't think I can resist

[will]

I'm really curious to see how the neck winds up getting patched (I was hoping that the missing chip would turn up in the case!)

[mcatano]

Depending on the depth of the missing piece and provided you know someone with a vertical mill, you could run a ball end mill down the length of the heel along the crack to make a u-shaped channel, then glue a dowel in lengthwise. Cut/chisel/sand/shape/etc smooth. Actually, given that square dowel exists you could probably just do it with a regular end mill and save yourself a bunch of hassle.

I'm sure there's a more woodworking-friendly way to do this, as this is probably one of those "guy with a vertical mill sees a vertical mill solution" situations.

[hornz]

Neat project, bargain of the century really. Seeing as the finish is long gone, yeah, why not hit it with Fiesta.

[l9gaj]

very nice, a '59 with the original guard and wiring in this rather rough condition; must be a surprise indeed!
Have you decided on the color( was that originally 2-tone sunburst?)?
what a splendid restauration project!

I think I want to custom color on this one: fiesta red. Terry Foster posted a picture of one on his instagram feed and I don't think I can resist

This looks great - I'm tempted to go gold on my fiesta red JM now.

[fortytwo]

I don't normally dig Fiesta Red that much, but there's something about that combo that just looks right to me.

[bencrit]

So here is another update:

I've repaired the cracks, stripped the varnish, used filler to prep the body, put on several coats of sanding sealer.

Now we are ready to paint. The prep process is the most important. If the body is not prepared properly, you will see all kinds of bad things in the final finish. On an old guitar like this with lots of problems, it's really hard to make it look brand-new, so you're always going to have a few imperfections. That doesn't bother me too much, as long as I get 95% of them out of the way.

Please see above for shots of what I started with. It's pretty incredible that he gets at this point given what it started with.

Here's a shot of the front and back with the first layer of Olympic white. I plan to finish this off with fiesta red, but want in Olympic white undercoat





Here are some close-up shots of where the substantial cracks used to be. As you can see, right now they do not show any evidence of having been there. However, as the finish settles in we will have the real test of this:

[l9gaj]

That looks quite a heavy undercoat. Are you planning on sanding it back to keep the completed finish thin or are you keener to hide the cracks?

[l9gaj]

oh, BTW - I took inspiration from the fiesta red photo you posted - couldn't resist. Mine now looks like this -

[bencrit]

oh, BTW - I took inspiration from the fiesta red photo you posted - couldn't resist. Mine now looks like this -

Looks beautiful! I hope mine turns out half as nice.

The Olympic white really only has about three coats of lacquer to it. The fiesta Redbull probably have about six coats total. Then I'll do about four coats of clear on top of that.


Looks beautiful! I hope mine turns out half as nice.

The Olympic white really only has about 2 coats of lacquer to it. The fiesta red will probably have about six coats total. Then I'll do about four coats of clear on top of that.

So I'll have a total of about 12 coats. That's really not very much for lacquer as it is incredibly thin. There's a pretty good shot that when it's all done it will actually be thinner than that because some sanding will be required.

How many coats do you usually do?

[ChrisFFTA]

Red with gold guard reminds me of the newest squiers...

[tonehungry]

this guitar is beautiful