The signature on the headstock was Ian Moore's. He's a blues player from Austin, TX. Luckily the signature came off with no problem. Nothing a little alcohol and Q-Tips wouldn't fix. I even saved the decal!!
Turns out the neck on this thing is dated 5-60, not a 1962. It needs a refret badly aas the original frets are still there.
The body date is any guess as theirs so many layers of paint over the whole body much less the neck pocket. I know it's a least a 1960 body as the control route is curved, not straight like a 1959's is. The body weighs 4 LBS even with all the paint.
Back to the paint I think the original finish is under a layer of the grey/silver that covers most of the guitar, as on parts of the body I can chip off the grey/silver and there's a checked black finish underneath. The guy that I bought it from said that it was a sunburst finish before he painted it. I doubt he took the time to sand it down before he painted it grey/silver.
After wet sanding the middle under the pickguard I'm getting five layers of paint before the wood. It goes grey/silver ---> White---> Black ---> Red ---> Blue ---> wood. Anybody know if Fender used any of these paint colors as a primer for a sunburst? I know that Fender used to shoot custom colors over sunburst finishes; but not under a sunburst finish.
I'm going to have to have patches made for the humbucker routes, I'll have to level the hack job routes before I put the patches in then hide glue them in.
Does anybody know if or how I can patch the tuner holes so that I can use a set of Kluson's, instead of the Fender locking tuners that the neck was re-drilled for? The weight of these Locking tuners is ridiculous.
Here's picks of the body and the neck and some of the colors that I have found during my wet sanding. Enjoy.
