Squier Bass VI refinish (with pics)

Talk about modding or building your own guitar from scratch.
Post Reply
User avatar
molwam
PAT PEND
PAT PEND
Posts: 34
Joined: Mon Nov 14, 2016 10:58 am
Location: Germany

Squier Bass VI refinish (with pics)

Post by molwam » Thu Jun 22, 2017 1:03 pm

Hello my fellow offsetguitarists!
I've watched so many refinish threads around which I enjoyed so much that I thought that I should try it for myself. I've struggled with my self for a little bit wheather I should really "ruin" a good finish, but now I've finally decided to do so. I have coosen my Squier Bass VI as my first victim, since I bought it relatively cheap second hand. Also it is my second sunburst guitar/bass and I'm not a great fan of that kind of finish, although I think it looks great on certain guitars. It already got a really nice red nitro tort Pickguard from SneakyT, LaBella Strings and a staytrem Bridge. Other than that it's stock. Well it was :D

So this is my first refinish and I expect to mess up at some points, so you probably shouldn't take this as a guide for your next refinish project I think/hope it will not be the worst you have ever seen, but if you have problems watching an imperfect finish or finishing process with some flaws you should better shut your eyes now and leave :D

For me the most important thing about this project is to learn a little bit about wood and how to do a proper finish, so I did some research and bought some tools (Random Orbit Sander, breathing protection mask) and hoped for the best. I couldn't decide wheather I like seafoam green or seafoam green the most, I spend endless hours staring at pictures of colorsamples and was really torn between those two but I finally decided to go with sonic. But if I ever do a finish again and it fits the guitar, it'll be seafoam.

This is it, the day before I started taking off the finish:
Image

While dissassembeling I discovered that each of the pickup cavities has its own grounding connection to the shielding paint. These wires connect the back of the volume pot with the shielduig:
Image
I wonder what that is about. Isn't it enough to connect the shielding paint only at one point since it is conductive? Could this introduce hum since it's a ground loop via the shielding? I have no idea Also notice the pickups are mounted with springs AND foam. Never seen something like this before ...

Then I removed the bridge post thimbles:
Image
I used the solder iron to heat them up and took pliers to gently pull them out. Twisting the thimble has worked wonderfully for me. Since I'm allready modding this thing, I want to mess with the circuit too. The plan is to have a varitone circuit, push pull pots for phase reversal of bridge and neck pickup and parallel/series option for every pickup. I don't know, how many of these things I'll actually use, but I think it's nice to have them To fit all the components in the bass, I had to enlarge the routing of the lower control cavity. And I don't have a router nor a chisel so I had to take a drill and some sandpaper. I'm sorry. But once there is the control plate over it, noone will see it. So the following image is probably not for the fainthearted:
Image
It looks a little bit like someone took a good bite out of it :D

I did a quick mockup with the new control plates I made:
Image

I made them from a sheet of aluminum and polished them afterwards. But they already oxidized and have slightly blue tint compared to the trem plate. Also the lower control plate din't align with the pickguard very well, so I decided to take the orginal lower conrol plate and drill an additional hole in it:
Image
Much better I think. I think I'll stay with the pickup selector plate for now, maybe some day I'll find a good alternative for it.

I started sanding the headstock:
Image
I think this went pretty good. But there also isn't much to mess up :D

Then I took of the old finish with a heatgun and a scraper. Got two burnmarks at the trem cavity/the butt and two major scratches, one at the upper horn and one on the lower backside. I was pretty annoyed by this and hoped to be able to fill them with sanding sealer. So I brushed on a few coats of sanding sealer on the whole body and sanded it down until there were no more shiny spots. I wetsanded and obviously used too much water. The wood around the bridge posts and some pickguard screw holes swole and the surface became uneven, so I had to sand it level:
Image
The body was stained in yellow and I didn't bother completly sanding off the stain since it is going to be a solid colour, in case you wonder why the color is so uneven ;)

Image
Some nice flames in the wood at the lower part of the body. Shame it was hidden under the burst.

After applying the primer:
Image
You can still see the scratch at the upper horn and if you look closely, you can see, where I sanded through the sanding sealer because of the wet wood. I decided to stick with it and sand it lightly again.

And this is what it looks like right now (sorry for the quality, there will be better pictures soon )
Image

Post Reply