Bass refinish day

[Twincam]

Here are some pictures of my refinished USA Musicman sub. The only critic of these basses is the rather industrial factory finish. And the terrible scratch plate.

I had already taken the painted finish off the rear of the neck and applied a linseed oil and final tru oil satin finish. And I bought a used scratch plate 

Thankfully I have full use of my cousins car body garage, with a proper oven spray booth . I did the initial sanding, which I fully stripped off. And very kindly he did the final spraying. He has a colour mixing thing that has thousands of colours available. I choose a suitable red, I didn't want to go too fancy, flake finishes and candy colours are available but not my thing. 

Just to point out the red is darker than in most of the pictures.

With original industrial body finish. The new plate and oiled neck already made a big improvement.

Mid stripping of the finish. Was very tough on the front. I had to use an 80 grit on the dual action sander. Even then it wasn't easy going. The sides and back were not as bad. The front would of been extremely difficult by hand.

After first coat of primer. It got two coats in all then sanded to level it. 

Just after painting. 

And here it is all built and set up. I think it looks really good. It plays excellently, while the paint was hardening I levelled the frets, recrowned and polished them like a mirror. Middle up close picture, is a true representation of the colour. 

The finish I asked to kept as thin as possible, but still being resistant and getting a good colour. The tone has changed very slightly, and i swear to me the strings move subtly more (I re used the same strings and same exact setup specs). I don't know if it was the refinish as it was very thick originally and now much thinner. Or the fret job, because I often notice with both mine and customers instruments, that sometimes a good fret job can make an instrument not only play and feel better but they seem to sound subtly better. 

Next up is to lacquer the headstock. Like they do on the "full fat" ones. I almost was going to refinish and colour code the headstock and apply a decal, but wanted to keep some originality. Even though it says sub bass, which those not in the know might confuse with the Sterling brand china/Indonesia made ones. 

I'm very happy! 

[JohnDaBass]

Lovely!!

[ebenezer]

Very nice Aidan, lovely colour and cracking job