Best Aged White Guards?

Discussion of vintage Jazzmasters, Jaguars, Bass VIs, Electric XIIs and any other offset-waist instruments.
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andy_tchp
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Re: Best Aged White Guards?

Post by andy_tchp » Mon Mar 01, 2021 3:32 pm

bterry wrote:
Tue Dec 01, 2020 7:53 pm
Let me know how it turns out :)
3 months on and.... I'd continued to forget about this.

It may have just ticked over to Autumn here, but the sun is blasting and it feels like it's about 34 degrees C outside (95f). Have put it (AVRI 'mint' guard) in the sun, will try and keep the motivation to take in progress shots day by day.

Hopefully it doesn't melt in the process. :D
"I don't know why we asked him to join the band 'cause the rest of us don't like country music all that much; we just like Graham Lee."
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Re: Best Aged White Guards?

Post by andy_tchp » Tue Mar 02, 2021 6:25 pm

Kurpak wrote:
Tue Dec 01, 2020 2:00 pm
The most authentic shade of pre cbs mint celluloid I've found was the result of leaving a Fender 62' mint reissue (or the spitfire mint green guards) out in the summer sun for a full day or so.
Thanks for posting this.

Here's the 'before shot'. The guard is the factory Fender offering off an AVRI that's ~20 years old. It looks like hot rolled garbage on the guitar which is finished in OTM.

Image

And this is after ~8 hours of full sun on a consistently low-to-mid-30s day.

Image

I'd put it out again today but it's very gloomy and raining intermittently. Expecting some sunny days over the weekend so will see how much more it changes.

I fixed the white balance as best as I could, there are still some differences even though the photos were taken in exactly the same spot at exactly the same time of day in front of the same window. It was super bright and sunny yesterday, less so this morning.

Let's try side by side.
ImageImage

It didn't melt so far as turning into a warped mess of plastic, but eagle-eyed readers will notice the (2) cracks have distorted and shifted. Significantly enough that what would've been an easy/near-invisible repair probably won't be possible.

Real 'authentic' ::) 'M@J@' I guess?
"I don't know why we asked him to join the band 'cause the rest of us don't like country music all that much; we just like Graham Lee."
David McComb, 1987.

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Re: Best Aged White Guards?

Post by Highnumbers » Tue Mar 02, 2021 9:20 pm

Wow that made a massive difference! I will have to test this out when summer comes.

This was with a normal plastic (PVC) modern a fender guard? Not celluloid nitrate?

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Re: Best Aged White Guards?

Post by andy_tchp » Tue Mar 02, 2021 9:33 pm

Yes I was surprised at the difference. Be interested to see if it continues to brighten up or if there's a limit inherent to the material.

It's whatever Fender used for their AVRI guards, it won't be celluloid. I'll post up a pic of the back of the guard which has experienced zero fading ever - It's SO green :-X .
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Re: Best Aged White Guards?

Post by PorkyPrimeCut » Wed Mar 03, 2021 8:58 am

I bought a "parchment" Telecaster pickguard from Axesrus a few years ago. It was custom cut for a different neck pickup & I actually changed my mind on the whole thing not long after & stashed it with my other parts.
What I'd not noticed was that a third of it was sticking out of the box all my parts were in, and that the daily sun passed over it for a few hours. It was there for several weeks before I took it out one day to discover a glaringly visible tan line. The covered part was still a very pleasant off-white but the exposed part had actually darkened, almost to a butterscotch colour! I'm glad it didn't happen over time while it was on my guitar as the resulting colour was pretty ugly.
I've always wondered if they actually treated their pickguard material with some kind of clearcoat to get that particular hue, although they're more likely buying blanks from elsewhere. Dunno.
Last edited by PorkyPrimeCut on Wed Mar 03, 2021 1:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Best Aged White Guards?

Post by Highnumbers » Wed Mar 03, 2021 10:29 am

andy_tchp wrote:
Tue Mar 02, 2021 9:33 pm
Yes I was surprised at the difference. Be interested to see if it continues to brighten up or if there's a limit inherent to the material.

It's whatever Fender used for their AVRI guards, it won't be celluloid. I'll post up a pic of the back of the guard which has experienced zero fading ever - It's SO green :-X .
Interesting, yeah I'll try that.

I have an old Custom Shop '64 relic guard that I assume is the same guard material used on AVRI models. It's puke green alright, and way off from what a vintage mint should look like. I replaced the guard with a Spitfire mint, but I'll give the sun fading a go once the weather warms up here in the northern hemisphere.

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Re: Best Aged White Guards?

Post by gishuk » Wed Mar 03, 2021 12:14 pm

I really didn't expect the UV from a day in the sun to make that much difference!
Looks way better after that.

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Re: Best Aged White Guards?

Post by andy_tchp » Sat Mar 06, 2021 8:24 pm

Threw it out there for a few more days, I think this is as good as it'll get. I don't think there's much if any discernable difference from post day 1 of the experiment.

Image

This is the colour of the rear side of the guard:

Image

It occurred to me that the tension on the cracked areas could be due to the different heating of the top layer (3-layer Mint/Black/Mint guard) while the middle and bottom layers stayed at a lower temperature. I've put the guard back out to fade the back layer. Hopefully this doesn't exacerbate the cracking even more. But at the end of the day this guard has sat in storage, slightly broken for >5 years anyway... But as it sits now, it may end up back on the guitar, or the lightweight replacement body I'm contemplating (might look OK on a daphne blue Jaguar as it's fairly well 'parchment' now.)

Next up, deciding whether I can be fucked to do a similar experiment with the pickup covers. Probably not :D
"I don't know why we asked him to join the band 'cause the rest of us don't like country music all that much; we just like Graham Lee."
David McComb, 1987.

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Re: Best Aged White Guards?

Post by Marc » Tue Mar 09, 2021 6:57 am

A bit late to the party here but this company in Germany stocks real celluloid nitrate green guards that come from Japan.
Website navigation is a bit iffy so here is a link to the JM page... I'm sure they had more kinds last time I looked:

http://crazyparts.de/pickguards/fender- ... /index.php

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Re: Best Aged White Guards?

Post by zhivago » Tue Mar 09, 2021 2:03 pm

Resident Spartan.

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Re: Best Aged White Guards?

Post by adamrobertt » Wed Mar 10, 2021 2:35 pm

$300??

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Re: Best Aged White Guards?

Post by marqueemoon » Wed Mar 10, 2021 3:30 pm

andy_tchp wrote:
Sat Mar 06, 2021 8:24 pm
Threw it out there for a few more days, I think this is as good as it'll get. I don't think there's much if any discernable difference from post day 1 of the experiment.

Image

This is the colour of the rear side of the guard:

Image

It occurred to me that the tension on the cracked areas could be due to the different heating of the top layer (3-layer Mint/Black/Mint guard) while the middle and bottom layers stayed at a lower temperature. I've put the guard back out to fade the back layer. Hopefully this doesn't exacerbate the cracking even more. But at the end of the day this guard has sat in storage, slightly broken for >5 years anyway... But as it sits now, it may end up back on the guitar, or the lightweight replacement body I'm contemplating (might look OK on a daphne blue Jaguar as it's fairly well 'parchment' now.)

Next up, deciding whether I can be fucked to do a similar experiment with the pickup covers. Probably not :D
Hilarious that aging an “aged” guard makes it look more authentically old.

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Re: Best Aged White Guards?

Post by andy_tchp » Sat Feb 26, 2022 10:11 pm

Back on the guitar in question finally, only took a year or so.

OTM remains a difficult colour to photograph accurately, these are OK but might try and take some better pics in sunlight (we're experiencing one of the biggest rain events ever seen and once again my city is flooding, so I don't expect this to be soon)

Image
Image

Some warping in addition to the cracks (one crack was due to dropping the guard many years ago, a second appeared after the sun-bleaching, a third appeared today around the thimble hole like so:
Image
"I don't know why we asked him to join the band 'cause the rest of us don't like country music all that much; we just like Graham Lee."
David McComb, 1987.

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Re: Best Aged White Guards?

Post by tequila_in_teacups » Sat Feb 26, 2022 10:14 pm

andy_tchp wrote:
Sat Feb 26, 2022 10:11 pm

OTM remains a difficult colour to photograph accurately
It at least looks green on my screen, so you've done well. Whenever I photograph my JM, it always looks more blue.

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Re: Best Aged White Guards?

Post by JSett » Sun Feb 27, 2022 1:00 am

tequila_in_teacups wrote:
Sat Feb 26, 2022 10:14 pm
andy_tchp wrote:
Sat Feb 26, 2022 10:11 pm

OTM remains a difficult colour to photograph accurately
It at least looks green on my screen, so you've done well. Whenever I photograph my JM, it always looks more blue.
Turquoise/teal/blue-greens in general often prove to be a pain to photograph thanks to the dominant nature of the colour waveforms. This coupled with modern digital cameras' (and more importantly, phone cameras') built in autocorrection software means that they naturally default to blue. Try shooting in RAW format and see if you have better results.
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