Restoring a Lake Placid Blue '63 Bass VI

[Jonesie]

This is truly incredible. Keeping my eye on this.

[MattK]

It's just the repair slab that I showed earlier being epoxied to the body.

The little blocks of wood you see in the photo above are just so my clamps don't dig into the surface of the body.

The repair slab of alder is thicknessed to exactly the same as the body, so it will require minimal sanding to blend it all together. The body wasn't sanded down at all, front or back.

Very glad it wasn’t sanded. I was confused by the alignment clamps running front-to-back in the image. That’s a lot of clamping to get done in a few short minutes!

[GilmourD]

[Highnumbers]

It's just the repair slab that I showed earlier being epoxied to the body.

The little blocks of wood you see in the photo above are just so my clamps don't dig into the surface of the body.

The repair slab of alder is thicknessed to exactly the same as the body, so it will require minimal sanding to blend it all together. The body wasn't sanded down at all, front or back.

Very glad it wasn’t sanded. I was confused by the alignment clamps running front-to-back in the image. That’s a lot of clamping to get done in a few short minutes!

Ah, yep it was pretty frantic. The body is 1-2 hundreths of an inch thicker than the body to allow for sanding it down flush without removing much from the body.

There are always micro amounts of 'curling' in a guitar body though, even a Fender is rare perfectly dead flat since you have multiple pieces of lumber seamed together from the factory. That makes adding a repair section difficult because you have to try and level everything out, and sometimes it's high on one side and low on another.

I wanted to save the Lake Placid Blue that's between the pickups and under the control plates, but it might need to be sacrificed in order to have a perfectly flat body with the thickness sander. We'll see what it looks like after the clamps come off.

[Highnumbers]

Hmm, the image isn't showing for some reason.

[MattK]

I wanted to save the Lake Placid Blue that's between the pickups and under the control plates, but it might need to be sacrificed in order to have a perfectly flat body with the thickness sander. We'll see what it looks like after the clamps come off.

Could you fence it off and/or use a safe-t-planer type approach to flush the patch with the periphery of the body?

[Highnumbers]

I wanted to save the Lake Placid Blue that's between the pickups and under the control plates, but it might need to be sacrificed in order to have a perfectly flat body with the thickness sander. We'll see what it looks like after the clamps come off.

Could you fence it off and/or use a safe-t-planer type approach to flush the patch with the periphery of the body?

I don't believe those planers are able to take off hundredths of inches accurately, there would still be sanding necessary. Not to mention that "Safe-T-Planer" is a really a misnomer, those things look incredibly dangerous!

Sanding the repair slab perfectly flush to the body won't substantially remove any material from the body. A couple thou, at most. You'll find more variation than that measuring multiple factory original guitars!

[MattK]

Yeah I thought it might be a little … agricultural for your standards. I know if the finish patch can be saved, it will be saved.

[graceless]

Holy crap. Incredible.

[GilmourD]

Hmm, the image isn't showing for some reason.

Weird because it was a Tenor GIF... But I fixed it. LOL

[clintburgess]

This post needs to be turned into a mini-documentary. I would watch this all day long. Thank you for sharing Highnumbers!

[clintburgess]

Pretty weird shape to clamp, getting a tight seal around the repair edge, and also flush top/bottom. It took a lot of clamps and frantic work before the epoxy starts setting (and then I'd be in deep shit). This whole stage is rather unsightly.

This clamping is completely sightly...shows a lot of thought went into what you're trying to acheive here. Will be back often to check on the progress of this particular restoration.

[DrippyReverbTremolo]

I've got chills, they're multiplying.

[PlayWithPride]

I cannot believe he's going to make this:

Look, play and sound like this:


What an amazing project. You are doing god's work!

[Highnumbers]

Thank you!

I couldn’t find many other examples of a 60s Bass VI in LPB, just this ‘65 that sold at Retrofret and Garrett Park Guitars years ago.

When it’s done, mine should look something like this (but with a mint guard)