I cleaned it up and put on the extra decal I had left from my Jaguar build...the placement is a bit weird but it's only temporary. I also flipped the rhythm switch back to where it should be, and since the pickup switches were all out of whack, I rewired them to be somewhat correct...except with the series mod. I also restrung it with 12s, set up the tailpiece to lock properly, and did some tweaking to get the action about where I like it. I went ahead and took the mute off and put it in the case, at some point it may go back on, but for now I didn't want to screw with getting it working properly.
...ignore those bubbles under the decal and the poor placement
I did some scratching while I had it apart and found out that the red that's showing is a thick layer of metallic red, not a candy color, and it's on top of another thick layer of solid, almost dakota-ish red, and it's on top of a very thick layer of gray fill primer, which is on top of the original candy apple red. All of that build up explains why the surface is so wavy when you look across it. I don't know how much of the original finish is intact or how much sanding or filling was done for the refin, so I'm planning for the worst case scenario of stripping it completely and doing a full refin.
I went ahead and ordered some paint from reranch, candy apple red, inca silver, and white primer. I'm going to do the color coats with reranch, and use my uncles spray rig to shoot some deft nitro clear on it. I still have some reranch neck amber, but I may end up using Behlen Starcast Amber or something else to do the neck. The plan at the moment is to do some very minor ageing and checking on the guitar, and let the rest happen naturally, I say this because I get the impression that this guitar was fairly hammered on before it was refinished, and I kinda want it to have that vibe. I also ordered reissue Kluson Double Line tuners (it has generic Allparts tuners on it, the same as my home built Jag) and a new decal for it.
