My Mustang Project (65/66) [now with neck backbow!]

letsgocoyote · Post by **letsgocoyote** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 12:53 am

Ok, so I got this 66 mustang body off ebay. Stripped. It had a hole in it. Patched. Now refinishing it. I'm not super anal so I didnt get reranch or anything, jsut got white primer and the best match of blue i could at home depot. rustoleoum aqua. i like the color. a shade darker than my bullet strats daphne blue, but its a couple shades lighter than the blue i saw in the pickup cavities (although that may be aged/yellowed). clear coat will be deft nitro
got the neck too. payed too much for it, prolly out of impatience, but im moving in 3 weeks so i wanna get the project moving. it needs a tuner hole fixed but the frets are good and it looks nice. need to score some cheap f tuners, but that souldnt be hard

now... i ordered all new hardware/pickgaurd etc. so heres the relic ethics part.

the neck looks old, when i get the tuners they will be vintage as well. i dont plan on expressly relicing the body, i think it will take on it's own natural relic withng a year if i am not careful. and i am not careful.

but the hardware...... so shiny. would it be lame to maybe toss allt he bits ina bag together and swing em around my head a couple times, then try to take some of the shine off with some acid or some crap?

jsut tell me... lame or not lame

Mages · Post by **Mages** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 1:20 am

the thing is, it's less lame to us than it is to you. to you the wear on the guitar will never feel real because you did it, you know how it got that way. to us though, we just see the end product. so if it looks good we'll think it's fine.

Pavlov · Post by **Pavlov** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 7:31 am

Not lame. While I personally think relic'ing should come natural, I also realise that, with normal wear, it'll take decades to get the same wear and tear as, say, Frusciante's guitar. Don't listen to guitar snobs and do what you like best. The only thing that'd be pretty lame is paying for a relic'ing job.

letsgocoyote · Post by **letsgocoyote** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 10:55 am

well apparently im well on my way because i did a pretty amateur refinish (but I don't mind and anyone from 10ft away wont know) and i had it hanging on this coat hook to cure... couple hours later 'bang'. coat hook ripped out of the wall. free relic service. only a small small chip and a scuff though, so it's not bad.

benwalker · Post by **benwalker** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 11:40 am

DGNR8 · Post by **DGNR8** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 2:44 pm

People do what they want. For chrome you can use acid fumes to wear off the finish, and for screws you can stuff them in a can of wet salt for a few weeks to develop a bit of rust. Either way, you forget about it after a while.

Good paint isn't any more anal than relic parts. I like properly formulated colors and proven methods. If you are not bound by that, you have a much greater choice of colors.

BobArsecake · Post by **BobArsecake** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 4:54 pm

letsgocoyote wrote:well apparently im well on my way because i did a pretty amateur refinish (but I don't mind and anyone from 10ft away wont know) and i had it hanging on this coat hook to cure... couple hours later 'bang'. coat hook ripped out of the wall. free relic service. only a small small chip and a scuff though, so it's not bad.

Haha perfect, just be clumsy with it. Wear oven gloves or something to do any work on it so you'll fumble it and drop it. Leave the hardware outside for a while perhaps, and just say you forgot you'd put it there? I don't know.

letsgocoyote · Post by **letsgocoyote** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 7:23 pm

this is the body i got (pic from the auction)

its now rustoleom aqua blue. i will get pics later tonight of the body and the neck.

letsgocoyote · Post by **letsgocoyote** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 7:27 pm

you can see the hole that goes through thr back of the control cavity. i glued a piece of popsicle stick inside the cavity to cover the hole, then filled it in with wood putty from the other side. worked a treat

Pavlov · Post by **Pavlov** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 7:36 pm

Is that basswood?

letsgocoyote · Post by **letsgocoyote** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 8:08 pm

poplar. its a 66 body

Mages · Post by **Mages** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 10:30 pm

our rob(og) says basswood is almost identical to poplar it just has a bit different coloring.

letsgocoyote · Post by **letsgocoyote** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 8:27 pm

I got my order from guitar parts resource, all the hardware and bits. heres a pic

the finish is real amateur. no grain filler or sealer, the body didn't have a flat sanding job..... but i d0ont care. looks great from 10 ft away, and yeah, its a thin finish so the guitar should breathe and wear well.

im still trying to aquire some plastic button f tuners. ive ordered some stuff from mojo music supply and stewmac... nut, string tree, conversion bushions (in case i need them, due to one of hte tuner holes being reamed out large), and supplies to wind my own pickups!!!!

does anyone have measurements for vintage mustang pickups? i am going to TRY to wind my neck pickup underwound, to get more of a syrupy low output lipstick type sound.... somehting liek 4.9k. i will wind the bridge slightly hotter than vintage 6.3k or something. between 6-7k. hopefully. dont want the bridge to sound too thin

Fran · Post by **Fran** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 9:54 pm

letsgocoyote wrote: looks great from 10 ft away,

My JS build is like that, well, 2 ft away anyway. Looks good dude.

paul_ · Post by **paul_** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 10:31 pm

Not lame. It'll look the business.

Mages · Post by **Mages** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 11:13 pm

looks pretty good. so you ended up getting that neck? cool!

letsgocoyote · Post by **letsgocoyote** » Thu Apr 16, 2009 3:26 am

i now have tuners. i never scored on some f tuners, so i jsut bought some modern style tuners instead for cheap cuz i just got hit with a speeding ticket and taxes. they have pearloid keys though so it looks somewhat original but does match the pickghurd better than n an original so i think it looks nice. they work ok.

so i ghetto slot my nut, and it works alright too. string it up. two issues come up. one) the high e is basically coming off the fretboard. not a huge deal. iw as going to try and get jazzmaster saddles, but now i decided i'd just file a new slot in the existing saddle to alter the spacing. so thats not too bad.

the real bad thing is the neck has a backbow. pretty much 5th fret and lower. so it frets out nicely until the 5th fret. it might partially be due to a high fret or two but id say its largely accounted to backbow.

so now how do i fix this? i loosened the truss rod completely, in that i even just took the truss nut off. should i tune the strings real tight and take it into the bathroom with me in the mornings to steam it up to get it to bend back forwards? that sounds like a ghetto idea but im running out of time and definitely money

Ty · Post by Ty » Thu Apr 16, 2009 3:51 am

Are you selling this? or is THIS just a coincidence?

hotrodperlmutter · Post by **hotrodperlmutter** » Thu Apr 16, 2009 4:25 am

silly_rabbit_band wrote:Are you selling this? or is THIS just a coincidence?

coincidence. look at the trem.

Post by **Mike** » Thu Apr 16, 2009 7:31 am

Here ya go:

http://www.athensmusician.net/archive/2 ... ody1.shtml

it looks great bTW