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Alternate thread title: Look what I'm doing with cooterfinger's body.

Such a NICE body it is too - for $100, it was a bargain! Shapely and well cut, really nice wood - I like it a lot!

With my SFG '75 Duo Sonic, I wanted to go pretty much pristine, and that's pretty much what I got. Nice and level, did a ton of prep work on the semi-thrashed body, replaced most of the hardware with less "aged" looking vintage parts, etc. With my '71 Mustang, I went for a slightly more matte paint finish, but with some shine left on it - basically trying to make it look like the 39 year old guitar that it is, and not go too "new looking" with the paint.

This time, I decided I wanted to try my hand at doing a full on "relic". So with that in mind, I'm doing a few things differently. I'll go into the details a bit later, but I thought I'd start with some pics... each "layer" has a white primer coat between it... so we have clear shellac, then primer, then sea foam green then primer, then shell pink... with the hopes that as I ding and "wear" it, those other colors will show through too - kind of how it does with the bodies Fender painted over with a a new custom color on top of the previously painted body with a flaw in it...
I deliberately left the wood a bit grainy and didn't seal and level it like I did with my previous two guitars - the grain pattern is so nice (and you don't always see that with poplar wood, or with the alignment of the pieces) that I decided I wanted to simulate "lacquer soak" or shrinkage; where the lacquer shrinks back and draws into the wood and reveals the grain texture a bit through the finish.

My birthday is at the end of the month, and I hope to have it all finished by then. We'll see - the lacquer may need more time than that to fully cure before I can do any checking / crazing on it...

Again, thanks to Richard / cooterfinger for an ace body and great transaction.

That is some lush grain thar!! Look forward to seeing this pan out. So are you doing the whole relic thang and chipping and sanding bit off? Like to see what techniques are used!

Looking good Phil - will keep an eye on this one.
I really like the colour over another colour - have seen a lot over sunburst but not so much this way.
I did see a custom shop relic strat the other day that was Shell Pink over Daphne.



Not sure about that one, but think that the pink will go better with the green.
By the way, great choice on the pink

cool idea with the paint colors! looking forward to watching this one build up

Phil O'Keefe wrote:Again, thanks to Richard / cooterfinger for an ace body and great transaction.

My pleasure Phil. I'm really looking forward to this paint job.

Thom wrote:Looking good Phil - will keep an eye on this one.
I really like the colour over another colour - have seen a lot over sunburst but not so much this way.
I did see a custom shop relic strat the other day that was Shell Pink over Daphne.



Not sure about that one, but think that the pink will go better with the green.
By the way, great choice on the pink

I can only hope that this one turns out nearly that nice. Or thrashed, depending on how you want to look at it.

cooterfinger wrote:

Phil O'Keefe wrote:Again, thanks to Richard / cooterfinger for an ace body and great transaction.

My pleasure Phil. I'm really looking forward to this paint job.

You won't recognize it...

im digging it!
i just recently got some poplar in indianpolis with some nice grain, i have gotten it from them for years, but it has always been kinda greeeeeenish broooown with not real grain, but this last piece is rather nice\ altho the prices have almost tripled in 4 years.....

Got any pics Robert?


I need to get some new pics of this project up, but I'm pretty swamped with work stuff right now. I'll try to do it by this weekend. IMO, it's really coming along pretty nice...

Is the Musicmaster body the exact same as the Mustang/Bronco?

apart from the routing, yes.

clever idea with the paint. interested to see how it turns out as i feel a bit unsure about the idea myself.

*I* think it's turning out very nice indeed, but I'm a bit biased.

I'm pretty much done with the body. I still have to cut out some brass shields for it and finish the pickup wiring (control plate wiring is already done), but the paint and relicing of the paint is finished. The pickguard is already finished, and the hardware is already old / aged... I just need to let the paint firm up a bit more before I go and tighten any of that down.

I'm currently working on the neck. I'm thinking about doing a refret and my buddy Dennis (a Fender CS Master Builder) suggested teaching me how to do it when I asked about how much he'd charge to do it for me. I still need to order a new logo decal for it and there's a few other things here and there that I need to do, but it's looking like everything is on track to have it completed by the end of the month.

OK, it's still not "finished" yet, but the body's nearly "done", so I thought I'd get a few pictures uploaded...

Here it is hanging and drying, with the final "layer" of paint applied - you can kind of see the grain coming through the finish in this shot:
And here's some random shots of the relic work to the body...
I still hope to have the whole thing finished by my birthday at the end of the month.

my my, that's fly.

oh my, that looks good......

I can dig it

That is just really, really fantastic work. I love the grain.

Yeah, for poplar, it has really nicely figured grain, and Cooterfinger did a great job lining the pieces up in terms of getting the grain symmetrical.

I'm working on the neck and trying to decide what I should do in terms of tuners. The neck had white button F tuners on it. They're all pretty rusty, and two have bent shafts, although they all work OK. I also have a set of Pings (Kluson style) metal button tuners I could relic out... the advantage is they'd work MUCH better (I've never been a fan of the original, Fender made F tuners) but they wouldn't be "original" and probably wouldn't look quite as good. I have to think a bit about how that would fit into the "relic story" of the guitar... the Klusons would "cover" and hide most of the F tuner's holes...

What do you guys think? F tuners or "Klusons"?

my vote is for F's.