How to totally screw up your guitar

[paradisel0st]

Unless you use some horribly strong insane posionous stripper and even then you wont have much luck getting the finish off that way. I've refinished several guitars and the best way is a palm sander and some heavy grit paper. With proper technique and the palm sander you'll be able to get all the finish off without destroying the wood underneath. If you try to hand sand all that off you'd be there for a month working at it every day. It still took me the better part of a week with a palm sander and fresh sheet of sandpaper after another to strip my ibanez finish. The only remotely safe stripper is one called "Citristrip" and I left it on the Ibanez finish for the better part of a day and it literally barely did anything. Removed a slight amount of black and that's all. Just get a cheap palm sander and go to town man. It really isnt that difficult if you take your time and are patient. Here's the first Guitar I ever touched as far as refinishing. See Attached.

[paradisel0st]

The body ended up being a 3 piece mahogany with pretty decent grain so I finished it with Birchwood Casey Tru-Oil (aka gunstock oil). Don't have any pictures of it strung up here at work. Currently working on sanding the finish off the headstock, repairing a small crack, covering it with mahogany veneer, cutting it to size an finishing it with the tru oil so the headstock will match the body. Then I'll apply a new Ibanez logo.

[paradisel0st]

Is the neck a maple neck with rosewood fretboard, or maple with a maple fretboard? I've used the Citristripper to remove a finish from a maple board before and had no issues with it damaging the frets or the wood in anyway, but keep in mind this is a much "calmer" stripper as far as they go. I was going to use tru-oil on the neck of my Warmoth scalloped Strat neck but didn't like how it was turning out so I used the citristrip to get it off and then I just shot it with minwax oil based polyurethane. Only thing left stock on that strat is the body 

[|iR|Focalor]

By palm sander, are you talking about the power tool type or a simple sanding block? I'm thinking you probably used a sanding block. The electric sander I have is way way too heavy duty to use, it would destroy the wood. At the time, I couldn't find my sanding block, the basement was kinda in disarray. I just used a heavy grain sandpaper and my bare hands to rip through the several layers of clear and then tried to use a fine grain once I got down to the primer and base coat. As you can tell from the pictures, it really fucked it up. You can clearly see the lighter spots where the wood has been worn, looks kinda like water spots. I've since found my sanding block. Perhaps I'll give it a shot.

I'm not too sure what kinda wood it is other than the fretboard. The fretboard is definitely rosewood. I emailed someone at B.C. Rich and asked them check their serial number logs to tell me exactly what year it was made and all the factory specs. Since the serial number starts with 84 and from the logo design on the headstock, I was always pretty sure that it was made in 1984. But no surprise, he couldn't tell me anything other than "Yeah, since the s/n starts with 84, it's probably from 1984"... DUH! Unfortunately, since B.C. Rich has undergone so much corporate bullshit since Bernie Rico sold the company, they apparently have TOSSED OUT their old records of serial numbers and catalogs. So if anyone reading this has an old early 80's B.C. Rich catalog laying around somewhere, you might want to put it in a safe place, could end up being worth some money one day. Anyway... I'm thinking that both the neck and the body are alder since it feels a little too heavy to be maple.

[paradisel0st]

By palm sander I mean I used a electric Dewalt sander. Other than that I used the 3m "sandblaster" sanding "sponges" for things like the countor horns. I'm not sure what wood that is, but I used 60 grit on the sander until I started getting a good amount of wood visible then went to 100, 220, etc. I didn't have any problems "destroying" the wood. Putting scratches in some areas? Yes, but I just sanded them back out climbing up the grit scale.


Edit this is exactly what I used.

[paradisel0st]

As far as I'm aware Maple would be the much heavier wood over Alder. That's why solid maple guitars (if you can find them, usually custom made) are extremely heavy since maple is a very dense grain, which is why it's the most common neck wood.

[|iR|Focalor]

I got it backwards then, I thought maple was lighter than alder. It's not a custom or anything fancy. It has your basic nonlocking one-way tremelo with a one piece threaded trem arm like a lot of Fenders, cheap knobs, and what I assume are lower quality stock B.C. Rich-made humbuckers. (no logo on them or identifying markings anywhere, even on the backs) The tuners are pretty decent though, classic all nickel with the old "R" logo impressed on the back of the machines, I believe they were manufactured for B.C. Rich by Schaller. I'm not sure if the strap pegs are stock, they're the Schaller locking type. I was under the impression that those were strictly after-market. Anyway, from what I've seen of past catalogs, B.C. Rich has never mass produced any Mockingbirds with maple bodies. Usually the old US top of the line models were very similar to Les Pauls with a stop bar tailpiece, mahogany body and maple top, ...or... alder with cheap hardware, crappy tremelo systems and less than great electronics.

[paradisel0st]

Focalor 

[|iR|Focalor]

I took a look at it today. There's no way I can visually tell what kind of wood the neck is. It's completely finished, even all parts of the heel... even the insides of the holes where the tuners fit through the headstock. That was one of my concerns about removing the finish from the neck. I'm not sure if removing that small layer of finish on the heel of the neck would completely throw the tuning off by slightly lowering the action of the neck.

[[BTF]Sigma]

Didn't read the whole thing again so I'll just ask my question.

Is there any markings on it that you can trace back to the manufacturer and ask what kind of wood they used?

[|iR|Focalor]

Nah, the guy at B.C. Rich that responded to my email had me send him photos of it so he could look through old catalogs and find any specs. He said that from the serial number, it was probably made in 1984 and that they no longer had the serial number logs from those years. B.C. Rich technically went out of business for a while, but the owner (Bernie Rico) sold the company and the name, which is why these days they mainly produce cheaper crappy guitars other than the small number of US made ones and some of the signature series.

[[BTF]Sigma]

I googled a wide range of tags and I think they used Maple for the necks. Several guitars that are listed in results from 1984 describe their necks were made of maple.


Hope it helps.

[paradisel0st]

Yeah Focular I'd bet just about anything the neck is maple, honestly I wouldn't worry about the paint on the heel at all. 99% chance IMO you're only going to be improving things. Some people disagree but again IMO things like paint, especially at the heel of a bolt on neck can dampen vibrations between the neck and the body. The last issue you're going to experience is throwing off tuning stability and unless it's some insanely thick layer you probably wont even notice the action difference, just a little bit of increased sustain or resonance playing unplugged.

One thing I will say from my personal experience, going from that Ibanez having that insanely thick primer and black finish + poly on it, to the natural tru oil the Guitar sounds like an acoustic when you play it unplugged and it can really scream plugged it. It was a night in day difference between the two. So I definitely don't think those kind of things (finishes thicknesses etc are bs) but I do agree sometimes people go overboard with it. I think a nicely applied paint finish that's not super thick would give equal results. Best of luck with finishing that thing! You should really try out the DIY section on the harmony-central forums. I post there from time to time and there are some _incredibly_ knowledgable guys in there.

Check it out http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forumdisplay.php?f=94

[|iR|Focalor]

This happened quite a while ago. I'm guessing around 79--> 80. I just forgot about it (in the trunk) and it turned really cold that night. So this many years later, I would have noticed an out of tune condition along the way. It desperately needs a re-fret though (original frets). If I was still living in Ontario that would be no problem because they are many expert technicians there. But Nova Scotia has barely 900 thousand people in the whole province and is less sophisticated. Here's a pic - you've seen thousands of these.

Necroposting here, but... screw it. Recently been doing a lot of research and shit about Les Pauls.

Yeah, if you leave one in the trunk of a car in the freezing temps, they say cracking of the finish can and often will occur, especially if the guitar goes from extreme cold to warm indoors quickly. They actually don't finish the clear top coats with clear polyurethane like a lot of other companies do on most of the overseas mass produced guitars. Gibson has always used a hand sprayed nitro cellulose lacquer which allows the wood to breathe and vibrate better than polyurethane and age more naturally. In the amount of time it takes them to apply, dry, reapply, dry, etc etc all the layers of nitro cellulose lacquer COMPLETELY BY HAND, the other Japanese and Korean factories can paint 100's or 1000's of their guitars with a robot that sprays the things down with polyurethane. It's one of the big reasons why US-made guitars like Gibsons and US Fenders cost so much more than overseas made guitars. There's WAY more by-hand human labor put into the higher priced US models. The woods they use in US models all tend to be much higher grades of wood, which are going to be rarer and thus more valuable cuts of wood, and that drives the price up too. When they do bindings around the body and neck and headstock on US made guitars, they typically work that binding onto the guitar by hand, and again, CHA-CHING. I used to be of the opinion that Gibsons cost so insanely much mostly due to the prestige of the name brand and the big name musicians who played them over the years (Jimmy Page, Billy Gibbons, Zakk Wylde, Slash, etc etc etc etc etc), but... 'TIS NOT SO. Yeah, a little bit of the price is the name on the headstock. But most of the price is simply the quality of the work and the materials that goes into making the guitar. They don't cut corners ANYWHERE with these guitars like they do with the overseas guitars.

Anyway, back to the nitro cellulose finish. Gibson will tell you, DO NOT subject your nitro cellulose lacquered Les Paul to extreme temps because that type of clear coat will be at risk of cracking and looking like shattered safety glass in a car window. They recommend that if you DO happen to leave the guitar exposed to excessively cold temps, DO NOT open the case immediately when you bring it inside, but instead leave it closed and allow the air inside the case to gradually warm up to inside temps.

That 72 Les Paul is a fucking beauty though. Sometimes if nitro cellulose gets scratched, a qualified and experienced person could simply buff it back smooth. But for temperature cracks like that, they tend to go all the way through the clear coats. From the pic, it looks like a rather large and conspicuous area too. Usually if they are GONNA crack, they tend to do it right there on the upsweep of the carve on the arched top. It's really not a big deal though. It doesn't hurt the value of the instrument all that much. Some people actually PREFER to see cracks like that because it tends to indicate the guitar has more age on it. Back in 09 or whenever this thread was originally started, I thought those were soapbar single coil pickups. Pretty sure all Les Pauls had those types of pickups on the pre-1958 models and several models made after 60 or 61 when they started really offering more diversity with different versions of the Les Pauls. But turns out those are most likely the little mini-humbuckers they made from the late 60's through the 70's, which would make that a 72 Les Paul Deluxe.

HELL NO, I would NOT have that thing refinished if I were you. Not EVER. Slapping new finish on that thing will KILL the sweet aged tone of that 40+ year old piece of art. Not to mention... it'd be expensive as fuck. It might simply "look" prettier afterwards. That is seriously the one and only plus to refinishing that guitar. It'd be like having a modern artist draw bigger titties and fancier hairdo on the Mona Lisa. Blasphemy, I say.

[|iR|Focalor]

Oh yeah. Another thing Gibson tells you:

DO NOT keep your nitro cellulose lacquered Les Paul sitting on a stand that uses plasticized rubber sleeves on it to pad the support arms so they won't scratch up the finish on the guitar. Apparently plasticized rubber can chemically react with the nitro cellulose lacquer over time and eat through it leaving ugly yellow spots on the clear coat and even eat through it and into the body and neck wood if it gets bad enough.

Looks like you probably have one like the one I use, which has foam pad sleeves over the body support arms, and those are fine.