Recent content by T.Rex

I've always used baby powder on my hands. It pretty much voids any difference in neck finish friction in my experience. Having unfinished or semi-porous finishes always seemed kind of unhygienic and disgusting to me. YMMV.

Did it dry rough? If it did, and if it's just the base color coat, you can probably sand it flat and maintain the color with 800 grit or similar before doing your clear coats. Hard to tell from your picture though, sorry!

Thanks for the compliments! It turned out very well and has nearly become my main guitar at this point. As you point out, it really (perhaps unfortunately) almost comes down to as a vintage instrument versus updating and better appearance. I obviously was more interested in the latter. While...

Or a classic old girlfriend! Great work, and white on white gets my vote as well. Thank you for the kind words. The pickguard ended up being one of the more challenging aspects of the project, and not because of the color choice. The fabricator determined that the original pickguard was...

To me it's more like a world saturated with too many Accords, Camry's and Altima's (Strats, Teles and Les Pauls) and it's mighty refreshing to see a rare old BMW E30 M3 (Rickenbacker 480/481) for a change. Thanks for the compliments on the refinish though!

Thanks for the compliment. They are dead sexy guitars that Rickenbacker should re-introduce in my opinion. They may have been a little before their time, or something kept them from catching on at the time, but I think it's high time they stirred their pot a bit.

I've wanted one since I was a teenager in the mid-1970s. A friend bought one, and I wanted one ever since. One of the odd things about this project was with the original electronics being kind of a train-wreck, I didn't know how the final product with new electronics/pickups was even going to...

I actually ran a little poll on Facebook of friends/family on the pickguard color. The white got the edge by a fairly wide majority. The black Rickenbacker 4003 wielding bass player in my band liked the white with black pickguard!

Thanks! I will probably finish the black pickguard at some point, and load it with some Filtertrons or an internal Roland GK pickup perhaps. Swappable! This one uses Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates (Bridge) and '59 (neck). It sounds and plays just fantastic. The angle was from Rickenbacker's idea of...

Couldn't find anyone to do it, so I bought "the" book at Amazon and did it myself. Lots of work, but VERY happy with the outcome! I had a plastic fabricator make me both black and white pickguards because I couldn't decide which I liked better. I still have the original black pickguard, but the...

I can identify with everything you said. And I love the way my Rickenbacker feels in my hands, and the way it "will" look and sound. My first electric was a Guild S300 that I modified heavily and should have never gotten rid of. I tried Les Pauls and Strats before I bought it. And that was back...

Exactly, I just want the pee colored paint to look like snow colored white paint. And it's 100% opaque, so wood grain is not an issue. That potential damage to the binding from chemical strippers was what originally made me think using the lightly sanded original finish as a "primer" might just...

I am not selling it, so I'm not concerned much about it's value drop. I'd be pulling my hair out if I spent time fussing over a capricious collector's market anyway. I couldn't be much further from a vintage guitar fan. I like the 481, because they look and feel awesome, and seeing someone else...

Actually, I have little desire to do this work myself, although I've done my share of industrial painting. I just haven't been able to find someone to do it for me. And I'd love to build one and finish it myself, but this Rickenbacker 481 "thing" is a specific obsession going back to the...

I kind of had the same thoughts about the yellowing being superficial, and perhaps it could be polished out. Then I took off the pickguard to find the exact same yellow color in the pickup cavities. I think it's a chemical breakdown, and obviously couldn't have been caused by sunlight under...