OLD Ibanez Bass...FRETs to FRETLESS

[dmraco]

I am redoing an old ibanez bass.  The owner wants it be be fretless.  I pulled the frets and filled with some poplar veneer I had laying around.  The original rosewood did not like taking the frets out and tore in a few locations.  I layer down a few coats of shellac to fill the gaps and will sand flat.  Thisis cool since I am going to shoot some lacquer on the entire neck.  I will post some picks asap.

 

[dmraco]

My camera died so all I have is finish pics.

I did not take this down to the bare wood, I just scuffed the finish with some 220 grit.  I really fell in love with this color when I saw it and took a bit of a risk.  It is HIGH TEMP ENGINE PAINT.  It goes on a satin finish so I sprayed some satin poly on top as a top coat. 

For the fret board I filled the fret slots with oak veneer and super glue and sanded smooth.  I also used the super glue to fill the damage around the frets left when removing the nickel frets.  I sprayed the whole thing with satin poly as well.

It looks very cool and feel great.  The owner is very pleased since I only changed him materials.  He gave me total freedom and because I was experimenting we both came out on top!  The added bonus is the finish on the guitar can not withstand 750 degrees!!!

I was wondering what you would think of a trans purple burst on top of this??

 

[Cagey]

Very nice!

I was wondering what you would think of a trans purple burst on top of this??

I know purple is not blue, and that body is not yellow, but I suspect you'd end up with a sort of strange brown trying to burst it that way. If it did come out purple-ish, it'd probably look a lot like an Easter egg. If it sounds like a good idea to you, perhaps some experimentation would be in order just to see what happens before you commit to the body.

 

[stratamania]

If you did want to do a purple type burst edge, bluish purple I don't think would go but a reddish purple on the outside with a red between it and the colour of the body might look ok but as Cagey, said you might want to do a test first.

The colour of the body does look good as is and it looks a fun project to do.