60's Esquire 'Replica'

IvisonGuitars

I picked up a GSP Basses Telecaster recently off @Hymnal.



I decided to pull the trigger on it as I'd heard great reports of @GSPBasses fretwork, it had Mojo Pickups and was interested to see what all the fuss about Wudtone was. I'd always been pretty sniffy about it, prefering 'real' nitro, and this was finished in Dairy Blonde. I am happy to report that, as usual, I have been proven wrong and Wudtone is great! A really nice finish on body and especially the neck - so it's staying....on the neck.

I bought this guitar with the intendtion of getting it close-ish, visually, to a mid/late 60's Esquire. I'm not sure yet how cork sniffy i'll get about it along the way but we'll see...

 My inspiration being this guitar:



Now obviously this guitar is pretty much a solid blonde but I wanted a more translucent 'see through' aged White Blonde so I'm hoping that i'll be able to come up with something inbetween the above guitar and this one:



With a bit of the aging/tint of this one thrown in (minus the scratchplate scrawl...):



So. The guitar itself needed some work on the nut and a full set up when it arrived (as I knew when I bought it) so that was the first job. The body is ash with as ash cap so I can only deduce that this is a weight relieved/chambered body, regardless, it sounds great! SO much sustain, I was quite blown away! The Mojo pickups are, as usual, superb and this really is one of the best sounding Tele's i've owned and that included Fender CS etc, etc. So I'm very happy!

First job was to strip it of all hardware and, as much as the wudtone was a great finish, start sanding the body. I was a little concerned that the Wudtone would have permeated the body too much to sand it off but luckily that wasn't the case and, being such a light colour, it proved pretty easy to sand off. In fact I left a small amount of finish in the pores of the wood as it helped to fill and accentuated the grain.

Here's the sanded and grainfilled body (it looks like there's a LOT of yellow still in the grain but it's just a trick of the light):



It was a sunny day yesterday so I managed to shoot some lacquer. I'm using White Blonde Gloss nitro in cans from @SteveRobinson aka Manchester Guitar Tech. This is the 2nd time I've used this nitro and it really is great stuff. I've also taken a lot of advice from Steve's excellent blog and it really is some great, and very generous, free information for anyone wishing to shoot nitro.

So here's the body in the White Blonde with a clear gloss coat. It took two cans of White Blonde, I built up the finish on the edges so they had more coverage and are not as translucent as the front of the guitar. It takes a while to build up the colour as it's such a light pigment but the results look great..(if I do say so myself!):





One thing I did learn (the hard way!) is that shooting outside, while ideal for ventilation and drying, can be a nightmare for airborn particles. Pretty much each coat attracted something! But, I just let the coat dry and it was easily wiped off. I think for ease next time, i'll construct a spray booth in the workshop and that will solve it. I also got a small run in the lower cut away so, again, I let it dry then gave it a very light sanding with P1200 wet and dry (wet) which gently removed the run and it desolved into the next coat. The beauty of nitro!

I had about 1/4 can of tint left over from another build a while ago so I shot the headstock face too:



Lovely Birdseye Maple neck, which I'll leave in Wudtone:



Not the most conventional washing line I'll grant you...



So my next job is to tint the guitar. I have found a lot of info on the net which suggests that one should shoot the tint coat before the clear coat. I personally think (rightly or wrongly) that the tint should be shot afterwards as the whole effect I am going for is the effect of the UV light aging the original white finish. Then, through playing I will hopefully get my own forearm wear pattern and not the 'usual' Fender/Nash belt sander wear that always seems to be in the wrong place to me. Any thoughts?

So, that's it so far, i'm off to order a light tint from Steve....

xHymnal

Oh boy can't wait to see this finished! Glad you like it and I have to admit I was chuffed with the electronics loom. I may put together a few more of them if there's enough interest at some point. Re. thoughts perhaps get a little pot of muriatic acid and give the hardware the fume treatment just to take the "new" edge off it all? 

SteveRobinson

Thanks Neil.

I generally put the tint under the clear so that it doesn't get rubbed in patches when the finish is flatted back.

You still get the right effect doing this as you can buff (or wear naturally!) through the clear gloss and the tint down to the white and the clear top coat isn't obvious.

ThePrettyDamned

Looks really nice. Wudtone do make a great finish for sure

Looking forward to seeing this one!

benmurray85

no joke, I'm nursing a semi. i love relic'd tele homebuilds

jd0272

benmurray85;366908" said:

no joke, I'm nursing a semi. i love relic'd tele homebuilds

Yup!

lamf68

SteveRobinson said:

put the tint under the clear so that it doesn't get rubbed in patches when the finish is flatted back.

You still get the right effect doing this as you can buff (or wear naturally!) through the clear gloss and the tint down to the white and the clear top coat isn't obvious.

Exactly what he said, below the clear...take care with tinted clear to not get any runs or you'll end up wearing away the colourcoat when you try and sand it out, it will happen no matter how careful you think you're being especially with an aerosol can.

jd0272

Is it finished yet???

IvisonGuitars

jd0272 said:

Is it finished yet???

Ha! Not quite Jase....as the great Tom Petty once spake "The Waiting Is The Hardest Part"! ;-)

Thanks for the feedback advice chaps.

My tint should be arriving this weekend and the guitar has been hanging each day in this unseasonally beautiful weather so the plan is to VERY lightly flatten the clear with P1200 paper then spray the tint.

I did this method on my previous 'blackguard' build and it worked really well. I sprayed the tint unevenly as I feel that, on the many vintage guitars i've seen in the flesh and in pictures, the aging of the UV is rarely uniform.



As you can see, there is some forearm wear already starting to happen. The only thing that I wasn't happy about with this one was that I obviously didn't shoot enough clear as I couldn't get the lacquer to crack.

jd0272

Yum.

IvisonGuitars

I managed to get a bit more done today.

The tint on the headstock was dry enough to sand flat so I took the opportunity to do the headstock decal.

I know there is some contention whether or not partscasters/homebuilds should have a manufacturers tradmark on them but the way I see it is, i'm not ever going to sell it, anyone with half an interest in guitars will see it's not a 'real' one and that's the name that should be on that headstock shape so tough! ;-)



Buried it nicely with a good few coats of clear, a few tint and a couple more clear. Really pleased so far.

  

jd0272

Nice. I've got F logos to go on mine over the lacquer. I've also put Made In Northumberland waterslides under the lacquer on the back of the headstocks in clear sight.

Deadman

That looks sweet. Well done so far.

IvisonGuitars

jd0272 said:

Nice. I've got F logos to go on mine over the lacquer. I've also put Made In Northumberland waterslides under the lacquer on the back of the headstocks in clear sight.

Nice! I'm probably going to get a neck plate ingraved with a serial number - my sons date of birth.

@Deadman Cheers!

jd0272

miserneil;369654" said:

jd0272 said:

Nice. I've got F logos to go on mine over the lacquer. I've also put Made In Northumberland waterslides under the lacquer on the back of the headstocks in clear sight.





Nice! I'm probably going to get a neck plate ingraved with a serial number - my sons date of birth.



@Deadman Cheers!

Yeah got Angus and Spencer's initials and DOB as Serial Numbers and the Made In... bit under. Will do one for Sophie too, although the Esquire Custom has mine. Kids can have theirs after I've kicked the shit out of the guitars at gigs and they're 18! Angus (6) is beyond excited for his La Cab. He wanted it black. So be it. He'll need to be 18 too as the neck is mahoosive.

jd0272

I'll stick a pic up the morra.

IvisonGuitars

jd0272 said:

miserneil;369654" said:

jd0272 said:

Nice. I've got F logos to go on mine over the lacquer. I've also put Made In Northumberland waterslides under the lacquer on the back of the headstocks in clear sight.





Nice! I'm probably going to get a neck plate ingraved with a serial number - my sons date of birth.



@Deadman Cheers!

Yeah got Angus and Spencer's initials and DOB as Serial Numbers and the Made In... bit under. Will do one for Sophie too, although the Esquire Custom has mine. Kids can have theirs after I've kicked the shit out of the guitars at gigs and they're 18! Angus (6) is beyond excited for his La Cab. He wanted it black. So be it. He'll need to be 18 too as the neck is mahoosive.

You must start a thread and show a few of them off Jase, we'd all love to see 'em!*

*the guitars, not the kids...although I'm sure they are lovely too! :-)

jd0272

I'll stick a pic up the morra.

jd0272

Coming along slowly dude. Seems up here spray days are few and far between and me flatting technique leaves a lot to be desired.

IvisonGuitars

The tint arrived yesterday so, due to the weather forecast being horrendous for the coming few days, I took the chance to spray the tint coat:



I also sprayed a few coats of what remaining clear I had on top which gives the tint a little depth. I've sprayed a bit more tint in some areas to get an uneven, in my opinin, more authentically aged look.

I also sprayed with the pickguard in place, to give a 'shadow', I was considering resting the bridge in place and getting an ashtray shadow too but decided against it, mainly for time constraints, perhaps i'll do that on the next one.

IvisonGuitars

F*cked It.

Too much tint.....
:x