Completed Refinish Project - Schecter C1

BillDL

I saw a Schecter C1 Desert Camo edition in the classifieds here and bought it as a refinish project.  It would have started life like this, with camouflage finish on the front and headstock (black binding and black gloss back and side), and aged coppery bronze hardware and pickup covers:

The member I bought it from had seemingly grown tired of the camouflage livery and decided to scrape and sand off the polyurethane / polyester finish in an attempt to take it back to the wood for a natural finish.  In the seller's own words in the classifieds advert:

" ..... finish sanded off top (badly), ideal for project .... I decided to try my hand at sanding the finish off the top to leave a natural finish.  It sort of worked from a distance, but i'm clearly not good at this sort of thing ...".

I have absolutely no intention of insulting the seller in any way, because it isn't an easy thing to remove a hard finish like that, especially with the top string ferrules in place and with the knob and switch recesses along with the carved profile.  The lighter shaded areas are where it was sanded through to the wood while the darker areas are mostly where it was only sanded through to the sanding sealer layer.  I knew I would have to sand back quite a bit to remove some of the deeper sanding and scrape marks and lose a bit of the sharpness of the carved profile.

After removing the top string ferrules and sanding right down through the grades, then spraying on clear nitro sanding sealer and sanding that back finely, I had a major setback when the sanding sealer proved to be incompatible with the primer and separated into loads of thin meandering river like crevices back to the sanding sealer.  I had to sand that all back off again.

(see here: https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/295950/spray-painting-issues)

Next time around I gave it a coat of clear then a few coats of Shoreline Gold.  My intention was to subdue and darken the gold to something more suited to the hardware while darkening it towards the edges while still keeping the metallic sparkle slightly visible through the dark edges.  I misted on Amber tint clear gloss to seal in the flakes then applied a very thin wetter coat, going a little thicker around the edges.

I followed that with a very light misting of black tinted clear gloss all over, then applied it more thickly to create a kind of edgeburst.  I juggled between trying to get a balance of shading and ended up darkening the horns a bit too much, so I misted some gold over the darker areas followed by another misting of amber until I got to the final clear coats.

This is how it looked during the initial stages of spraying and then at the end of spraying before flattening and applying clear top coats:

I then moved onto the headstock.  I was going to lose the Schecter Diamond Series logo anyway, so I took the opportunity to saw off the pointy part of the headstock and leave it as a slightly diagonal end and used black felt-tip pen to create fake binding.  I just sanded down the existing camo polyurethane a bit to key it for primer, then following similar steps to the body.  This is in angled lighting.  It changes to almost black with a sheen in some light:

At some stage during the gassing off it looks as though the lacquer has reacted with the gold metallic flakes or they have oxidised, and the areas of subdued goldish glitter have changed shade to a gold with a greenish "verdegris" hue that I really liked.  I hope it doesn't continue to change shade, because I think this greenish hue coming through shows off the hardware and complements the look well:

I felt that the black pickup rings just looked odd when fitted, so I used the very last of the same lacquers to try and replicate the body finish a bit while leaving them a bit darker than the core area of the body and coated them really thickly with lacquer.

Apart from the setbacks with the sanding sealer and colour, the only think that annoyes me is that the top string ferrules were obviously very thinly plated or coloured to match the "bronze" hardware, and the buffing has left them silvery.  I wish I had just put in the "black nickel" or "cosmo black" ones I had.

All strung up and adjusted this guitar sounds and feels really great.  It has G&B Alnico V pickups (9.26k Bridge, 8.6K Neck), 500K Log pots (swapped in to replace the Linear ones), and a Push-Push coil split that doesn't lose too much volume.

paulnb57

Nice job Bill!

BillDL

Thank you Paul.

BertMassive

That's lovely looking, Bill. Great job.

BillDL

Thank you Bert.  Despite the frustrating parts where the lacquer went wrong, and the way the original vision of the colours evolved a bit, this was a satisfying project and it's a really great guitar.