bighevosimo
TDPRI Member
Hi everyone. I thought I'd share a fun project I recently finished. I've been building partscasters for about 2 years and in the process I've gotten familiar with finishing guitars in nitro, wiring, set up etc. One thing I always wanted to do was refinish and age my 'mocha' Vintera tele deluxe.
Stripping the poly - basically combination of heatgun and sanding. The body is a very solid 3 piece alder body.
Nitro refinish - grain filler, white primer, black nitro, nitro clear coat. Only sanded to 600, 1200, 1500 and 2000, then did polishing compound by hand. As I wanted to relic.. it doesn't need to be perfect. To stain the exposed timber I use tobacco brown colortone diluted with some water. I make sure it is sanded smooth and all exposed timber gets a few 'truoil' coatings to protect it. I sometimes 'check' my nitro finishes, but I really didnt want to for this one.
Pickguard - sanded up to 2000 to remove gloss. Used a colortone tobacco brown on the white plastic trim to get an aged plastic look. Worked surprisingly well.
Chrome hardware / screws, pickup covers, string ferrules - sand with 600 - 1200 grit and apply ferric chloride and rinse. I find chrome parts dont need more than 15-20 seconds, whereas nickel doesn't need sanding and only needs 7 seconds.
Pickups / electronics - the fender soldering job was not great, but pots, capacitors are really good. I love the sound of the vintera, so didn't replace anything.. yet.
Neck - poly neck was hard to deal with. Sanded everything except fretboard with 2000 grit to remove gloss, removing tuner bushings did crack some poly / timber (really upset me for a day), but decided to work with what I had and age headstock a bit more than I would like to (razorblade and tobacco brown colortone stain in strategic locations). Came up ok.
Overall project cost me $155 for nitro paints, some patience and effort. I did replace the jack socket with a spare 'electrosocket' I had already aged.
I am blown away with the absolute quality of the Vintera Tele deluxe and I do love the sound so am reluctant to replace with CuNiFe pickups and redo the wiring.. But who knows.. I'm super happy with the outcome. Anyway hope you get something out of this if you are a Vintera owner.. or soon to be. Really is a great guitar.
Stripping the poly - basically combination of heatgun and sanding. The body is a very solid 3 piece alder body.
Nitro refinish - grain filler, white primer, black nitro, nitro clear coat. Only sanded to 600, 1200, 1500 and 2000, then did polishing compound by hand. As I wanted to relic.. it doesn't need to be perfect. To stain the exposed timber I use tobacco brown colortone diluted with some water. I make sure it is sanded smooth and all exposed timber gets a few 'truoil' coatings to protect it. I sometimes 'check' my nitro finishes, but I really didnt want to for this one.
Pickguard - sanded up to 2000 to remove gloss. Used a colortone tobacco brown on the white plastic trim to get an aged plastic look. Worked surprisingly well.
Chrome hardware / screws, pickup covers, string ferrules - sand with 600 - 1200 grit and apply ferric chloride and rinse. I find chrome parts dont need more than 15-20 seconds, whereas nickel doesn't need sanding and only needs 7 seconds.
Pickups / electronics - the fender soldering job was not great, but pots, capacitors are really good. I love the sound of the vintera, so didn't replace anything.. yet.
Neck - poly neck was hard to deal with. Sanded everything except fretboard with 2000 grit to remove gloss, removing tuner bushings did crack some poly / timber (really upset me for a day), but decided to work with what I had and age headstock a bit more than I would like to (razorblade and tobacco brown colortone stain in strategic locations). Came up ok.
Overall project cost me $155 for nitro paints, some patience and effort. I did replace the jack socket with a spare 'electrosocket' I had already aged.
I am blown away with the absolute quality of the Vintera Tele deluxe and I do love the sound so am reluctant to replace with CuNiFe pickups and redo the wiring.. But who knows.. I'm super happy with the outcome. Anyway hope you get something out of this if you are a Vintera owner.. or soon to be. Really is a great guitar.
.
