Refin Starfire bass?

lungimsam

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Anyone know how easy/hard/feasible it is to convert from cherry to like a satin natural?
Can cherry stain be sanded off without destroying the laminate?
 

SFIV1967

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Are you talking Polyurethan (means Newark St.) or Nitro? Usually you would scrape the nitro off, sanding is not the right way. But with Polyurethan this is brutal...I would not want to do this on a semi-hollow body...Basically if Newark St. I'd say forget about the idea.





You might want to read this long thread from our master fixit to see how he refinished a 1967 Starfire IV which was sprayed black after cherry. The cherry was still visible however. He scraped off the entire black!


Ralf
 

fronobulax

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@gilded has a story about removing white Krylon from his '66 and revealing and restoring a 'burst but that might not apply to poly.

I'm not a "project" person and I would rather have the bass I wanted rather then the experience of transforming the bass I had into the bass I wanted. So I would be looking longingly at the NS SF II in natural and hoping that some of the things that bothered me about the SF I had been addressed :)
 

lungimsam

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I hear ya’. But not for 1499$. I don’t think they are worth that much. I’d have to see it in person and be sure all of the rediculius stuff that was going on on my FMIC had been fixed by CMG.
But I will leave mine original cherry then. I like it. Just wondered how hard to convert. Looks like not worth it. Cherry is fine. I just routed it for a neck bisonic so the process is posted in another thread.
 

gilded

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frono, my old friend! Let me see if I can remember the 'krylon details.'

There was a music store in my hometown that closed up around 15 years ago. Two repair shops morphed out of the ashes of the original store.

I visited one of the repair shops shortly after they opened in 2007 and saw an elephant's graveyard-type of scrap-pile at the back of the shop. In the middle of it all was an off-white Guild bass neck with headstock, tuning keys, logo, body and all the rest of the parts.

The repair guy pulled it out for me. I saw a BiSonic pickup (first time) and what I later identified as a Starfire I bass. He hit me with a high price around the time I noticed 1 or 2 active cracks on the back of the headstock. I told Mr. Repair that I was more interested in the pickup than anything and asked him if it worked. It did, so we settled for an attractive price (from my viewpoint) for the whole project.

'My' Repair Guy (a different fellow) looked at it and said that he couldn't get the Krylon off without destroying the finish so I asked him to strip it, shoot it with black lacquer, fix the cracks, et al. For some reason he was bothered about the idea that I didn't believe the Krylon was not removable (not true), so he grabbed some chemicals off the shelf and rubbed a little on the back of the Bass.

Voila, the Krylon was gone! Sacre Bleu and back to the original Sunburst finish we went!

How is the bass now? The Krylon itself is about 99% gone, but if you try, you can still see very small blotches of white where there are cracks in the original lacquer. Doesn't matter, it's a mighty good bass.

That's most of the story, frono. I'll tell you the rest the next time I see you!

All the best, gilded
 
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