1960s Fender Mustang Nitrocellulose Respray

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This poor Mustang has been left in a rehearsal room when it flooded along with loads of pedals and amps.... Aside from being painted badly by hand this old beauty has a range of things that will need doing to it including:

Guitar Body Respraying
Guitar Fret dress
Electronics and pickups repairs
Fitting a new bridge
Full guitar setup including a fret level

Interested in getting your beloved guitar re finished? >Respray Pricing

Before the restoration

Someone's done their own DIY Paint job on an odd green colour. Whatever brand of paint they have used it's just not tough enough and has worn out / peeled away! They also painted the tops of the pickups to match the colour scheme.

The guitar originally used to be Blue with a yellow undercoat by the looks of it. Apparently at the time Fender simply named the colour blue and later on was dubbed Daphne blue. Here's an interesting site about Mustangs:

www.fendermustangstory.com

1966 Fender Mustang headstock nitrocellulose lacquer checking

You can see how the old nitrocellulose lacquer has degraded over the years, it has mild crack in it called checking. The lacquer has also ambered in its age. you can also see that the waterslide fender decal has shrunk a little too. The owner doesnt know where the original tuners are but they were probably replaced for a good reason.

Cheers Ted, here's the underside of the Mustangs neck heel

Note the extra screw hole which may have been used during the finishing process

More neck heel detail

Looks like the person who applied the stamp slipped and blurred the date on it!

Stripping off the old green DIY Mustang paint job

This paintwork is really gummy and took ages to remove. Nasty stuff stunk as well! We get our first glimpse of the timber underneath which appears to be Poplar

You can see the greeney type hue of the timber, typical of poplar. if you look closely you can also see remnants of yellow. I reckon this was a primer used. Looks like it was mixed pretty thin as it has gotten into the timber pretty deep. You can also see an old screw hole that someones filled in. At a guess I'd assume that that was for an extra strap pin but someones filled it in (probably at the same time as the Green paint was applied.

The back and sides of the mustang have been stripped down to wood

Having fun with a silly camera filter that only lets green in...

The bare poplar guitar body is now sealed with sanding sealer

Fiesta RED, My favourite solid colour!

Me applying some Fiesta red to the Mustang body

The back and sides of the guitar body have had their first coats of Fiesta Red

Here's the front of the body. 1 colour coat so far

2nd coat of the Fender Fiesta red colour is applied

The clear coats will deepen it a bit plus theres another couple of colour coats to make it opaque

Sanding out a mild paint run I had. Doesn't alway go to plan!

The Fiesta red paint is now properly opaque and not showing any grain through

Here's the Mustang body after about 15 coats of clear lacquer. When dried it develops this "Orange Peel" effect

Here's half the back flattened. The dull spots are the areas flattened, the glossy spots are still to go... Long!

Here's the body after flattening. Now it's time to buff and give the body some PROPER gloss!

After a trip to the buffer I like to finish up with some swirl remover, have a look for the reflection in the paintwork!

I love this colour! Will be a shame to cover up alot of the paintwork with all the hardwear

The old Mustang is looking a bit better now eh. Now it's up to the owner to add some scratches and dents!

All done

That was a lot of work but well worth it as you can see! You probably got the hint that Fiesta Red is my favourite colour too...

I hope the owner looks after it...!

Cheers - Jack

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