1971 Fender Music Master Build-Up (Currently Painting)

Dougler

That looks so good, can't wait to see it when you finish it.

Doug

Nice job. Can't wait to see the finished guitar.

Whew, was I glad to hear your explanation when someone asked about yu getting all that paint on the neck... 😲

How'd the paint end up crinkling so bad on the...what, second coat was it?

Mad-Mike

Doug said: Nice job. Can't wait to see the finished guitar.
Whew, was I glad to hear your explanation when someone asked about yu getting all that paint on the neck... 😲
How'd the paint end up crinkling so bad on the...what, second coat was it?

Yeah, I kind of wondered if I should have explained it outright that I use an old broken Strat copy neck as a paintstick. I also used that on my Jazzmaster when I was rubbing on the Minwax wood sheen.

As far as the wrinkling, I think it might have been caused by not cleaning off the paint-dust from previous coats, or not letting the water evaporate entirely before putting on the paint. So now I let it sit a day or two before I add anymore coats, hence why painting this guitar is taking so long. I also think it may have been a weather factor, possibly humidity levels.

This morning, after a great show and a bit of a turbulent early morning with the protective instinct kicking in, I decided to spend some more time this morning sanding the body, now have only one or two more coats around the edges before I can start putting on the clearcoat. I'm trying to get the body as flat and perfect as possible before this, because I'm going to try my damndest to get a real showroom like finish out of rattle can paint, it seems to be possible - given the correct tools, the biggest of which seems to be sandpaper.

Mad-Mike

New updates, no pics yet (at work, can't access facebook due to fear of network compromise by marketing assholes).

Now am starting on the clearcoat, have some drips and runs, the color is now turning the same color as my Jag-Stang (hmm, looks like it really WILL be a Kurtmaster when I'm done). I hope to do some wet sanding this weekend, but between the band, a new relationship, and other obligations, this project will run pretty slow.

Also finally have the bridge coming in, ordered a string-through Musicmaster bridge for the guitar with the body furrels for it, hopefully the holes for the string through on the body will line up with the holes on the bridge properly. I'm hoping that I can get the finish worked out soon enough so then I can focus on populating this thing with hardware, little by little, and have it done before the year ends.

Mad-Mike

Picking up an electric sander next week to do the sanding, I"m getting sick of getting semi-sonic-blue paint all over my bathroom floor when wet sanding by hand, and the drips and runs this go around are getting hard to smooth out. I'm also thinking I should try and get a BETTER clearcoat to use. Other than that, showroom finish seems to be quite possible, even without polishing.

After some fighting with FedEx I got the bridge in. It looks like I'll have to cut the guard and move the bridge back more because the existing string-through holes are a little too far forward for the tailpiece, plus the saddles are almost in the perfect spot with that adjustment (they were a little too far back to be the same distance from the 12th fret as the 12th fret is to the nut using the original screw holes)). Also, the body looks a little more balanced this way. I currently have the guitar jury rigged with one screw in the bridge, a capo at the 3rd fret, and 2 low E strings so I can locate where to drill holes for the remaining tailpiece screws, and get the string alignment and bridge alignment totally straight.

So things left to do

- Add more coats of clearcoat, sand up to 1200, then use 3M finish restorer to a showroom shine

- Buy the rest of the parts (nut, tuners, wiring kit for Mustang/Duo-Sonic, Strap Locks, Pickguard, Pickups, Control Plate, and Knobs), probably also adding a treble bypass cap, or assembling my own wiring kit using a 500K Volume and 1Meg Tone (as close to no-load as it gets).

- Do additional electrical sheilding, I'll be putting in the original brass plates over the top of my usual Aluminum tape, and building a super good Faraday cage to block out stray RF interference.

- Set up, and take for a test run, possibly live with the band, with video.

Doug

Lotta work...no matter how well ya plan there's always gonna be surprises, yeah?

Hang in there. It's gonna be beautiful. And so much your guitar.

Mad-Mike

Here's a picture of the bridge in calibration

kurdtCobain

WOW,just saw this thread AMAZING guitar Mike,keep up the hard work it looks beautiful. 😁

Mad-Mike

I just revved up the Flux Capacitor because I'm back at it again..........after this guitar had been sitting in our bedroom for almost a year, untouched, I decided to get back to it.......

So I've decided to do the Cobain thing with it. I'm not going to finish the finish work till I have everything else in order.....

- Schaller Tuning Machines

- String Guides & Nut from a Kay KE-17

- Neck Plate and screws I had laying around

- Tornado-style bridge with through body stringing

Here's a new pic......I've been sitting around playing it, it plays a lot like a Gibson Les Paul "Fretless Wonder" because the frets are so low...must be the originals. Also, it sounds like it's got a good neck/body join so the tone should be in truckloads........

My To-Do List is as follows on this one....

- Tighten up Neck Joint on the Side (to prevent Neck Shifting)

- Order new Mustang/Duo-Sonic Pickguard for it

- re-Shape the bottom to fit the Tornado Bridge (the bridge was relocated to fit the through-body stringing holes)

- Find the bridge pickup brass sheilding plate (if it's even still around)

- Buy a cheap Mustang Pickup and a Hot Rails Humbucker of some sort (Same Vein as Kurt most likely a JB Jr. or DiMarzio)

- 2 3-way Switches for Mustang/duo

- mustang Control Plate

I have the rest of the stuff I need to outfit the guitar (pots, jack, wire) and a brand new soldering Iron I got for XMAS (and just finished rewiring a 1967 Fender Student Single 10 Pedal Steel with).

Alex

Looks like a fun one!

HNB

Nice!

Ben

Keep up the good work. That's going to be one sweet guitar.

Mad-Mike

This is sort of a quasi-repost of what I posted on OSG to update and finish off the build in this thread...it takes an odd yet cool turn...

About 4-5ish years ago, I bought a 1971 Fender Music Master Body and Neck from Tommy's Guitar Shop in Everett for a good price. This is what it looked like then, circa mid-2010....

Skip ahead to earlier this year, my wife saw this body and neck, strung up, just hanging around on the rack in my man cave and asked me when I was going to complete it. She was sit of seeing the poor thing hanging around for 4 years, getting noodled on by me with no electronics on occasion.....

So I threw it together temporarily with a jack-plate to hold in the volume pot, a Harmony Single Coil with 2 Neodymium Hard Disk magnets on the bottom, and screwed it into the wood, the sound was super AMAZING! Very chunky and low heavy with that bright twangy snarl of a single coil built in - sort of like the best of both worlds of S-coil and Humbucker sounds.

I was wearing an orange shirt and saw how good it looked with the guitar, and knew PVC pickguard material was out of the budget at the time, but theres this place down the street called TAP plastics....I decided to check them out. I found out they sold orange acrylic plastic (amongst a ton of others I Can use in other guitar projects). I bought a 9X6.5" Sheet of orange acrylic for $6.50....and got to work....

And this came out as a result, sorry for the mess in the livingroom...that has since gone away....

And this was the result...

So my wife gets me some stickers for my birthday, and I dunno what to do with them, my one sticker guitar is a Les Paul I pulled out of a dumpster when we were dating, she got me 2 stickers, a Super Bario Bros. sticker with Cheech & Chong as Mario characters, and I got some stickers from a guy at my job that said things like "relax!" with a guy riding on a skate or something like that.

At this point, I had joined Zombie Jihad as a lead guitar player, and we had a possible gig at Hempfest coming up August 17th. So the wife says not to reveal until Hempfest. I decided to keep the guitar's future/final appearance a secret, until now.

Just prior to the week before Hempfest, I was spazzing out because I needed a decent bridge pickup, and I kept trying crazy stuff with the bridge pickup, in the end, I bought some Magnet Wire from Radio Shack (30 AWG), and overwound the beast in the OPPOSITE direction....mixed with the reverse polarity of the 2 Neodymium magnets, I made a humbucker. I have an original design for this pickup coming up that I will not disclose just yet. - I used a rotary tool to widen the bridge pickup rout. The resulting sound was godlike, and hum-free...........

Here's the Guitar Backstage with the hot-rodded pickup installed....
http://s26.postimg.org/9pfy5y8rd/20140817_163355.jpg

Here's me with the guitar during the set. and it's got some publicity, safershirts also has it on their instagram now......
http://s26.postimg.org/wzu41ml7d/20140817_174157.jpg

Now here's the guitar in action for the first time live.....covering Led Zepplin's "In The Light"

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