4003 finish woes
Posted: Tue Mar 05, 2019 1:17 pm
The finish on my fireglo 2009 4003 has starting flaking off around the tailpiece, exposing the bare maple underneath. I noticed this around a month ago after using the bass at a gig for the first time. I took the tailpiece off this weekend to take a closer look, and it's even worse than I thought. When I ran my fingers over one of the areas where the finish was damaged, little bits of the finish just flaked right off. Bare maple is now visible on the sides and top of the area covered by the tailpiece.
Chips in the finish have also appeared during the last month or so in two locations on the front of the bass near the binding. I have no idea how they got there. I've known that the finish on this bass was problematic for a few years, ever since hairline cracks began appearing in the clearcoat on several areas of the binding on the body on the neck. I could live with those cracks, but I can't live with the flaking finish on the front of the bass. I'm not sure what the root of the problem is. The bass has lived most of its life in its case. It seems likely that something went wrong at the Ric factory in 2009. If memory serves, 2009 is around the time that Ric changed over to UV-cured finishes. Perhaps they hadn't yet perfected the process when my bass was manufactured.
I've more or less decided that I will remove the existing finish and convert the bass to mapleglo, perhaps with just a sealer and no clearcoat. Does anyone have any recommendations about I should go about removing the current fireglo finish? Should I just sand it off, or will I need to use some sort of chemical stripper? Any tips would be appreciated. I don't want to spend the next several years watching the fireglo finish on this bass slowly chip and flake away.
I have two other Rick basses -- a 1973 4001 and a 2009 C64. If a finish problem like this occurred with either of those basses I would hire someone to do a professional refin. This bass is not as special to me. I'm willing to take some risk in dealing with the problem.
Chips in the finish have also appeared during the last month or so in two locations on the front of the bass near the binding. I have no idea how they got there. I've known that the finish on this bass was problematic for a few years, ever since hairline cracks began appearing in the clearcoat on several areas of the binding on the body on the neck. I could live with those cracks, but I can't live with the flaking finish on the front of the bass. I'm not sure what the root of the problem is. The bass has lived most of its life in its case. It seems likely that something went wrong at the Ric factory in 2009. If memory serves, 2009 is around the time that Ric changed over to UV-cured finishes. Perhaps they hadn't yet perfected the process when my bass was manufactured.
I've more or less decided that I will remove the existing finish and convert the bass to mapleglo, perhaps with just a sealer and no clearcoat. Does anyone have any recommendations about I should go about removing the current fireglo finish? Should I just sand it off, or will I need to use some sort of chemical stripper? Any tips would be appreciated. I don't want to spend the next several years watching the fireglo finish on this bass slowly chip and flake away.
I have two other Rick basses -- a 1973 4001 and a 2009 C64. If a finish problem like this occurred with either of those basses I would hire someone to do a professional refin. This bass is not as special to me. I'm willing to take some risk in dealing with the problem.