On Refinishing My 4003 Silver

admin · Post by **admin** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 2:43 am

I love my 1988 Model 4003 Silver and up until recently would never have considered refinishing it. I probably still won't as it "is what it is" as they say, but this topic area of the Forum gives one ideas.

It plays beautifully, has limited dings, is unique and so, why refinish it? Do I care about market value and do I plan on selling it, no and never. Am I worried about interfering with history, yes.

So I asked my wife whether I should refinish it and this was her reply. But would you?

tony_carey · Post by **tony_carey** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 3:29 am

I can't view your wifes reply because of a sound card issue. Is a refinish any worse than adding a bigsby, or a third pick up to a gtr? The gtr may be rarer, but it depends what you want from it I suppose.

Will you play it more if it has a refinish? Without seeing it Peter, I would probably advise against it. If it was a bog standard 330/360/4003...then yes, but if it is a bit special & not wrecked, then I would let it be.

admin · Post by **admin** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 4:03 am

It still lights my fire Tony.

ozover50 · Post by **ozover50** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 4:49 am

Oh, deary me (again)!! That is beautiful, Peter. Unless you want a lynch mob arriving at your door in the very near future, LEAVE IT ALONE!!

That's only my opinion, of course (darling!!)

sloop_john_b · Post by **sloop_john_b** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 5:13 am

Peter, any colors in mind?

admin · Post by **admin** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 5:45 am

John: Madness aside, with the silver bass coat, Ruby has come to mind.

ozover50 · Post by **ozover50** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 5:58 am

I don't suppose your wife's name is "Ruby", is it Peter??

PS - just in case anyone out there is sniggering, "darling" refers to Peter's sound clip!!

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 7:41 am

"Is refinishing any worse than adding a bigsby, or a third pickup..."

Nope. In fact, it is better; much better.

Tony, you have brought into sharp relief the mindset of many musicians, and provided an excellent segue into a topic to which I refer in passing in one of my posts in this topic area:

Refinishing a guitar should not affect the monetary value of the instrument, with the of instruments significant for musical or technical reasons.

Whether a guitar should or should not be refinished where sentimental attachment is involved, should depend strictly upon the owner's wishes.

The attitude toward refinishing guitars (and here I'm talking mostly about electric guitars) is fed, fostered, bought, and paid for by vintage instrument dealers.

I've observed the attitude toward refinishing (and restoring) growing more negative over the last two decades, and I've got to say that it's because guitar collecting has only achieved big-money status (and hence, legitimacy?) in the last 15 years.

Like most things involving supply, demand, and HYPE, the value of collectors' instruments is ramping up at a steeper and steeper angle. Again, this is being driven by people who have access to great numbers of instruments, who are considered "authorities", and who have a vested interest in charging higher and higher prices, taking greater and greater profits on their own stock, and walking away with huge commissions on consignments. (I am talking about the dealers in the real high-dollar stuff, who set prices to benefit themselves, then come to us, throw up their hands, and insist that this sort of thing benefits EVERYBODY.

Right? Well, the smaller dealers follow suit (they must, to stay in business), the collectors develop a subculture of greed, and odd things happen and are encouraged by this group of strange bedfellows, in order to preserve the status quo and bank on the future.

One of the oddest of the odd things is the dealers' abhorrence of refinished instruments, and the insistence on absolute originality. This abhorrence exists in no other high-end hobby, and in a business area where appearance of the asset in question, such as real estate, is paramount, a well-presented property will always garner better offers than a run-down property in the same location.

The negative cast given restored instruments has grown because of two primary factors: the extreme shortage of restorers and finishers who are capable of resurrecting an instrument to the standards to which it was originally constructed, and the usual tendency of dishonesty to gather most where the money is.

Looking over the Web, Googling anything and everything having to do with guitars and their builders and restorers, it's easy to see that nobody's getting rich except the biggest dealers. It's also painfully obvious to anybody who loves beautiful artifacts and respects craft, that there are a whole lot of hacks plying their trade. Stop into any guitar shop dealing in used equipment, and you'll see some awful amateur attempts at "restoration" or "refinishing", which do nothing but decrease the value of an instrument, usually pretty depressingly.

High-dollar dealers--and remember, they determine market direction and values!--do not like to deal in modified or restored or refinished guitars, unless the deal is just to tempting or profitable to pass up. This gives restoration, as a preservation strategy, an undeserved bad name.

Ed Roman has written some rants filled with charming facts about counterfeiting of high-dollar collectors' guitars and their parts, and he insists that there are many, many more "original" flame-top '59 Les Pauls being traded today than were ever manufactured in Kalamazoo. He speaks of factories in the Phillippines which build and age counterfeit vintage Strats to order, which are supposedly authentic to the last screw. He mentions an Asian gentlemen who approached him with a briefcase filled with perfectly counterfeited PAF humbuckers, and handed him a card, saying that there were plenty more where they came from.

Dealers don't like to deal in counterfeits if they are shown later to have dealt in them--either defense strategy ("I didn't know" or "I didn't care") casts them in a bad light.

Bottom line: we've been brainwashed into believing that an expertly-completed restoration will kill collectibility or marketeability.

Next: What about Rickenbackers?

shamustwin · Post by **shamustwin** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 8:03 am

If you look at the vintage automobile auctions, humongously high buck cars have usually been taken apart and put back better than new, including new paint.

I suppose my views on refinished guitars have been formed by the number of bad jobs I've seen. Now Paul, on the other hand, has seen up close and way personal, fine fine fine refinishes.

I visit a couple of vintage guitar stores somewhat regularly, and their prices are always *this* much higher than what seems to be the going rate. And rarely do I see any refinished guitars.

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 8:27 am

Exactly. It would surprise no one at this juncture to mention that I began to restore vintage cars at about the same time I started restoring guitars.

I saw no resistance in the marketplace to restored cars, and as the hobby-business grew in maturity, the distinction of "hack restoration" became category and these cars were shunned or properly restored later, if precious enough to preserve properly. A separation grew between bodymen, mechanics, and restoration shops.

Any clown with a jigsaw and a box of spray cans can call himself a "luthier" or a guitar tech or restorer, and hack stuff is prevalent. I'm not too amazed at what I read passing for solid advice on guitar tech topics on the web, and there's even misinformation and no small number of misconceptions being widely circulated in some books written by otherwise reputable technicians.

I do believe that as the hobby of collecting (playing does not drive values, and as much as we might find it distasteful, it is dollars and cents that most often drive restoration decisions) gains some whiskers, it will also sort itself out and we'll find work of excellent quality being once again rewarded with legitimacy, whether it was done 40 years ago or last week.

BTW, I restore and refinish guitars, not for a living, but as a hobby, so I'm not trying to raise these points in order to feather my own nest. I'm just sharing my own impressions and conclusions.

winston · Post by **winston** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 9:02 am

Paul your observations are bang on. You did though miss one other element. I am referring to the number of prominent musicians who play beat up old relics. By doing so they inadvertently contribute to the myth that old, worn and tired guitars have mojo and are intrinsically valuable. This is perhaps a phenomenon that occurs just because these instruments are owned by a star player.

Further to that observation and meant to be a continuation of yours, here are two rhetorical questions.

Was SRV's Number 1 Strat original in every detail. The answer is a resounding no.

Was Rory Gallaghers precious Strat original in every detail. The answer is also a resounding no.

So here we see two old Strats that are beat up that have replaced hardware and replaced necks etc. and they are considered to be virtually priceless. Only because they were owned by famous musicians.

It's topical to note that I bought a beat up old Strat (albeit it a 71) and refinished the body because there was so much florescent paint on that poor instrument. It looked like a surveyors test post for a spray can when I rescued it from a pawn shop for a $100.00.

There was so much sweat residue on the body that the worn wood was a horrible grey-brown color. The body was in a disgusting condition. The neck and hardware were in much better shape but again not much other that the neck, the body, the pickups and the wiring harness was original.

Do I feel bad about doing what I did? No. It now looks good and it gets played. That's what a good guitar deserves.

jamie · Post by **jamie** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 9:23 am

I believe that Clapton is destroying the myth by giving up his old guitars and playing modern Strats. Even Pete Townsend is playing new stuff. Come to think of it they were playing "New Stuff" back in the 60s as well lol!

I have to admit I can be somewhat on the fence about this issue since I do have that nostolgic feeling towards some of my guitars but that's my own personal bonding coming into play.

I was actually trying to discourage my bandmate who has a beat up early 70s Custom LP w/headstock repair from getting it refinished but he really would like the guitar to look nice and isn't impressed with its relic status so I'm more inclined to enourage him now and refer him to Paul when he's ready to do it.

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 9:58 am

Jamie, you'll notice that I consider nostalgia that a player feels as a primary determinant in whether to restore or refinish. The player himself should go with his/her heart, and if attachment to all those dings or dents is a factor in the affection that a player feels for the instrument, then to restore it would compromise a relationship. Depending on a player's sensitivity and/or level of superstition, refinishing could be the worst thing that could be done to an instrument, notwithstanding the refinisher's sensitivity and competence.

Since "restoration" as it applies to guitars is primarily an issue of mechanical and electric or electronic condition, "refinishing" I tend to see as an adjunct to restoration or a separate entity entirely.

With proper maintenance, "restoration" is almost an oxymoron. But in many cases, refinishing a guitar to factory-fresh condition, can actually rekindle the old flame.

In the case of my own MB 381V69, for instance, I was able to find one brand new in the color I craved. Would I ever refinish it? The answer is a resounding "no". But, should I want a 381 in another color, I would not hesitate to buy a recent one in excellent condition (like Rolls-Royces, 381s are seldom beat up) and change the color.

joepee · Post by **joepee** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 11:37 am

I may be way off base here...but I say nothing wrong with a refinish job. I remember in the 60s and 70s, I could go into many area pawn shops and see these ugly gold sparkle Gibson Les Paul guitars. Some, if not many, would take a belt sander to those guitars.

Many of the guitars we used to pick off the wall, we would have never bought (not because they were expensive, they weren't), but because we thought they were ugly. Now these same guitars are vintage, and VERY expensive. All the guitars I played as a young man were VINTAGE. That's weird.

My point: if you scratched or dinged your guitar back then, no one knew where to take a guitar to have a professional refinish job done on it. Much less had the money to pay someone to do it. You just lived with it. If you wanted to find someone to do refinishing, you looked in the Yellow Pages. If we were lucky(not), it would have probably been done by a furniture refinsher. Maybe a fender specialist...and I mean car, not guitar.

I look at the kind of work Paul and Dane have displayed here for all of us(Thank you, PeterMc for a great forum), and it just blows me away.

The Internet has made a large world much smaller, and it is now a place where Howard from Australia, and Tony from England all compare notes with the experts of the world in everything Rickenbacker including the CEO.

Uniting experts of the world in any field a few years ago required a bunch of businessmen and women, a lot of travel, and some sort of convention center. Now we can gleen knowledge, expertise, etc. from our homes, offices, with a click of the mouse. It really is like a Ray Bradbury sci-fi novel.

Now, I know know exactly where I would send a guitar for refinish or repair, and I know more and more about Rics everyday because of you experts.

What a interesting trip for a boy who saw John Lennon on Ed Sullivan, and wanted to be "that cool"...and have a guitar just like that.

I guess, I'm becoming VINTAGE...but life is rich.

winston · Post by **winston** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 11:50 am

Great observations Joe.