As I mentioned before, for every ten or so hours I spend on customers' instruments, I give myself an hour or so on one of my own projects. Why? It keeps me sane and motivated. This one's been around for years and I finally got it together in the last few weeks. It's a '75 430 that I purchased (already modified) in late '06, for $375.00 from a lady who had it listed on local Craigslist. It's one of the mahogany-bodied ones with a thin finish and lots of grain texture showing. I traded it to Kira and she traded it back to me awhile back, so I decided to do something a bit different to it. It's really odd for a Rick, being bolt-neck and having soft cutaways. It came with the Bigsby B5 already installed, a mucked-up wiring harness, and the wrong knobs. Correct tailpiece was in the original case.
The body was thickness-sanded to dead flat, then filled with microballoon filler to smooth out the mahogany grain, which was pretty fierce. I decided to do the neck as it came--natural maple, but with a varnished fretboard. The neck was refretted before finishing.
I wanted a double-bound body on this one, but did not want white or black binding, so I did the binding in tortoise shell celluloid. Now there was a look beginning to happen.
How about a paint color? I thought a lot about this one, and settled upon a red, but different from any other red I'd ever painted. I started with a transparent pearl red that I mixed, which still allowed the mahogany grain pattern to show through. Then I sprayed a few coats of deep candy red over the red pearl. You can see the contrast between the red and tortoise shell below. It's a really different look.
It received new toaster pickups, a new harness and knobs, tuners, and strap pegs. All fasteners are new, stainless steel. A new pickguard and engraved TRC were fitted, from tortoise shell celluloid as well.
Enough words--here are some pictures!
Coming up: Final version of Tim Rock's 380/12 PZ conversion. Bound headstock and shaded body tie it all together. After that, in numeric order a wild 381. A real one-of-a-kind 700C/6 in Cowboy Burst. A series of 4001s and a complete resto on an RM 1999. And more...
that transparent metallic finish is really unique and cool looking. Bravo!
