Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Lol, like I said, I'll be asking Lots of questions. I just hope Paul doesn't get sick of me. He does phenomenal work btw.

basshead wrote:I agree with you but living in the Middle East makes it hard to send to anyone, lol. I've re-fretted before and am prepared to re-fret this "Wreckenbacker".

I will, however, be asking loads of dumb questions and (hopefully) be in contact with people like Paul

That's the spirit

De-fretting, levelling, and re-fretting are the fun part.
Going through this myself recently (not quite finished yet), for me the challenging and time consuming work was/is re-finishing the fretboard.
I'm not that good with a praygun, and struggled to get a nice build-up of clear coat on each side of the frets - getting the build-up even and uniform on each side of each fret, and at the same time getting a smooth and even finish. I eventually I gave up on that build-up.

There's lots of info already in the "Vibrola" and "Reflections of a Curmudgeon" sections if you do some searching for "refret" and "refinish", and also "conversion varnish", in those sections.

In my experience with Paul W., when he refinished my Blackstar, he was quite open and eager to tell me how it was progressing. I got the feeling he really enjoyed working on it and liked sharing details. In any question that I had about any of the Rickenbacker basses, I either purchased or was thinking of purchasing, he always emailed me back.

About finishing the fretboard, I recently saw a 4004 with a natural/unfinished board. It looked sweet. I imagine you need to oil it occasionally, I use lem-oil on my 4004.

It's an option to consider.

Sepp