Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

This is probably an unusual restoration story because it doesn’t involve any refinishing, just painstaking hours of fiddly stripping, cleaning and polishing. And why? Well, sixties 330s are still quite rare in the UK and once I had seen that there was an opportunity to restore the guitar back to it’s original finish – albeit with standard player wear – I thought that it was right to have a go and do so. I absolutely love the top end refinishing which is demonstrated on the forum and if the guitar was not able to be restored to plain Mapleglo, I would have refinished in Burgundy (if the wood was nice) or White (if the wood was plain).

So, here are the before shots of the poor thing covered in thick brown brushed on varnish, but crucially showing some Mapleglo finish through the player wear. Initially I had thought that the guitar was sanded and prepped before the brown stain was applied, fortunately it was a very lazy job which had mercifully little affect on the finish below it (it was only keyed in). Ironically it did have clearcoat over the brown stain – well after you had spent so long brushing it on you wouldn’t want to see it damaged would you!

Part One - Before









The neck showed the glimmer of hope – I spied Mapleglo!

Investigations showed more original finish.

Work in progress next...

Part Two - Work in Progress

The brushed finish was first flattened with 800 then 1500 sand paper, the removed with T-Cut original. Yeah – I kept the hardware on until the last minute because I liked playing it.

Part two continued.











cont.

More Part two...
















Part 3 next...

Part Three…(nearly) finishing.

The finished was restored to a glass shine with Meguiars Swirl-X and Zymöl polishing. All chrome was cleaned with Swirl-X.

The pick-up wiring had been replaced, but as it worked fine I left it alone.

I still need to make a top pickguard to match the bottom one I made and I need a couple of screws to finish off.

Part Three continued...

















cont.

So there you have it – back to how it looked before the brushed stain was put on. Dinks, dents, player wear on some edges, some chrome pitting, shallow divots in the fretboard, bit of fret wear, lots of glorious flame, superb straight and thin neck, fantastic sounding pick-ups. Love it!

Thanks to Craig Witty for letting me buy it in the first place!

Love a thread like this great before and after pics with fantastic results.Mark was very kind to show me some pics as he went along and im glad he has posted them on here for everyone to see.Thanks for the post mate its a pleasure to witness that guitar come back to life.
Nice one

Looks great!


I just wonder why anybody would crud it up like that in the first place...

Wow,
It looks great! congrats!

You did an EXCELLENT job with this. Does the new guard have a black underlayer.
Also, why is it strung backwards with the ends of the strings facing outward on the headstock. Is this personal preference?

Wow! Excellent job. Beautiful guitar brought back to life.

jwilli wrote:Wow! Excellent job. Beautiful guitar brought back to life.

+1000!