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Bass Guitar's
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Just finished restoring Lemmy's 2 main Bass Guitars. (Number
1 & 2) |
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Tim Butcher (Lemmy's Tech) decided it was time for a bit of TLC on Lemmy's 2 main Bass Guitars. His main stage guitar is the Number 1 Rickenbacker Custom LK1 (shown on the left) and the number 2 back up guitar. Both were is pretty bad shape having just completed a few hundred gigs between major servicing. I managed to take a few pictures during the process for his Number 1 so for all you Lemmy Fans here is a breakdown of the repairs: |
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As you can see in the picture above, the back of the neck was
pretty dirty - the finish had worn off and the Maple grain was full of dirt.
After a very light sanding and scraping I treated the neck with a very mild
solution of Oxalic Acid to burn out the remaining dirt from the pores in the
wood. |
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The headstock on the Bass is made from 2 mahogany "wings"
either side of the central neck core of maple - these wings were both coming
detached so a bit of glue and clamping fixed this problem. |
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Clamped overnight using my Stew Mac Guitar Vice |
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As you can see, the body was also in pretty bad shape - again
light sanding and scraping, plus more acid cleaned up most of the dirt. |
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The relief carving needed a bit of cleaning also - after
cleaning out all the dirt the background relief was re-stained black. |
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The frets on the Bass had been worn down pretty bad - I used
a sharpie marker to show the playing wear. |
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A few frets were to far gone, so new ones were installed |
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After installing the new frets a bit of dressing was still
required (its nice to do fret work under string tension) |
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Lemmy had requested an extra fret (needs it for the song
Metropolis) - this was achieved by removing the strip of neck binding and
creating a brass raised binding piece on the edge of the fretboard. |
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Full rewire on the electronics, nice bit of shielding etc. |
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Tim Butcher installing the pickups - also note that the
bridge has now been countersunk very slightly into the body. |
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The strap button had taken huge abuse over the years (I
extracted 8 snapped screws and left in another 5) |
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The binding had completely disintegrated - I managed to track
down some replacement checkerboard binding but it arrived too late to reinstall
so faux binding was created to take off the sharp edge - we will install the
replacement binding at the next service. |
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| Finally finished - a lot of work went into these 2 Bass Guitars - really happy with the results - especially loved testing them prior to going back to Lemmy! |
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If you have a guitar or bass in need of restoration, please
give me a call or email
tim@tcellisguitars.com |
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