Encore Bass Refinish - 4 - Refinish Finished

The Encore Bass refinish is finally complete.  I spent a week or so sanding down the nitro lacquer flat before buffing the scratches out.

I started with 800 grit wet and dry sand paper and gradually worked up to 1500 and then onto gradually finer polishing compounds.

Slowly the scratches and swirls start to disappear and the shine begins to form.  I used a hand held car polisher buffer to apply the compounds and  polish but did the hard to reach places by hand.

Once I had a nice mirror finish I re-assembled the guitar.  I had purchased replacement tuners as one of the originals had gone missing and had been replaced by something similar in the past.  Also the tone pot was very noisy so I ended up replacing both pots.

I also replaced the worn out control knobs but everything else is original.  I set the string heights and intonations and tested the bass out and it sounded great.

Unfortunately I only took one picture of the finished guitar as a colleague snapped it up as soon as it was finished.  It looks beautiful though, I would describe the finish as a very very light relic.  It was always my intention to portray this 30+ year old guitar as one that had been hidden away for years and years and hardly ever used, like finding a gem in the loft one day.