Restoring An Old Guitar Finish

[lcmtvbreath4]

Hey y'all. I've got a 1965 Gretsch Corvette. My dad bought it back in the 70's from a buddy of his. He played it for years but when my parents got divorced it sat in a leaky garage for years and years until I rediscovered it about 10 years ago. In the meantime I've been building guitars and restoring some of the other guitars I've accumulated over the years, and now I think I'm ready to restore it. So here's the thing. EVERYTHING on the guitar needs to be replaced. The pickup literally fell out because it completely rusted through. The pick guard crumbled with the slightest touch. About half the machine heads are rusted and broke (it really needs a new set... these are unsalvageable.) The pots were rusted frozen. So here's the good, the body is in great shape, but the finish is spiderweb cracked everywhere. The tailpiece is fine and the bridge is fine. My question is given how much work needs to be put into this guitar, I'm not sure how much it will be worth since it needs a complete resto. However, would it be better for me to leave the finish as it is and maybe lacquer it (the cracking looks kind of cool) or should I sand it and completely redo the finish? I know normally you wouldn't want to sand it down to the wood and redo everything, but as I said, I'm not sure how much it's going to be worth since I'm never gonna find 100% original parts. I'm going to get the actual DeArmond Dynasonic pickup for it, but the machine heads will most likely be aftermarket. I would just like some opinions on which direction I should head in. I don't plan on selling this guitar really, I just want to make it sing again! Thanks everyone!.

 

[lcmtvbreath4]

Re: Restoring An Old Guitar Finish

P.S. I'm posting this question because either way it's getting restored, but if I have a chance of making it valuable, I wouldn't want to do anything to hurt it. I just want to restore it in the best way I can that will do it justice as well as not make it worthless.

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: Restoring An Old Guitar Finish

Generally, any vintage guitar with a worn but original finish is worth more the same guitar refinished or oversprayed.

I'd just clean it up real good and use some good guitar polish. I used Martin polish from Martin Guitars on my old PRS.

 

[lcmtvbreath4]

Re: Restoring An Old Guitar Finish

That's what I figured. I probably won't touch the finish then.

 

[KeeperOS]

Re: Restoring An Old Guitar Finish

I would def. try to reach out to the Gretsch people and ask them for original or at least direct replacement parts, they might be interested themselves in a 50-year-old guitar of theirs.

 

[Dr. Vegetable]

Re: Restoring An Old Guitar Finish

Cool mojo on that one! I would clean it up carefully and leave the finish as-is.

 

[ItsaBass]

Re: Restoring An Old Guitar Finish

I'd leave the finish, and fix everything else. I wouldn't dump a bunch of money into it by tracking down perfectly matching original parts, though. It's a cool guitar, but not valuable or "particularly historic," so I'd just do what you want to do with it. Nice modern tuners and bridge, for example. My two cents.

It'll be an easy and fun restoration, as long as the neck is still playably straight and the frets are still serviceable.

 

[lcmtvbreath4]

Re: Restoring An Old Guitar Finish

A few years back I taped an old thin acoustic pickup over the original pickup hole and borrowed a floating bridge and tuners off another guitar. It played great, so I know it's playable as long as I get permanent parts for it. I've seen these guitars in good condition go for $1,000 to $2,000, so they might not be as significant as say a fender or gibson of the same year, but I don't want to absolutely kill the value. The only pickup that will fit in the original rout is the original pickup, or a copy thereof, so that has to be close to stock at least (you can buy an original new for like $120). The tuners I don't think are that significant to be original because it could always be redone later. The original bridge is like $60. I have plenty of pots and jacks and stuff laying around, so for like $180 I've got a playable vintage guitar. The pick guard I had remade by a guy, but he didn't do a fantastic job (about 8 years ago I paid this guy who claimed to be a guitar repair man to make a pickguard and I was SEVERELY disappointed.) The original material was the black/white/black sandwiched plastic. This guy just used black and the edges are rough, so I'm using it as a template and I'm going to buy the correct material ($15) and make a proper one.

-C

 

[Bludave]

Re: Restoring An Old Guitar Finish

I would leave the finish as is. I would replace the tuners with vintage appropriate tuners, then research the guitar and find a suitable replacement pickups for it.

The pickguard may be challenging to replicate, but it can be done, the pickups look like filtertrons, but I guess it depends on what model it is.

 

[zenmindbeginner]

Re: Restoring An Old Guitar Finish

You can re-amalgamate the finish with butyl cellosolve and the checking and damage will at least feather out with some light and patient use of the stuff.

The shine and luster will come back to the old finish after amalgamating and you can then either seal the old finish in with a little nitro spray from a rattle can or can just start polishing it.

 

[Bludave]

Re: Restoring An Old Guitar Finish

Leave the finish alone.... it looks cool they way it is, if anything just give the back of the neck some love to make it smoother to play.

 

[lcmtvbreath4]

Re: Restoring An Old Guitar Finish

I would leave the finish as is. I would replace the tuners with vintage appropriate tuners, then research the guitar and find a suitable replacement pickups for it.

The pickguard may be challenging to replicate, but it can be done, the pickups look like filtertrons, but I guess it depends on what model it is.

Yeah, it depends on the model. Mine does not have the tremelo tailpiece, bigsby or otherwise. It has the regular tailpiece and the bridge was quite literally a straight bar of metal with slots in it. The pickguard won't be too hard. I just want to get closer than the other guy. The original had a slightly planed edge so you could see the layers. That's what I'm going for as long as it's close. I guess the other thing I would need too are the pot caps. I see a lot of these redone with different kinds of caps for the volume and tone. Anyone know which ones were generally used on the stock corvette?

 

[lcmtvbreath4]

Re: Restoring An Old Guitar Finish

It has a single pickup which is a DeArmond Dynasonic. On my model anyway. The cavity is shaped in such a way where nothing else would fit without widening the rout, which I DEFINITELY don't want to do.