Occasionally I am asked to donate a guitar for local fundraising events. “Sure. I can part with one more guitar”. Maybe. So, I started going through some standard bolt-on parts in the shop and found this deep blue American Made early 90’s Fender Stratocaster body. I decided that I would remove the blue lacquer and refinish. The first shocker was that the original finish was not nitrocellulose lacquer. It was epoxy and damn near impossible to remove even with the best of epoxy remover. And then shocker #2; as I sprayed remover, waited, scraped, sprayed, waited, scraped,the clear top coat came up and eventually the blue. And then a layer of silver, and a layer of aqua. Then another layer of silver and the red which was on top of yet another layer of silver primer.
What in the hell is this? I have no idea why all the layers as epoxy is very dense and not translucent so doesn’t bleed through. The guitar certainly didn’t need this thick coating.
The end result was a ‘go with the flow’ grunged up American relic. I installed the original Willy Wailer neck, an antiqued pickguard, some old knobs and three Abigail Ybarra, Fender Custom Shop late 60’s pickups. ‘What a strange long trip it has been’.
Plays great and kind of cool,ah? Not sure what to do with this junkyard dog.
Now, I still need a guitar for the fundraiser. Back to the shop.


