Welcome To EGR Labs OK, so here’s a little look behind the scenes at EGR Labs (aka, my spare room.) Obviously, the Baja Tele we purchased has been taken apart, with great care given to photographing the wiring (it’s an S1 system) since we don’t want to run into difficulties putting it back together.
All parts were put into separate containers and labeled with blue sticky notes, just to be on the safe side and to keep everything as organized as possible. The tear-down actually took longer than expected, but with a little luck we managed to get all necessary hardware removed from the body without undue difficulty.
Sanding The Body Much to our surprise, sanding of the poly finish wasn’t nearly as difficult as expected––while Fender’s site doesn’t list it in their official specs, many online retailers claim the Baja Tele has a “thin” poly finish, and it’s likely that this explains the ease of sanding.
Starting with coarse 60 grit paper we managed to take off a good amount of poly in just over an hour of heavy dry sanding (by hand.) Perhaps we could have used an electric sander, but as you can probably guess, the sanding was a great way to get out some of my pent-up aggression!
By that time we had already hit bare wood on many of the corners and edges, and it was at this point that I switched up to 100 grit for about a half-hour, and then on to 200 and 400 grit for detail work. While some resources recommend wet sanding, we stuck with the dry stuff, and were quite happy with our progress.
The plan is for our final instrument to be topped with a thin coat of Olympic White nitrocellulose finish, so there were two main goals to this first sanding––1.) generally prepare the body for nitro by roughing up that shiny coat, and 2.) strategically expose some bare wood to emulate the natural wear and tear of many years of hard playing.
The idea is that we will sand the Tele’s body down yet again once we’ve got a coat or two of white nitro and clear top coat applied. At that point we will further expose these bare areas, and with a little luck I think we can get a few different layers of color coming through––white on top, the Baja’s sanded-down Blonde underneath, and below that the natural Ash.
It’s my assumption that exposing these bare areas now will make it a lot easier to produce the very natural worn-in look we are hoping for.
Tackling The Pickguard If you were paying attention you may have noticed in the top photo that our mint green pickguard came in as well this week. So, following the many great suggestions over at Relic Deluxe, I began to sand that piece too.
Unlike the heavy-handed sanding of the body, sanding the pickguard requires a much lighter touch, and I can already see my own tendency to over-relic… luckily, it’s just a pickguard and it can be easily replaced if I screw it up.
I will post photos and detailed explanations of what I did to relic the pickguard in another post, but for now, let’s just say I’m having a lot of fun with this part of the process.
Aging The Hardware After reading through a number of online “relic” resources, we finally accepted Relic Deluxe as our main bible, and so far they haven’t let us down.
In keeping with their recommendations we decided to age our guitar’s hardware via the Rock Tumbler approach.
Yep, we managed to purchase a brand new 6-lb capacity rock tumbler on eBay for about $50 US, and late last night I loaded it about 3/4-full with rough gravel (Home Depot) and a few guinea pig pieces of hardware for testing purposes (neck plate, strap buttons, and their respective screws.)
In the photo here you can see all these pieces loaded into one of the tumbler’s heavy rubber cylinders. After taking this photo I popped the top on, sealed it down good, and started the whole thing tumbling.
Relic Deluxe recommends just a few hours, but for giggles I left it running all night. G and I were quite happy with the results… but you’ll have to wait for the next post to see ‘em.
- EGR’s Great Tele Relic Experiment: The Poor Man’s Paint Room
- EGR’s Great Tele Relic Experiment: Aging The Body, Adding Some Grime
- Chop Shop: And So Begins EGR’s Great “Tele Relic” Experiment Of 2008
- EGR’s Great Tele Relic Experiment: The Nitty Gritty On The Neck & Fingerboard
- EGR’s Great “Tele Relic” Experiment: Our Guinea Pig Arrives
- EGR’s Great Tele Relic Experiment: First Look At The Hardware
- EGR’s Great Tele Relic Experiment: Beatin’ The Hell Out Of That Pickguard
- EGR’s Great Tele Relic Experiment: Heavenly Body
May 7th, 2008 at 11:13 am
“Over-relic”?! Thar ain’t no such thang!
May 7th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Awesome Cary! You are a braver man than I!
May 7th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Thanks Rick… I’m having a blast!
May 7th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Whoa! This is great stuff! I recently spoke with a guy who makes aged parts. He uses a smoker for plastic parts and pickups. Some electric food smokers have a “cold smoke” setting for doing cured stuff. This setting doesn’t melt or warp plastic parts. Anyway, he says this is a good process for tinting pickguards, pickups and knobs. Plus I guess you get that Texas smell…
Keep goin!
May 8th, 2008 at 12:48 am
Cary, this is awesome. A fascinating read. In that close-up of the body’s edge, is that natural discoloration?
And who is this mysterious “G”? ;)
May 8th, 2008 at 6:03 am
I was checking out that Relic Deluxe site, and I mean it man, all the work over there is way-too-subtle. Sod that – kick the bugger down some stairs, whip it with chains!
May 8th, 2008 at 6:43 am
Good question Tom! No, I actually sanded down a bit too far along the edge and managed to hit wood with no stain on it whatsoever.
The heavy grit I was using and the fact that I was going against the grain pretty much turned the area white, so I threw in a bit of stain to bring it back to life.
Now that it’s really dry it looks quite nice :)
May 8th, 2008 at 8:00 am
Awesome posts Carry, you’re really tempting me to try this myself with a nasty (but nice) Jim Reed Les Paul copy I have.
Incidentally it seems to me that it’s far easier to find reliced Strats & Teles than it is Gibson, and most “how to” guides always seem to be concentrate on fenders and their ilk. Anyone care to hazard a guess as to why?
May 8th, 2008 at 8:18 am
I’m sorry, you are having way too much fun.. :)
May 8th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
onechickentim:
Here’s my opinion: Strats and Teles look really cool when they’re banged up and heavily played. Gibson’s don’t. I have two theories:
1. Gibson’s “fancier” finishes (Goldtops and flamed maple sunbursts) aren’t conducive to looking hot when they are reliced.
2. Classic Gibson vintage guitars show a lot of weather checking but seldom show the kind of wear and tear you see on Fenders. I’m not sure why, but
May 8th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
onechickentim:
Here’s my opinion: Strats and Teles look really cool when they’re banged up and heavily played. Gibson’s don’t. I have two theories:
1. Gibson’s “fancier” finishes (Cherry, Goldtops and flamed maple sunbursts) aren’t conducive to looking hot when they are reliced.
2. Classic Gibson vintage guitars show a lot of weather checking but seldom show the kind of wear and tear you see on Fenders. I’m not sure why, but since the real deals don’t look that way, neither will the relics. That’s why, IMO, Tom Murphy aged Les Pauls focus mainly on dull hardware and faded finishes.
May 9th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Take a look at a Gibson neck. It’s rosewood or ebony. Step back from the guitar and you’re not going to be able to see wear on that neck until you’ve worn through the fretboard. Maple necks are different. Neil Young’s guitar is a black-painted goldtop, but you wouldn’t tell unless you saw it close. So that’s one thing.
For the other thing, consider jeans. It’s jeans that look good worn, so there’s a market for worn, broken in jeans. There’s a used jean market, and it used to be a thing to prematurely wear jeans so they look like they’ve been worn out. I’ve “relic’d’ jeans before. But you don’t relic a tuxedo. you don’t scruff up your cumberbund. something like a blackguard Tele than a bound custom, is like a t-shirt and jeans. A Gibson is like a nice suit.
To throw out a third thing, the story I heard was that Keef was asking the Fender CS for guitars and said “I don’t play new-looking guitars”. That story came about and the CS started selling ‘em to people like us, and they relic’d Fenders because they’re Fender. People suddenly thought “You can do that? You can do that!”, much like I thought when I realized that a little razor scraping and sandpaper and bleach could make jeans look aged. So, because Fender did it, they did it to Fenders.
Anyway, keep going. It’s like a TDPRI build thread in reverse.
May 9th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
And, as an addition, what are the most famous distressed guitars out there?
SRV’s Strat. Rory Gallagher’s Strat. Eric Clapton’s Brownie Strat. Of course it’s the Strat guys who are going to try to make their MIM look like those ones.
May 11th, 2008 at 5:15 am
My favourite distressed guitars are the Joe Strummer Tele and the Rory Gallagher Strat. Hence my distaste for “subtle, tasteful” distressing. Those guitars looked like they were at death’s door. Ironic, then, that they outlived their owners.
May 13th, 2008 at 9:40 am
I completely agree with Tom L & Dave @Sans Direction. Distressed guitars are positioned with Fender guitars.
Besides, Gibson’s are more elegantly built– with body binding, inlay work, arched tops, fixed neck, etc.
Now, as a twist, imagine someone paying $3K plus, for a real fancy Tom Anderson Strat-type, with flame maple top, binding, the works– and proceeding to relic it. Even relic fans would probably think the guy’d lost his mind.
Straight stock Fenders seem to be the best platform for a relic job. Or, some guys will dress ‘em up with an MOT pickguard, shiny knobs and a pin-up decal.
Seems like a Les Paul is something that’s complete as-is. You polish it once in a while and leave it at that.
Larger hollow body Gibsons might see a Rock-a-billy treatment, a la Bigsby & flame decals, but only if they’re painted finish i.e. black. Natural finishes and bursts are left alone.
That’s just how I’ve observed things to be. There seems to be a tacit-agreement protocol with this stuff.
Then there’s James Trussart…
May 26th, 2008 at 6:15 am
I’m assuming the rock tumbler you bought has 2-6lb cans? Is one of them large enough to take the bridge? I’m about to pull the trigger on one but won’t if it doesn’t have the ability to tumble the larger pieces of hardware. Watching with very keen interest…….
August 27th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Did you consider having the body dip-stripped? That’s probably the fastest way to get poly off. I had it done to a generic bass body years ago for $25.00.