RESTORED 1979 4001 JETGLO

I’ve featured this JG 4001 out of the (one hundred ten?) that I ‘ve restored, simply because it was one of the five roughest that I’ve ever gotten it over nearly 20 years working on Rickenbacker guitars and basses. When I first opened the case, I was impressed with its, er, patina. The original finish was worn down to maple on both front and back, the fretboard and neck had separated on both top and bottom, there was substantial buckle rash, the original conversion varnish had turned the binding, fretboard and its inlays a sickly yellow, the pick guard was stained and cracked, and all the hardware suffered from some corrosion.

Additionally, when I remover the pick guard and treble pickup, I found the cavities filled with lint and cat hair. Lots of lint and cat hair. So, after vacuuming the dreck out, I set About stripping the finish and de-fretting the fretboard, after which the truss rods were removed, the neck and fretboard were re-glued, and the fretboard was flattened and re-crowned.

New frets were installed, flattened and crowned, and the fretboard received two coats of grain filler, sanded between coats. Then the body and fretboard got two coats of sanding sealer, were sanded, chips and scratches were filled with tooling compound, and another coat of sealer was sprayed and sanded. For coats of Jetglo lacquer were applied and allowed to dry, the binding was scraped and sanded clean, and four double coats of catalysing urethane were sprayed, with 24 hours of curing time and sanding between coats. The penultimate coat was dry-sanded and one final double coat of clear urethane was applied and Allowed to cure for 24 hours (again). The entire body and neck were wet sanded and then it was on to the buffing wheel.

Meantime, hardware that could be reused spent a couple of hours in the ultrasonic cleaning tank, and any determined to be unusable was replaced with new. The tuners, bridge pickup surround, and backplate cleaned up fairly well. Normally I would replace a pitted bridge pickup surround (bezel) with a new replaced one, but these were not in my stock in this pattern so I cleaned it up as well as I could. The customer wanted a new Type 2 tailpiece to be fitted, and I custom-built him a wiring harness with heavy stranded wire with push-back cloth insulation, and new pots and caps.

The bridge pickup cover’s heavy plastic triple plating was completely corroded from perspiration, so this was replaced with a new one. New strap pegs were fitted and a new neck pickup cover was installed. The pickup pigtails were replaced and resoldered. All possible fasteners were replaced with stainless steel ones.

The tuning machines got a good hand-polishing to restore their gorgeous gloss, and new screws were used to attach them. Their black plastic bezels were wet sanded to remove scratches after years of use, and sprayed matte black to restore their new appearance. A gold pick guard was fabricated and a matching gold nameplate was fitted. The original nut was cleaned up and reinstalled.

This vintage Jetglo 4001 now looks, plays, and sounds like new with its flatwound, low-tension Thomastik-Infeld Jazz Bass strings.