Re-finishing an Artist TC59

[dozymuppet]

Nothing wrong with this guitar at all, but it weighs a tonne, I'm not attached to the blond look, and I'm bored between projects and/or stages of projects. So I thought it would be "fun" to strip this one back, and refinish it (and maybe upgrade a couple of hardware bits and pieces - not that it really needs it).

"Fun" is probably not the best way to describe the process of getting a finish like this off, but I think I'm now ready to re-finish.













In the process, the body weight has gone from 2.75kg down to 2.5kg.

[king casey]

Shot 3 brought back memories.

My trusty heat gun made light work of it.
Otherwise it's like breaking rocks in the hot sun. (figuratively of course)

cheers, Mark

[dozymuppet]

Even with a heat gun it was hard work. There are a few minor scorch marks that I just couldn't avoid.

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[Simon Barden]

The finish on that guitar is pretty thick, but you'll add weight back on with any new finish, so you might want to think about reducing the weight by reducing the thickness by maybe 3mm. I'd simply sand down the back and front - with more off the back than the front.

[bronzesnake]

The finish on that guitar is pretty thick, but you'll add weight back on with any new finish, so you might want to think about reducing the weight by reducing the thickness by maybe 3mm. I'd simply sand down the back and front - with more off the back than the front.

Hey Simon.
I always liked a heavy guitar, they come in handy during live performances when fat chicks bum-rush the stage! OH! BOOM!

Seriously though, I'm a minority who really prefers a heavy guitar. I find the light hollowed out bodies make it feel like a toy. I obviously know there are some very expensive light models, so in my case it's personal preference and has nothing to do with back problems after years of playing heavy guitars, sound/tone/sustain or anything else.

When I started playing electric I'd been playing acoustic for about five years. So I was about 16 or 17 when I got my first electric guitar (which is a story in itself) there was no weight reduction options and I learned to play with a heavy Gibson Les Paul.

My folks are from England, my father served aboard the carrier HMS Illustrious during WWII and my mother assembled bomb components, another very dangerous occupation during the war as the Luftwaffe would have spies on the ground looking for these assembly plants so they could bomb them.

They came to Canada after the war and adopted me at four days old in 1962. I'm Cherokee, Irish and Scottish.
My mum's father, grandpa Greenwood loved car boot sales, which we call flea markets, and my mother got the bug from him.

Mom would drag my lazy ass out of bed at 5 am and would drive 45 minutes North of Toronto where she had a sales table in a large very well known flea market in Stoufville Ontario. She gave me $25 each weekend which I could spend where ever I wanted to.

One early Saturday morning I took my usual walk around the entire complex which was HUGE to see if I saw anything I wanted as all the venders were unloading their cars/trucks and setting their items out on tables.
This one morning I saw a white electric guitar sitting on a pile of WWI and WWII items which stuck out like a sore thumb because that vender only sold WWI and WWII items.

As a matter of fact I bought an awesome WWI sword, a WWII British helmet, and a pineapple grenade among many other items he sold me for dirt cheap. The sword alone was appraised at $800 to $1,500 CDN! Back then, which was around 1972/73 WWI and WWII items were dirt cheap.

So this white electric guitar was an anomaly at his booth and I asked what he wanted for it. He took $25!
I had been playing my first acoustic (a cheese grater) for close to a year and my father saw I was going to stick with it so he bought me an awesome Yamaha FG 365!!

I took the guitar home and pretty much forgot about for a few years!
Only after I had moved into my own apartment and had my first job did I realize what I had bought for $25!
It was a white Gibson Les Paul and I bought it used obviously and common sense told me whoever owned that guitar didn't pay good money for a Gibson LP only to get rid of it right away.

Whoever owned it knew it was a valuable real Gibson and in all likelihood played it for a few years at least before selling it. So it was used when I bought it around 72/73 and it's entirely reasonable to assume it was at least 5 to 10 plus years old when I bought it.

So at ten years old I bought my first electric which turned out to be a Gibson LP for $25!!!
The irony is - after I moved out I had completely forgot about it. Then for whatever reason I was reminded of it, I think I was looking at some album cover and saw a white Gibson LP.

That's when I realised the significance of that guitar. I visited my parents one Saturday and went to my old room but it wasn't there. I asked my mom if she knew where it was and her face went six shades of "oh sheeeeit" So Mom needed some stock as her sale items began to dwindle.

It was winter and all the yard/garage sales were shut down, and so she grabbed the guitar thinking it was a cheap low quality guitar which I hadn't bothered with after the first few days of bringing it home, and she sold it!! LOL!

I couldn't bring myself to ask what she sold it for, however, knowing my mother, whoever bought it was no doubt doing backflips not quite able to believe he/she absolutely swindled this little older English lady who had no clue what it was!

Yes, it stung, but I didn't blame my Mom at all, as I would have done the same thing if I were in her shoes at the time!
I got it for a scandalously low price, then the god of odds levelled the great Karmic wheel and somebody else got it for a steal! ")

Apologies for the lengthy comment, I thought you or others reading this would get a kick from it!
Take care brother Simon.

Jack ~'()'~
Canada

[McCreed]

Nothing wrong with this guitar at all, but it weighs a tonne...

That is generally the biggest complaint (FLOABW) that I have read about these guitars. If I were doing this project, one goal would be weight relief. My PBG Ash TL was also too heavy for my liking and my tact was a bit extreme. I did a swimming pool route.
I would do it a bit differently if were doing it today, but live and learn.

If you are looking to lose some heft, a couple options might be doing some comfort contouring (belly, forearm ala strat - I did this on mine too).

Another avenue would be re-thicknessing. A few mm off the back would eliminate some weight, and though it would be slightly thinner than a genuine F TL, it personally wouldn't bother me and would have no effect on the sound IMO.
I now have a Safe-T-Planer that fits in my drill press which I didn't have before, and would have planed off some material if I'd had it then.

A third (more drastic) option would be the "swiss cheese" approach. By this I mean drilling numerous hole with a 20mm+ forstner bit in the area discretely hidden under the pickguard. This is what Gibson does with their weight-relieved Les Pauls, except they're covered with a solid timber cap.

Whatever you do, I look forward to seeing where you take it! Cheers!

[dozymuppet]

Thanks fellas.

Sanding a few mils from the body is probably the main route I'll take, as well as squaring off the sides a bit. I'm trying to not buy any more tools at the moment, so no planer for me.

I've also thought about recessing the output and neck plates, and routing out more of the pickup cavities. Hadn't thought about a comfort cutout, but that's not a bad idea.

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[McCreed]

Sanding a few mils from the body is probably the main route I'll take, as well as squaring off the sides a bit. I'm trying to not buy any more tools at the moment, so no planer for me.

That's fair enough. Sanding off 3mm will be quite a task if you're doing it by hand. Next best thing to planing would be a belt sander, if you have one of those. An orbital sander will still be better than a a sanding block by hand, but maintaining an even thickness with either method could be trickier. Of course if you have a block plane, that's a very feasible option as well.

If you do it with an orbital or block, check your progress often with calipers, and use a steel rule/straight edge to check for humps and dips across the width and length.

Before power tools, all this stuff was done by hand by real craftsmen, but they had more skill in their little finger than I have in my whole body!

EDIT:
FYI, if you do have a drill press and are ever interested in a planer, THIS is what I have and it works great for my needs. $15 express shipping, I had it in under 24 hours.
I wouldn't want to try planing big full slabs with it, but for small pieces it's brilliant.

[dozymuppet]

I half stained it to see what I was still dealing with, and then a friend of a friend happens to have a thicknesser.



Went and gave it a delicate go, and the first couple of run throughs were promising, before we adjusted a little more aggressively. A thicknesser is made for longer bits of wood, and the guitar body ends pretty quickly, so it doesn't have a stable angle for very long. This meant that the apparently small drop off on the other side pushed the end still in the machine up at a such an angle that a groove was cut into the back of the shoulder.





We decided not to proceed with the thicknesser, and grabbed old mate's belt sander to work the groove out, and get it back to level. Managed to take off 2mm+, get it level, and remove another ~100g.



All's well that ends well. Tomorrow I'll start on a belly comfort curve.

[Simon Barden]

Nice work. It's worth spraying a light mist coat and sanding it evenly flat with sandpaper from a roll stuck to a flat plank of wood to get rid of any dips and high spots. The spray just allows you to see where the dips remain after the initial sand, so you can start sanding once touch dry as you'll remove it all.