Headstock facia refinish.

[planetgaffnet]

I'm sure by now most of you will have seen the series one Cruisebass up on eBay; the finish is a bit of a mess and it would need some TLC to get it looking happy again.  I've been giving some thought about pulling the trigger on this but (probably stupidly), what's holding me back is that any refinish would likely involve removing the finish and Hamer logo off the front of the headstock.  (See below.)  Sooooo, how would you go about refinishing the front of the headstock? 

Cheers
Paul

 

[Steve Haynie]

For the price of that bass it would not be wise to refinish it.  Doing it correctly would add enough to the price to make the investment more than the bass is worth.  You can find nicer examples for the same amount or less. 

There are some reproduction logos out there.  Some of the other guys know where to get the better ones. 

[planetgaffnet]

I love to be able to find a better example for less!  Unfortunately I'm the wrong side of the Atlantic for this to be feasible.  They're rarer than rocking-horse droppings over here.

[Jeff R]

Look on the bright side, you've literally got a head start on Hamer's black and white zulu finish!

[Jem]

11 minutes ago, planetgaffnet said:

I love to be able to find a better example for less!  Unfortunately I'm the wrong side of the Atlantic for this to be feasible.  They're rarer than rocking-horse droppings over here.

 

They do come up from time to time over here and to be honest they don't shift that well, I almost brought one a few years back because it was soo cheap (about £300 and stock with a 2Tek bridge) and it just sat there but then the reality dropped in on "what the bloody hell am I going to do with a bass FFS".

Just further to this it's not the best time to buy from the States at the moment, the $Usd is around 1.4 if your lucky which will make that around a £630 quid bass by the time it lands and everything's paid for which is very much at it's money - and perhaps then some especially if you're thinking about some restoration that you'd have to farm out.

On that point, keep an eye out on ebay.de, a lot of Hamer's production ended up in Germany, especially around the early / mid 80's, I've picked up a couple FBII's through it and they are really rare compared to Cruise's. Obviously if you do snag one, ok, the €uro exchange isn't the best at the moment but with cheaper shipping and no VAT or duty to pay it'll save you a bundle.

I'd like to make a final comment about your original question on "refinishing the front of the headstock". The actual procedure wouldn't be rocketscience: strip it, prime it, blow it over black, apply logo (there's a number of people who can do proper dry transfer copies), clear over and job done but, and this really would be the but for me, is you now have a guitar with a nice shiny headstock and a beat to hell everything else which I think would look pretty odd. If it was a bolt on it would be a different matter, a veritable piece of piss.

This, In a roundabout way brings me back to Steve's statement of 'holding out for a nicer one' - you're call on that one especially if you not in to the 'heavily played' look.

[planetgaffnet]

12 hours ago, Jem said:

...you now have a guitar with a nice shiny headstock and a beat to hell everything else...

I would restore the whole bass!

[Jem]

3 hours ago, planetgaffnet said:

I would restore the whole bass!

Well, what you actually asked was "Sooooo, how would you go about refinishing the front of the headstock?"

So, if you're going to do the whole guitar, to my mind that would definitely make it a case for finding a better one.