Refinishing my Ibanez blazer bass

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16th October 2009

An Introduction:

In 1995 I was on the lookout for a decent bass guitar to learn on. Luckily at one of the local second hand shops I found an old Ibanez blazer custom bass. Not the prettiest in the world and not in the best condition. Priced at £65 I haggled it down to £55 and walked away with a bargain. I have no pictures of it from this time.

The blazer was Ibanez's low end rival to the Fender precision and would've cost just a couple of hundred pounds. Even now it doesn't sell for much which is quite surprising because it has developed quite a reputation for sounding awesome and I have to admit it is almost impossible to find as good a sound on another bass without breaking the bank. In fact I have bought 4 basses in the £500 - £1000 bracket to replace the 'ugly' blazer and each time the blazer stayed and the 'replacements' went back.

This particular model was made in October 1981 according to the serial number and is the 'custom made' version. I'm not sure what the difference is between the 'custom made' and the 'standard' version apart from the words 'custom made' being part of the logo decal. It has a swamp ash body and 'bolt on' one piece maple neck, fretboard and head which are all pretty simple and not overly contoured. Model No is BL700-NT.

Above I mentioned that it was not in the best condition by which I mean that the guitar body, neck, fretboard etc were all fine, apart from the obligatory 'dings' of which there were a fair few, but cosmetically poor as someone had decided that standard lumpy brown door varnish was an appealing look!!! The electrics needed sorting out although all the parts were in position and it needed stringing and then setting up.

Within a few days of getting it home and being an eager impatient young man it was stripped, the body was sanded back to the white ash and then it was clearcloated a couple of times. These were the days before I researched things and a long time before I developed patience of any kind. It didn't matter because I was happy enough with the end result.

After a day of letting the clearcoat dry the electrics were sorted out, scratchplate screwed on, strung, tuned and then setup.

So within a few days of purchase I had a decent looking ,awesome sounding bass for a total of £60 (the bass and the clearcoat.)

With the introduction out of the way we can now move onto the subject matter of this project which is refinishing the bass properly. Research has been done mainly at projectguitar.com but various other sources including forums have been used. One particularly inspiring site is the guitarist Jeff Miller's who makes the whole guitar from scratch. This site is well worth a look (or two.)

The aim is to use some 0.6mm bookmatched veneer on the face of the body and headstock. The particular figuring of the veneer I am using has various names including tiger stripe, flamed, rippled and fiddleback. I tend to call it 'tiger striped' so thats how I will refer to it. The colour will be a marine / royal blue but of course it is quite hard to capture actual colours in photographs.

I am also going to change the bass so that it no longer needs to have the scratchplate which involves making the entrance to the electrics on the rear instead of under the scratchplate. It also means the jack will be on the side rather than the face.

To finish this page here are a few pictures of the bass as it was before this project commenced. The 14 year old clearcoat has nicely yellowed with age as you can see on the pictures from how clear the clearcoat is where the scratchplate should be. You can also see some of the previous 'refinish' job where door varnish was left in hidden places.

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