Rickenbacker Bass Restoration (a thing I did)

How it looked when I bought it.

It is hard to see here but the glue joints holding the body together had failed allowing the neck to bend forward. The action was about a half inch high which is not a good thing.

Body wings separated

To fix the glue joints, I had to separate them further. I used a little heat from a PVC blanket to soften the rest of the glue and pull the wood apart. Apologies for the poor quality image.

Body wings reattached

After truing up the glue joints on my jointer, I added some small locating pins to keep the parts aligned during glue-up. This is the freshly reassembled woodwork. I also pulled all of the frets and leveled the fiingerboard during this part.

Walnut headstock ears

I decided to give it a vintage look by replacing the original maple ears with a pair made of nice walnut. Here they are glued on and shaped to fit.

Tuner holes drilled

Then I had to drill the tuner holes into the new ears.

Test fit and setup

After refretting it, I installed all of the hardware to see if everything fit right and if the bass was playable. The metal hardware would all eventually be re-powder-coated. 30 years of use (and abuse) chipped it up pretty badly.

The completed headstock

Here is the headstock with its new ears complete with tuners and truss rod cover. All that is missing now is a finish.

Completed body

Here is the completed bass. The guys at Third Coast Guitars in Chicago did the finish work. They did a superb job as did the powder-coating people. The pickguard is an exact replacement made from the original which was scratched and damaged.

Finished headstock

And here is the headstock with its new finish and freshly powder-coated tuners.

Fully restored

Here it is in perfect playing condition and looking brand new. Not bad for being 29 years old.