Guitar Reviews 4U Gretsch Paint repairs - Gretsch G5420T examples shown

 

Guitar Reviews 4U Gretsch Paint repairs - Gretsch G5420T examples shown

Upgrading a guitar can leave you with new areas to paint match -

this is often tricky for existing metallic colours like this Fairlane Blue

So, you've upgraded some parts on your Gretsch guitar but this leaves you with a situation to overcome - that of matching repair paint to the original colour.

In this review, I'll show you how to match Gretsch colours to Fairlane Blue and to the Anniversary Green used on the 5420T guitars for the repairs.

Obtaining a perfect match to paints can be expensive for the amount needed and often the amount of paint needed is very small. 

On the 5420T in Fairlane Blue, I upgraded the open back machine heads to closed back Wilkinson WJ45 units you can see this review here on how I did that job. This left me with bare wood plug ends to disguise to the original paint colour.

Blue mix in a Bigsby B6C unit I did -

Acrylic car touch-in paint used

After drilling the new holes for the replacement Wilkinson units I plugged the original screw holes that were now not usable with hardwood cocktail sticks. Small wood plug pieces were glued in to flush level and left to dry.

Once I fitted the new machine heads, I then had the bare wood to cover. In this case I already had some car touch-in paints to hand to use but not a direct match, this was a Trophy blue acrylic paint for a 2004 MGTF car. I find the car acrylic touch-in paints are easy to use and dry quickly, working with cured poly and epoxy paint and cellulose.

Touched in Fairlane Blue on my 5420T

after fitting Wilkinson Machine Heads

I used a couple of drops of clear acrylic finish in the mixing palette and then toned this with the MG TF blue a small amount at a time, in this fashion you increase the colour depth in the clear carrier gradually until it matches. Its done a pretty good job here. 

Dark Green infilled B6C detail on my Gretsch 5420T upgrade

I upgraded my 5420t 2 tone Anniversary Green 5420T with a Bigsby B6C and you can read the story here. During this job also I replaced the strap buttons with strap locks and had to do a reinforcing repair to the strap button area nearest the neck which meant I needed to do repaint areas to chipped paint. 

My 1958 Cadillac Versailles Green Dietzler paints match!

for my Gretsch 5420T 2 tone Anniversary 5420T

Once I had done the repair to the inside of the body of the green 5420T guitar, I was left with an area where the paint had chipped away. The colour I needed I found was from Dietzler paints and although I did find some Du Pont cross reference, it would likely be tricky to get a pure match to the darker green on the 5420T. So I mixed my own by eye to suit.

5420T Versailles Green repair around the strap button area -

you can't see the new paint - so a successful job done

The Dietzler 1958 Cadillac paint chips 

On this darker green match for the 5420T, I noticed that the Versailles Green was a 'smoky' looking green and rather than just use a dark Racing Green type of shade and lighten it, I would blend up to the green shade I wanted.

The Versailles Green has 'yellow' tone to it rather than some of the green shades which have more of a  'Blue' tint to them.

I noted that a Ferguson Tractor Grey would be a good carrier base to tint up, so found a Ferguson T20 Grey which was a mid grey and could be tinted up with a dark green, for this I Green I used a Fraser Green I had modified the shade of slightly to paint garden bench ends. 

Both of these shades are UN1263 Synthetic Resin paint base used in vehicle restoration, the type it is also referred to as semi-cellulose in some places. 

For the final paint match, I put a small amount of the Ferguson Grey into a mixing palette and then using the Fraser Green, added small amounts into the Grey and mixed it around with a brush.

I checked the paint on a brush by eye to the Gretsch paint, until it matched and then painted in the repair areas on the guitar.

Once the paint had dried and hardened, after about 2 days, I carefully flatted the proud paint back to the level of the original paint using 1200grit wet and dry paper with water and washing up liquid to get the blend of paint levels. 

Once to level and dried, I gently polished the repair area with Farecla G3 rubbing compound to remove any surface swirl scratches and then used a clear autoglym resin polish to finish it off.

As you can see here, the paint match is invisible which is the intention! 

Paint matching to original paints can be done at home, but can be more challenging with some sparkle and candy finishes.

For the 5420T with clear tint coats like the Orange, I would use a Tamiya X-26 Orange Clear tinted into Tamiya Clear Coat. These paints are shown below

X26 Clear Orange and X22 Clear Coat acrylic paints

 

Guitar Reviews 4U Gretsch Guitar Strap Button area wood repair and Strap Button replacement

Guitar Reviews 4U Gretsch Guitar Strap Button replacement and wood repair

Here's a quick guide on how to fix your Strap Buttons if the wood is damaged.

A Bigsby upgrade on my Chinese made 5420T led to repairs needed 

and to the replacement of both of the strap buttons with Strap Lock Buttons

The Chinese made 5420T is supplied with spin-on Strap Lock Buttons 

These have LEFT HAND threaded screw posts into 

the body unlike the Korean and Japan guitars

that feature normal right hand threaded parts!

Gretsch  nice quality Japan Strap Buttons R/H Threaded posts!

The unique threaded Strap Buttons an innovation Gretsch Guitars are very good, but have a drawback that if the button gets dropped and lost on a dark stage you are in trouble!  As a consequence, many owners fit strap locks for speed of strap removal and guitar safety. 

On a recent Bigsby B6C upgrade on my 5420T guitar, the Strap buttons were replaced, but the screw post threads that go into the guitar are left hand threaded on this Chinese made guitar, unlike the Korean and Japan guitars which have right handed thread units. 

Holes can 'tear' out - like on this 5622T -

This is a fairly easy to repair.

Removing the button screwposts from the Chinese made 5420T guitar led to some damage at the neck end of the guitar and here's a quick article on how to fix a Gretsch that has damage here. The threads on the Chinese posts were left handed!

On the hollow body guitars fixing enlarged holes is fairly straightforward and this method I used actually strengthened the guitar in the button area.

Neck area Strap Button repair - hollow body Gretsch

The button post nearest the neck damaged the wood on removal as it was very tight. The wood here is quite thin and to avoid more damage I devised a simple way to reinforce the wood when fitting a new strap button to that area. The body in this area is not completely flat, so I cut a small block of hardwood - Maple is best, but I used a Mahogany substitute block around 1/2" by 5/16" approx. for the job.

I sanded by hand the top of the repair block away from the centre of it in all directions to give a 'contour' shape to match the guitar interior body profile curve - not much wood is needed to be removed here. (A plastic contour gauge will aid you in this job.) Then I drilled a hole through the centre of the block to aid the installation.

Showing how to pull up the repair block into place -

this block provides a good base for the post to screw into.

To instal the block, drop a piece of string or thread through the old button hole and catch it with a crochet hook or a piece of bent wire and pull it out through the F hole below the strap button hole. I then put the block onto the string and left plenty of spare string outside of the F hole. You'll see why shortly!

I tied a piece of match to the string under the block and applied some PVA wood glue to the top of the block, then holding the lower end of the string to keep the whole string taught, pulled the block up and through into the guitar body, so it glued into place under the string post hole.

I taped the string out of the post hole over onto the body to keep the string taught so the wood glue would bond the block to the inside of the body. It took this particular glue 24 hours to dry out.

A day later, I removed the tape and pulled the string back through the F Hole and removed the match, then pulled the string back through and out of the guitar body. Now I had the wood reinforcing repair block right under the place I needed. So when I redrilled the hole to the final size I would be drilling into much deeper solid wood than just the body side.

Next I needed a Dowel peg to repair the oversized hole left, a BBQ Skewer fitted the hole well so a short length of it was cut off and readied to fit. Get it as flush as you can before fitting so your work to level the peg dowel is reduced. This helps reduce damage to the body when sanding or finishing.

The Peg Dowel was then glued into place with PVA Wood glue and left for another day to cure. Once that was done I used more PVA glue to fill the recess around the peg and again left it a further day to cure. This PVA glue can be sanded and painted over so it was simplest to use this as a filler and it goes hard when cured. 

Schaller Strap lock Button installed and damaged paint touched in

Once this glue was cured I carefully sanded the peg back with a Dremel Hobby tool using a fine sanding band. During the string post removal the green body colour was marked by the grips used on the reluctant string post so i had now to colour match the green paint.

I used a UN1963 resin paint to do the paint repair - Ferguson Tractor light Grey and tinted it with some Fraser Green Tractor paint to the correct shade. I did this under artificial light which is not ideal but as you can see from the above picture, you can't see where I touched in the areas so that was successful. There is some light flare above the selector switch, so that is not a defect area.

Paint colour matched for the damaged area on the guitar - 

Ferguson tractor Grey base with Fraser Green added to suit

Once the paint had cured I sanded it back using wet and dry paper with water and washing up liquid carefully. I used a 1200 grade fine grit on the job using light pressure. This did scratch the surrounding paint area so I used Farecla G3 fine rubbing compound to remove the scratches and a wax polish to finish off.

Next up was to drill the blanked off hole to take the new Strap Lock screws. I decided to use Schaller Strap Lock Buttons rather than the Gretsch screw on button posts. 

A Drill Block Guide - this keeps the Drill bit squarer 

when drilling using a cordless drill

To drill the holes I used a Cordless hand drill. I predrilled the Drill Block Guide from a piece of Pine Beading wood on the Pillar Drill. I used 1.5, 2 and 2.5mm Drill Bits as you can see on the Block here.

The way I used it was to put the drill block guide on the 1.5mm drill bit and start the drill bit carefully, then slid the block down flush with the guitar body top and then carefully and slowly drilled through the dowel peg repair. I then repeated the process with the 2 and 2.5mm bits to open the holes out enough for the new screw.

When doing this drilling job - check your screw sizes against your drill bits before doing any drilling. I would suggest that you use a scrap piece of wood to drill and try your screw into that to get the right size for the job before going to do the job on the guitar.

I use this Beeswax Leather Polish to lubricate screws for guitar work

Once drilled to the right size, I fitted the Schaller Strap Lock Button and felt, over a stainless steel washer which sat on the guitar body top to provide more area for mounting. I gave the screw some wax sparingly and screwed on the button, job done.

Looks great and much stronger than originally made.

Bigsby area Strap Button repair - hollow body Gretsch

Strap Button hole enlarged - a fairly easy repair to do

Some guitars may have a wood block in this area inside the body so all that is required is a dowel peg repair. If one is not present then use the wood block method used on the neck end to do the repair. The advantage is here the Bigsby tail plate covers the repair area over so paint colour matching is not so critical here.

Be aware that some guitars run a ground wire through the end of the body to sit under the Bigsby plate so do ensure this is in place and making contact after doing your repair.