Low Down Instrument Repair: Rickenbacker 2060 El Dorado Restoration

Up next thru the shop is a personal project I decided to take on.
A few months back I came across a Rickenbacker bass on craigslist that I didn't recognize. After a little research I found out it is a rare Rickenbacker 2060 El Dorado. From what I can tell they were made in the nineties as a "alternative" to the traditional Rick models. I was looking for a restoration example for the shop and this one seemed to fit the bill. The guy didn't really realize what he had and I got it for a great price.
When I went to pick it up I found it to be in way worst shape than the ad had lead me to believe. But I decided it was still too good to pass up. Here are some pics I took of the bass when I got it home.
The headstock was all dinged up and sporting an odd Aria chrome tuner.

The maple fretboard was nasty and had cigarette burns by the headstock. Frets were very worn, especially in the lower notes.

The neck and body…

And the pickguard and hardware… it was in pretty bad shape.

I started by removing all the stock hardware and cleaning it. I found out that pretty much all the intonation screws for the bridge were stripped. I managed to get them all off and replaced them with some stock screws I had in the shop.

Got the neck separated from the body. You can see the spider webs and cracks in the finish on the body.

Another shot of the pickguard and electronics, this time with the bridge removed.

Here is a shot of the controls still hooked up. Pretty interesting setup. 3 way pickup selector switch and a master volume and tone control.

And the controls separated from the pickups…

And here is a shot of the underside of the pickups. Another interesting aspect of this bass is the pickup height that is adjusted from some hex screws on the backside of the body.

Here is the body completely stripped of hardware…

The next thing I tackled was the neck. First was to plug the mounting hole from the odd Aria tuner.

The hole for the actual tuning machine was a little bigger than the others but I tried out one of the other stock tuners and it fit reasonably well and seemed sturdy.
Then I started removing the frets.

After that, I sanded down the maple fretboard to remove the gunk.

Then I started tackling the binding. The finish over the binding had become discolored and was chipping off all over the place.

So I started stripping off the chipped finish with a razor blade to make things a little easier for whoever was going to do the finish stripping. Here is a shot of the binding stripped and sanded smooth.

Then I sanded off the finish on the neck with 120 grit and sanded it down to 300. Then I applied a french polish with Tru Oil which came out really nice. Really complimented the subtle flame in the maple. Here is a shot of the headstock after the last coat of Tru Oil.

Next up was to make a new pickguard. I ordered a white sheet from Stew Mac and traced around the original pickguard to get a rough shape.

Then, using double sided tape, I taped the original pickguard onto the rough shaped one and used the original as a template and shaped and sanded accordingly.

And here is the new one side by side with the original.

The neck was ready for the re fret and the body was ready for stripping and re finishing.
After some research I found out about Marty Bell and after seeing his work decided he would be a great candidate for the body refinish. He was great to deal with and had a really quick turn around time and was very reasonably priced for the work that had to be done (especially considering all the binding).
Here some pics Marty sent me after the re finish. He did an amazing job!

Once I got the body back I ordered all the period correct hardware. This bass was originally equipped with Schaller Tuners which are more or less identical to the Scahller M4 tuners which are made now. The bridge was an early model Roller bridge. The newer Schaller Roller bridges have three mounting screws instead of 4 like this early model and the footprint of the early model is slightly different. I was able to find the same exact knobs on the Pick O The Ricks website. I also ordered new gold pickguard screws as well as a new gold input jack plate.
Here are the electronics, knobs and pickguard installed.

And here is the sidejack plate…

And the Roller bridge…

I am still trying to acquire all the necessary tools for a re fret so for the time being I brought this one to my good friend and expert repairman Carl Pedigo (a.k.a The Chicago Bass Doctor) for the re fret. He did an amazing job as usual.
Once I got the neck back from him I installed the tuners and the nut. There is tiny gap from the odd Aria tuner but you can barely see it from the back of the headstock.

Then I hit the neck with some Howards Feed N Wax and tried to buff out some minor scratches that came from Carl's neck jig.

Then I strung it up and started to dial in a setup. I decided to shim the nut to accommodate for the new frets. I filed down the nut slots to get things just right and then dialed in the rest of the setup. Then I screwed the truss rod cover/emblem back on and BAM! Here she is all restored and setup. The bass plays really nicely and the tone of this thing is very unique.