Gretsch White Falcon

This beautiful 1950s Gretsch White Falcon came in for a refurb we thought that it would need a complete refinish but under the DIY orange peel paint job that someone slapped on in the seventies, we discovered that the original paint was still intact, but it was a slow laborious process and risked burning through the original Nitro finish, every rub of the cloth had to be done with great care and all the time you dont know if you will uncover a filler or repair that the botched paint job was covering.

So obviously there was a beautiful guitar under there but first looks would have made anyone think this is a full repaint job.

Before

yes it was all kinds of wrong, wrong colour, we know they yellow a bit but this was too much, binding painted, thick edge, lumps in the paint etc.

so the binding will need scraping back too

you can see the orange peel and that the paint is lifting in places

the binding was mostly overpainted which was actually of benefit.

as was the orange peel which although thick and nasty had actually preserved the original paint.

The Process

After a light abrasion with a fine wet and dry we start to see the original paint

The binding is actually 5 ply on the edge and 3ply on the F holes, again this works to our advantage as once scraped back to the original paint, the chipped paint on the edges is less prominent.