Blue Sparkletop Mark II

owner: Bruce Murphy

I picked this up a month ago to replace my MKI that I had in my old days with Men Without Hats.

Sprayed Krylon blue metallic on the lid which covers the scratches well and is really tough. You can't scrape it off or chip it. The tolex was mangled, so I found some original blonde Fender tolex to match my Fender Bassman, traced the old tolex and glued 'er on. The underlying wood was severely gouged, so there's a ton of wood filler in there.

Playing-wise, it's got a really speedy action, and I just cleaned it up, replaced some broken tines and used teflon spray on the felt bits that move. I centered all the tines to emphasize the harmonics.

Leg mountings were broken and had to be re-welded, and the hardware had corroded to crap over the years, so I just replaced it all with black stuff from Speakeasy. I think a nice finishing touch will be an old '50s brown Fender Logo for the back. I'm going to cover the name rail with either diamond plate or some wood veneer...haven't decided.