The Mod Squad
Most new guitars have lovely high-gloss finishes. But what if you like things to look a little more lived in? Your choice is limited and often expensive, muses Dave Burrluck. Time for a change?
Why is it that with all the different types of guitars you can buy, with different pickups, hardware, woods and style, we invariably have only one finish type: gloss? Oh, and occasionally matt or satin, even though those finishes are often deemed ‘cheaper’. A high-quality modern finish is expected with no marks or blemishes. Modern finishes (polyesters, polyurethanes, acrylics) have been used on pretty much everything since the 70s, replacing nitrocellulose in the majority of cases for numerous reasons: they’re more stable, harder wearing, faster drying, easier to buff, and so on. Initially, many lower-end brands found they could heap on these ‘poly’ finishes and hide a lack of preparation. Today, a thinner finish is preferred and often is promoted as ‘better’.
However, with this advancement of materials, technology and the process of finishing, what we’ve lost along the way is feel. There are plenty of high-end makers offering nitro finishes, or burnished-looking low glosses, but few are available in the ‘affordable’ market. And as nicely as the majority of these new guitars are finished, the danger is that – to many of us who are used to those older nitro guitars with their invariably aged patina – the 2020 mass production guitar can feel a bit plasticky.
Back In The Day…
When I started making guitars I soon realised the big problem. However deftly I’d put the instrument together, its finish always let it down. The electric guitars on sale in my local music shops were all squeaky clean, sparkly and finished in what looked to me like a plastic coating. I soon became aware that these instruments were sprayed, like cars. Using a hand-brushed finish, even if it was a seemingly mythical substance called Rustins Plastic Coating, didn’t seem to compete. I got pretty good at it, though, particularly when I found a local metal-finishing factory that sold me some wet-and-dry paper a lot finer in grade than I could buy at the local hardware store.
As I painstakingly cut back the finish and levelled it, going through the grades getting ever finer before I hand-buffed the finish with T-Cut and other ever-milder abrasives, I read about buffing wheels. Spray booths, buffing wheels? This was a future that looked a long way off. When I found someone who could spray and buff my guitars, then, I was in seventh heaven. Call me Leo Burrluck. The helpful chap resprayed cars for a living. What I didn’t realise then was that cars and guitars are rather different…
I had earnestly reworked an unnamed thinline archtop guitar by taking its top off, installing a centre block, and putting it all back together. I decided a nice deep red would look the business and duly dispatched the carefully sanded guitar to my car-sprayer. When I eventually got the guitar back it looked a complete mess. My very apologetic car-spraying friend had done his job, but for some reason the finish he was using reacted to whatever finish was on my guitar, which I thought I’d completely removed. I couldn’t face stripping the paint off and resanding the guitar, so I cut the finish back and handbuffed it as best I could. There were plenty
I’d admire a gloss finish, but I found myself developing an unnatural attraction to less shiny instruments
of, ‘Oh dear, what went wrong? That’s a shame,’ comments. I thought I’d failed: my restoration or reworking had ended in disaster. Nobody knew about people purposely ageing a guitar’s finish back then. In fact, unwittingly, I’d created a relic a long time before such finishes existed outside the shady world of the forger and faker.
It might well be those early experiments in guitar finishing that shaped my personal taste in guitars. Professionally, I’d admire anyone who could put a lovely gloss finish on an instrument, but I found myself developing an unnatural attraction to less shiny instruments. Working with wood from a young age, I loved the smell, the tactile feel. I began to question why people wanted to encase that with a shiny plastic barrier. Many guitar makers I spoke to over the ensuing years felt the same, but ‘It’s what the customer or the dealer wants’ became a pretty standard reply. Most would invariably add that the actual finishing process is the most labour-intensive part of a guitar’s construction. The pursuit of perfection was well underway.
I’m not sure when I first came across an oil finish on a guitar, but it was probably a neck – and it was a revelation. Not only did it feel good, natural, it could be achieved without spray guns, buffing wheels or even the highly toxic ( judging by its smell, anyway) Plastic Coating. Researching and speaking to any instrument maker who
would entertain me, I began to see that the sprayed gloss finishes were an industrial construct; more grass-roots hand-makers often didn’t spray. I discovered French Polishing, Melamine sanding sealer: coatings that could be applied by hand and worked up to a lovely low lustre not only felt good but, to me, looked more ‘expensive’ than those glossy guitars in the music shop. Above all, it enhanced the raw material, the wood, bringing a depth of colour, even on a fairly bland-looking alder body.
A Lower Gloss
For us modders, the finish on an instrument can be a big stumbling block. If you want to change that high-gloss plastic finish, you’ll be looking at a princely sum to get it stripped, resprayed and polished. Removing a finish that’s typically polyester or polyurethane is certainly possible with a hot air gun and spatula, or by sanding. Both need some care. As ever, a bolt-on is easier to work on, and respray costs on a Strat- or Tele-style body should be a lot less than an entire glued-neck guitar.
Can you cut back the gloss a bit? Yes. It’s basically what Gibson does with its VOS finish, which isn’t aged as such, it just has a low-gloss lustre. The theory is simple enough: you need to flat the gloss, which will need a 600-grit wet-and-dry paper (dabbed in a bowl of water with a
Get a feel for the finish. While most modern finishes are pretty hard, some are also pretty thin
little washing-up liquid in it) and constant mopping up with kitchen towel. Once the finish is looking flat all over, go up a grade and continue until, ideally, you’re on 1,500- or even 2,000-grit by which time you’ll already have a near-burnished-looking finish. T-Cut, or a similar rubbing compound, and elbow grease will create a low-gloss lustre.
If you want a more textured look, such as the hand-rubbed finish on the higher-end Yamaha Revstar guitars, for example, you’ll need to stop around 800-grit and be very careful to rub the finish in a consistent direction. Good luck.
You need to get a feel for the finish, too. While most modern finishes are pretty hard, some are also pretty thin. PRS’s SEs are a good example, and the thinner the finish the more chance of you have of rubbing through to the wood, which is not what we want, unless you’re aiming for a relic. Nitro finishes need even more care and, unless you have a good understanding of the above, we’d leave those to someone with a little more experience.
Neck finishes, too, get many in a lather, but using the described method it’s easy to create a lovely silky smooth neck feel. You can remove the often the very thin neck finish on a Fender-style neck, take it back to the bare wood, then use oil (Tung or Danish) and a wax to build a smooth tactile finish. While the former will barely affect the value of your guitar (especially since the flatted neck finish will gloss back up with playing), removing the neck finish entirely certainly will.
Ageing hardware isn’t as difficult as you might think, but there are also numerous brands out there offering preaged parts. Personally, I’m quite a fan of nickel hardware and some honest gigsweat and grime – the nickel will age very authentically and quickly. Chrome-plating, on the other hand, will stay shiny for many years and is more difficult to age.
Exactly where the desire for shiny ‘dipped in glass’ guitars came from I’m not sure. These highly efficient modern finishes will look the same in 30 years’ time; any dings that occur will stick out like a sore thumb. While we, the players, age, our instrument stays in some kind of time warp. As ever, if you want something outside of the mainstream, you either pay to go upmarket… or do it yourself!