Official Luthiers Forum!

This is a great thread and very much what I was hoping for! Thanks everyone for your participation!

Tim your point that the flexibility of the finish is important is a excellent point. To sum it up so far we want thin, flexible finishes that are tough enough for the particular kind of playing that an individual guitar will encounter.

John I have a FPed L-OO here that I built to be very light weight and have minimal finish. It has only enough shellac on it to offer the very least amount of protection. It sounds clearly different than my other guitars and much more like when I have strung up a guitar prior to finish. Subjective statement? Yep but at some point if we discount every observation for lack of empirical data we just may step in that thing that looks like, but we have no evidence that it is, a pile of....well you know.

Al your partner's experiment indicates that you guys like to smoke the drapes too - I mean that you could hear the finish as well. Great example!

The other take-away from your post is that oil finishes do damp more so than other finishes and it can be a bit of a long walk on a short pier too with additional finish required over time hence increasing the problem of damping.

Paul thanks for that my friend. So you guys can hear the finish too. It makes me wonder if any finish is capable of adding anything pleasing to the sound of a guitar?

Darryl's question is an excellent one and I would like to hear people's thoughts regarding how the various finishes stack up for flexibility? Anyone care to comment please?

Good point Michael and I still wanna build and own for myself a guitar with a shellaced top.

Woody fear not there are lots of drapes left enough for all.... So with your memories of FP you have tennis arm?

John pickguards are a great thread in the works.... But Ervin has something to say about them too on his DVD and it is not positive.....

More thoughts please?

I don't like pickguards as i believe they are tone killers just like most finishes.They restrict top movement which i believe is the biggest tone killer.

It's kinda like geting the top exactly how we want it..................and then gluing the bridge on


Right elbow from pitching baseball, left elbow from FP

If a top is too thin, too light, or too...........something else, a thick finish (or any finish) might actually help. Also, tone is subjective. I've refinished several manufacturered guitars, and they all sounded better after the re finish. I strip them with a heat gun, but I'd say it would be next to impossible to strip a finish without removing some wood. There's always a few nicks and scratches to sand out. Most "manufacturered" guitars are overbuilt, so a re finish (and the slight thinning of the top) is going to make them sound better. Again, tone is subjective.

I would build a guitar, finish it, record it, re finish it with something else, record it, and so on, but I bet the top would loose a little thickness with every re finish. It wouldn't be a fair comparison.

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I didn't mean to say it, but I meant what I said.
http://www.brackettinstruments.com/

This is a really fascinating thread. One thing that jumps out at me is the idea of a guitar left free of any finish whatsoever. It would get dirty and stained, of course, but that might be kind of cool. Am I being daft?

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George :-)

Corky:
I very strongly feel that KTM9, being water based, puts a lot of water into the wood that it is sprayed onto. After it skins over, and with usually zpoxy underneath, that water is trapped between the two hard layers and takes a LONG time to escape. I also have wondered about " opening up", I am beginning to think that the phenomenon is mostly a matter of the solvents (either thinner or water) finally evaporating out of the finish. I do know that I don't level sand until I can't smell any "paint smell", that indicates to me that the KTM9 is hard enough to sand and polish. Afterwards, it takes another two weeks for the newly released solvents to finallly dissipate . I would bet dollars to donuts that if I sanded again that there's still more solvents in the paint.
I'm thinkin that maybe some of the newer multipart finishes that chemically cure and have fewer solvents might " open up" faster................. Mikey

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The Biggest Little City, Nevada
www.hammondguitars.com
I love building guitars!

It seems to me , if one is using the reflective back style of building , a harder finish would be more desireable, at least on the back and sides, listen to the ovation tubs ! if one is going with the responsive back style of building then I would think a lighter more flexible finish would be more apropriate. with the tops I would think , go for minimum damping, ...... just some thoughts I had . Jody

I'm with you Mark my friend and I don't like pickguards much either for the same reasons.

George after reading your post and of course not thinking that you are daft either I thought that I would show everyone the closest that I ever was to a guitar with no finish....

This one is 3 years old last week, is FPed with the absolute minimal amount of FP that I could get away with which added about 1 ounce to the over all weight. It is pore filled with Z-Poxy and if I did it all over again I would sand back to the pores and not leave the thin film on the surface of the guitar. It pops figure great sure but shellac does too and does not look as amber as some Z-poxy jobs IMHO.

When I built this guitar it was never going to be for sale and was specifically built if anyone remembers what I posted back them to see how close to the implosion line I could get AND how light weight I could build. I selected this nice set of mahogany because a) I love the sound of a mahogany guitar and b) it was one of the lightest sets that I had at the time. The top is Euro, Italian spruce from Uncle Bob and one of the stiffest pieces of any kind of spruce that I have ever had in my shop. As such the top in is the .090 range for thickness in the bridge area and thinner around the edges of the lower bout.

Some things that I could have done better are bridge material selection, this one was 34 grams and could have been less massive on a guitar this size. And EIRW fret board would have saved some weight too.

Anyway it has very little finish on it and it was strung up and played with no finish prior to the french polish job which now that I took Robbie's excellent course I can do a lot better....

My impressions after the guitar was finished is that the tone did not change very much and the little difference that I heard was a tightness that was not there before. Even with very little shellac but again there is Z-poxy all over the thing too.

I never expected this guitar to last but it is doing fine, very little belly and no cave in in front of the bridge. No signs of needing a neck reset either. It is an enveloping sound with an active back but even as an L-OO I just got done playing with five other guitarists here and everyone had a dread but one guy. I was as loud as anyone else.

Anyway I thought that I could show you a guitar with very little finish. Since I am careful when I use a pic the finish it is doing fine except for some hanger rash from hanging around my shop. It's braced with very stiff adi too. I really like this guitar and it is effortless to play with a great set-up. Since it is lasting I may strip/sand it back and redo the FP and pore fill not leaving a film of epoxy on the wood but only in the pores.

When it comes to finishes we have to look at the inference that the finish will ad. I am a Nitro guy but it matters not. The import thing is that it isn't what we put on but what we let on. French Polish and Nitro are my favorites as they are less acoustically pronounced.
Yes you can hear finish maybe , I don't have that good an ear. I have seen guitars done without finish , just waxed , you name it and if if could be out on it I think I have seen it. The one thing that surprised me the most was acrylic lacquer. A kit builder who was familiar with car finishes used auto clear coat. His guitar look very nice and sounded very good.
The unfinished guitar over time went backward. I cannot prove it but I think the body oils and other contaminates atmospherically borne can then penetrate the wood. Wax finish wasn't bad but you have little protection. Martin uses a poly paste on the X series , this is a very thin layer of finish but they did their homework as these HP solid tops sound pretty good.
Steel strings have more energy at to work with so I think Classical guitars are more prone to this effect.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

John,

I have heard the same thing about "White" guitars degrading quickly from a local tech who does quite a bit of repair work...

He talks about folks coming in after sanding down the finish... "Hey man, my guitar sounds so awesome..." ... Then they are back 6 months to a year later... "Hey man, I don't know what happened, but this guitar all of a sudden just went dead!"... and there it was... The white guitar with a grimey looking top... and yes... it really had just sort of lost something in the sound......

Of course, only that owner knows the rest of his story... that maybe if a little was good... Way more must be better... and the fellow may have just kept sanding more and more and more....... and just totally messed up the balance of the Guitar after several months of monkeying around!

Thanks

John

Re French polish and flatpicking: Tony Rice had the top on his latest Santa Cruz steel string
French polished.