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Here's how it went for me.
I used my Milwaukee heat gun, which goes from no heat at all on it's lowest setting to extremely hot at its highest. I adjusted it so that I could hold my hand about an inch from the nozzle for several seconds before it started to hurt. I aimed it near one edge of the guard and warmed it until it felt very warm, but not really hot, and started peeling. I used a palette knife to initially get under the edge, then just peeled with my fingers. Right away I saw that the guard was coming up quite easily, but the adhesive was staying on the guitar. As I slowly worked my way across, I increased the heat setting little by little, and gave it more time to heat up before peeling, trying to see if I could get the adhesive to come off with the guard, but it never did. I was probably being overly cautious with the heat.
Anyway, the guard came off fine, no spruce pulled up at all, and a few minutes of rubbing with naphtha on a rag cleaned off the goo. Most of the underlying shellac is very dulled or "etched" looking. No problem, in my case, since the guitar is going to be refinished. If I were going to maintain the french polish, I could just re-polish the area and it would be good as new. Still, I wonder if a nitro finish would have been similarly affected, and if the finish might have been completely undamaged if I had used more heat to release the adhesive.
I suspect the shellac is so susceptible to this kind of damage, though, that it wouldn't have mattered. I also removed a strap button which had a felt gasket under it. No adhesive on that, of course, but, even so, under the felt gasket the shellac is similarly dulled.
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