Deej

What about carnauba wax? That won't fully protect it but it may be better than unfinished? With time that may lead to a unique coloration of the wood. Only time will tell! Gotta love it!

I'm not really sure what the best idea would be for the higher gloss, non faded, series. I used a wipe on Poly.. I know I know, the Paul has Nitro on it.. But I had no idea where to get ahold of that stuff. Still, the poly looks great and blended fantastic. You may want to look into some sort of Nitro, as you have some scratches around your binding. I do believe unwaxed Nitro would "blend" in to the new Nitro.. Correct me if I'm wrong tho.

Thanks!

Thanks bud!

It is not actual binding or real paint, but just the exposed maple top. This is what I did... Because the nitro is so thin on these faded tops, it was very easy to sand. So I put painter's tape as a guide around the side, where the maple cap stopped. I then cut very thin squares of 100 grit sand paper and took away the side nitro and red paint. I went over the guitar again to give the binding "depth". I angled the sand paper on the top of the guitar to take away a little bit of paint from the edges, to make it look like it had some thickness. I moved to 320 grit sand paper to smooth the edges. Now that just the maple cap was showing, I used clear coat to protect the exposed wood. One thin coat, sand, a thick coat and another sand. One last 320 grit sand, wax, and you can't tell it was after market. I'm very happy with the results! I'll try to get some better pictures up soon to show it in decent light.

Thanks you all! It's good to hear those with actual "high-end" Les Pauls tell you your Studio looks good. I appreciate it! Someday I may tell myself that I need to step up to a more expensive guitar.. But this one suits me well, plus it's kind of cool to have a "bound" Les Paul body with an unbound neck.. Sort of unique I suppose..

So I love my Les Paul Studio Faded Maple Top, don't get me wrong. These guitars are straight up beautiful! Especially if you spend a little time polishing them. However, one thing I always loved about higher end Les Pauls was the binding. It just makes the guitar look BETTER. So I decided to mod my Studio to have "binding". I think it really added character to this guitar, both in looks and in "mojo". Well, because I did it myself. I wanted to document this experience on the Gibson website in case some brave Do It Yourself-ers wanted to take the task at hand to have a more "higher end" look. Now I have seen faux binding added to refinished VM's, but never with a Studio Faded Maple Top.... So maybe this will be the first! Let me know what you think! Here are some before pictures: And after (sorry for the shots, iPhones don't take the greatest low-lighting pictures!)