Gloss

[bill67]

Is there a easy way to take the gloss off a guitar and would it sound better?

[Versatile]

Depends on the guitar and the gloss....which is it?

[TommyK]

I've heard of people burnishing the finish with a rubbing compound or very find wet sanding it. This will remove the gloss, but swirls are inevitable. Will the sound improve? Who knows? Give it a whirl and let us know how it turns out.

[dhanners623]

If the gloss is from a poly finish, dulling it would probably do nothing to affect the sound. Even a light polyurethane finish is pretty heavy compared to a nitro finish, and dulling it (through sanding, etc.) won't remove the finish. It'll just dull the very top layer of the poly.

 

Years ago, I had a Takamine F-360 and decided to have the finish taken off the top to see if it would do anything to the sound. It was a plywood-topped guitar, so the difference in sound was going to be negligible but I was young and stupid and had dough burning a hole in my pocket. When I went to pick up the guitar from the shop, the repairman who did the work said the finish was almost impossible to remove and required lots and lots of intensive sanding. When it was done, the guitar sounded a bit better, but I don't know if the "improvement" was worth the time and money. And with the finish off, it didn't take much to scratch the bare wood. Within a couple of months, the guitar looked like it was a vintage Martin that had been played hard. Didn't sound like one, though. I often joked that nobody would mistake the sound for Clarence White's Martin, but then again nobody would mistake me for Clarence White.

 

I did have the finish dulled on an Epiphone slope-shoulder guitar a few years ago. The thing was just too shiny for my tastes. I took it to a shop in the Twin Cities and had a repairman do it. It really is a job for professionals because you have to work to avoid swirls and it takes a lot of work to get close to the bridge and end of the fretboard, otherwise you'll have glossy borders around those parts.

 

The guitar looked better when it was done. While it was glossy, though, I was able to use the finish to my advantage once. I was playing a gig and there was a drunk in the front row who didn't feel the need to keep his comments to himself while I was playing. I noticed that if I stood in a particular spot and angled my guitar in a particular way, I could capture one of the spotlights and reflect it into the guy's eyes. After awhile, he couldn't figure out why the lights were very bright and eventually left.

 

I've thought of trying to have something done with the poly finish on my IB'64 Texan. I love the guitar, but the poly finish -- though relatively light -- still just looks too heavy. And, unlike a nitro finish, it'll never age or get that patina a nitro finish gets. There is actually a guitar shop in Nashville that will "relic" acoustic guitars (like Fender does with some of their electrics, and Huss & Dalton has started doing with some of its high-end acoustics) and after looking at some of the work on their website, I e-mailed them just for the heck of it to see if they could relic a guitar with a poly finish. They wrote back and said that actually, poly finishes were easier to relic in some respects than nitro finishes. The bottom line, though, was the cost -- it would run as much as $500, which is more than what I paid for the guitar. I wanted the look, I just didn't want to pay that much.

 

And yeah, I know some people will say, "Just play the hell out of the guitar" but the fact is, with a poly finish, you can play the hell out of it and it's still not going to look like a vintage instrument, at least not in this lifetime.

[Ship of fools]

Is it a solid top or a laminate, doesn't really matter not suggested in the least. Most coating on the top are designed in nature to help stabalize the top and if the top is slightly thicker sometimes its done because the design was thinner and they might have wanted to protect the top. This is pure specualtion on my part but for the most its not recommended to do this to any guitar unless you really know what you are doing or don't care much for the guitar itself.I have to wonder why you would buy it if you don't like the looks of the heavier coat.Ship