It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Subscribe to our Patreon, and get image uploads with no ads on the site!
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
Let's keep things practical and quantifiable. As I posted earlier, I have just got a new guitar stand which came with a warning not to leave a nitro finished guitar on it for an extended period. This made owning a nitro finished guitar sound like a total pain in the backside and left me wondering why anyone would choose a guitar with such a finish.
My take on the finish-affects-tone thing is that, as mentioned above, a thin finish is important but much more so on an acoustic guitar. Also, a lot of this probably comes from the reverence with which old violin finishes are held. However, the form of the sound is quite different - a guitar is plucked (mostly), whereas a violin is bowed.
I have a Les Paul in nitro (89 Gibson), and it smells great. Feels great too. A little checking/crazing but it lives in its case when not being played.
Adam
Thanks!
@three-coloursunburst
One thing I would say, with no joke attached, is some things in guitars are not quantifiable. The romance, the aroma, the feel, the heritage, the history and above all, the Mojo.
I'd never get excited about a new Dumble, but show me a knackered 1957 HP Tweed Twin and I'll faint with emotion.
Show me a PRS Dragon and I'll chuckle. Show me an all original 1952 Tele and I'll sell my mother for it.
A Helix leaves me cold; a vintage CE1 will result in hours of exploration.
Honestly, some things in guitarland are better processed by the right brain as no amount of left brain rationalisation will make any sense at all and a lot of it is down to emotion, mojo, history and stuff like that.
*An Official Foo-Approved guitarist since Sept 2023.
Nitro is mostly known as cellulose over here. There's nothing illegal about it except regulations to do with solvent emissions by which it's meant to be used for particular purposes like restoration, I believe. This is the reason cars are now wearing waterbase colour underneath the "poly" (not poly) or two-pack or 2k clearcoat.
Guitars often have 1k acrylic colour layer under the 2k clearcoat. Or may be solid colour 2k. As ICBM says some of the much-loved schemes were 1k acrylic, not nitro, I think Oly White was another iirc
Nitro/celly is a thousand times safer to use than 2k which sets by catalytic reaction, the hardener contains isocyanates which can cause extreme reactions. I know of a few people who passed out, two woke up in A&E on respirators.
It sets in a few hours, getting slightly harder over the next few days. I like to flat & polish the day after paint because of that. By day three it's that much harder to do.
Nitro is far safer to use and touch-dries very fast which makes it DIY-friendly. Less bugs & dust to land in it.
Sound - I've refined guitars and played them before/after. Like a Tele that got primer (on top of factory sealer), ground coat, metalflake in clearcoat, candy clearcoat, and clear to flat/polish. Relatively a lot of paint, it sounded the same. A few grammes of paint on a solid 5lb slab aren't likely to make much difference imho, an acoustic with the thin panels is a different thing altogether.
Difficult thing to test, need new strings, other things like electrics must be unchanged etc, pickup heights, neck shims, everything. So far I haven't noticed anything significant anyway.
Paint varies as much as guitars do. There's plasticky 2k and more glassy-feeling 2k. Some is nice to spray, some is horrible, you can feel when mixing, pouring even, how it's going to be and so far this feel carries on to what it's like to flat & buff too.
Celly/nitro and 2k do feel different but they can look the same. Many variables, more than just 'what paint type'.
The chief advantage of polyester is that it makes for a colorful and extremely tough, durable finish. Polyester guitar finishes age and weather especially well and are seemingly immune to climate and injury—they are highly resistant to scratching and checking, and colors remain remarkably pristine. Sonically, you get tones that are more purely those of the pickups rather than other elements of the instrument’s construction, which many players prefer.
<puts on coat>
• Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@Goldeneraguitars
http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/57632/
Agreed.
But equally there is the connectivity. Somehow an old nitro guitar feels like a comfy pair of shoes....
*An Official Foo-Approved guitarist since Sept 2023.
• Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@Goldeneraguitars
https://i.imgur.com/ANqggVM.jpg
You can see and FEEL the grain. You don't get that with a plastic finish.
• Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@Goldeneraguitars