Official Luthiers Forum!

The owner of one of my guitars that I built for him a couple years ago was in town and dropped by today. It's fun seeing a guitar that's been out in the wild for a while. The guitar is in great shape but there are some light pick marks in the finish between the sound hole and the bridge below the high E string. They're only visible at this point when the light is at the right angle but we were talking about maybe putting a pickguard on to keep things from progressing any further. The pickguard would be clear to preserve the guitar's current appearance. Most of the marks are just brush marks, but a few of them look like very slight depressions in the finish.

So my question is, since the pickguard material wouldn't be in direct contact with the finish in those depressed spots, would they be made more visible by being overlaid with the pickguard, or possibly become more visible over time because of the pickguard for some reason?

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Guess if there was enough finish in the area, I would try to buff out the scratches. They likely will show under the clear pickguard.