Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi guys,

I need to replace cheap aftermarket pickup rings on my '94 Les Paul Classic with genuine Gibson ones. These come with flat bottoms. Reports are mixed; at the factory do they arch the bottoms to fit each guitar or do you gently tighten them and allow the plastic to curve under the pressure from the screws?

Secondly, the neck has had bad paintwork from an earlier repair and I need to refinish the neck in nitro. It looks like there's an aged / amber tint lacquer over the translucent cherry lacquer, which is also used to tint the binding for an aged look. The paint has rubbed through in a couple of places; one is down to the bare mahogany, but the other area shows signs of there being another amber tint coat underneath the cherry. Is this just the sealer coat or do they do a tinted clear under the cherry as well as on top?


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Some pics of the finish would help.

_________________
Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

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I do not see any earlier repairs or any real sign this neck has had any additional spray work done to it. The amber tint over the cherry is the clear nitro lacquer. Clear nitro is never actually clear, it always has a yellow tint. This yellowing will continue to darken with age whether it is dried or still in the can....What you see under the cherry is the sealer which is also a nitro and has also yellowed quite a bit with age. In fact since the cherry color was actually mixed in clear nitro it has now also shifted in shade a bit toward the orange from what it was when new.....

_________________
Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Thanks, Brian. That's what I suspected re the layers.

The history of the neck is that it had a headstock fracture repaired. The guy told me he had finished it in Polyurethane, blending into the original finish along the neck. I suppose what he did was to retouch the area of repair in cherry having repaired it and then blow over the whole headstock and half of the neck in clear Poly. Given the fracture was so slight though, it's also possible he simply glued it, smoothed it over without rubbing through the cherry, and then just clear coated it.

The problem with this was that in the process of trying to rectify his abysmal fretwork (see my other post called Shocking Fretwork), I masked up the side of the neck. When I removed the tape it pulled up the poly clear about half way down the neck. I tried to feather this in but as you can see failed miserably - I hasten to add at this point that I am not a professional luthier, with only two guitars under my belt!

A violin maker friend told me that you can use petrol or similar to remove poly without affecting the nitro. Is this the case?

Anyway, my ideal resolution to this situation would be to remove any traces of poly, re-seal and touch up the area where the cherry has been rubbed through, and then re-lacquer in nitro.

My questions to you professionals would be:

1. Should I successfully be able to spray in the missing cherry on just the area rubbed through and then go over with tinted clear to blend it in, or am I best off rubbing back a larger area through the cherry and refinishing a larger section of neck in cherry?
2. What's the best way of removing Poly without affecting nitro as much as possible?
3. Even though it's far from ideal, am I better off for simplicity's sake just spraying nitro clear over the poly so that it at least feels right, rather than taking the time to remove all traces of poly?

Thanks so much

No. Nitro is far more fragile than a poly type coating and anything that will remove poly will readily destroy any air dry lacquer.



Depends. Do you have an airbrush and how good are you with it? you will need to work on a larger area than you want to cover but removing more lacquer shouldn't be necessary.


There is none......To take off the poly will remove the lacquer underneath, end of story.


You can try, but if tape peeled back some of the poly then the prep work between the poly and nitro wasn't good enough. That means that as the new nitro drys and cures and shrinks back it may likely cause more spots to peel.....

Poly was the absolute wrong material to use for a repair like this. So now it is either live with it as it is or refinish the neck either partially or completely.

_________________
Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/