Leaderboard

I hate to say it, but nitro lacquer doesn't allow the wood to "breathe" (the wood is dead anyway..) It's a myth the gets posted on the internet all the time. It's just BS that people say to distinguish it from polyester or urethane coatings that are "plastic". If you're going to sand it down, you better have a good polishing wheel handy to buff it back, unless you want an "old looking" dull finish. Just be careful that you don't sand or buff through the whole finish. According to my dad, I had an uncle who used to polish his black Oldsmobile every week back in the early 50s. After a couple of years, he hit metal on a few spots!

I'm guessing that the change in feel wasn't so much a thickness issue, but a surface roughness change. Feeling a couple thousandths of a change in thickness would be impossible. A change of several microns difference in surface roughness is detectable. I worked with inks and coatings for 40 years and one of the measurements was surface roughness. It affects gloss and abrasion. Too smooth can feel sticky unless there is something to cause it to glide like an oil, wax or silicone. There are multiple instruments that will measure the film thickness in microns. It would be a really simple way to test an instrument before and after attacking it with sandpaper. Then measure the surface with a profilometer. While I didn't formulate any wood coatings, I had friends that worked in labs of a few paint companies around here who did. NC was on its way out for most purposes, but it is still used for certain coatings. We still had 4 plants using it at one point. It's excellent for certain packaging materials. BTW, I once formulated a really nice NC lacquer for the brass pans on my slot car chassis. We were trying to make an overprint varnish (didn't work because of solvent restrictions). We had a bunch of different grades of NC along with different plasticizers and compatible resins. Besides keeping them nice and shiny, it insulated so it couldn't spark if they hit the braids on the track. As long as you didn't need to solder it back together it was great. It was easily removed with a mix of acetone and alcohol.

You're basically saying my buddy is full of it, and equating him with so called internet modding experts. The guy I'm talking about is one of the finest players I know, and he is one of the best amp guys I know who's got a killer ear for tuning amps. If I was going to trust anybody's opinion on sound it would be his, not some internet expert. And BTW he didn't do it for a tone change, his guitars had overly thick finishes that he thought would feel better if they were thinned, and they guy that knocked them back did a great job and rebuffed them to a gloss. And as I said, the finish looked, and more importantly felt great when finished. The tone thing was just an added bonus that he wasn't expecting and he didn't say it was a massive improvement. I don't think you have enough practical experience to call this BS. Yes, wood doesn't breathe, but thinner finish can help the wood vibrate more (if the wood isn't just plain dead). On a good piece of wood, thick poly finishes dampen resonance. And many people that call this BS are playing with potted pickups that have zero ability to hear any difference in the improved resonance. I've done quite a few finish experiments. And I've stripped three different guitars of mine with poly finishes, and all three of them looked, felt, and sounded better than when I started. You can keep on believeing what you want about finishes, but I will believe what I've felt, seen, and heard. Gibson has sprayed too many guitars with thick overly plasticized lacquer, and many people I trust, who've thinned them, or better yet, refinned their guitars can hear a difference. And another thing that distinquishes poly and urethane (and even overly plasticized nitro), from a properly shot thin nitro, is that it's way harder to repair finish flaws with poly/urethane/plasticizednitro. Certain finish repair people I know won't work on certain gibsons because of the plastizers That's another reason alot of us prefer a good thin nitro finish.

Yeah it was mostly for the neck

While wood doesn't breathe, exposed wood will absorb and release moisture, which causes the wood to swell and shrink. That's why acoustic guitar bodies will move significantly with seasonal changes in humidity. The whole inside of the guitar is bare wood. The fretboards of guitars are generally uncoated, so they will also move with humidity changes. That's why we have truss rods. You won't see the body of electric guitars move like that since they are a) much thicker and stable and b) coated with lacquer to seal the surface.

As I understand, the nitro finish on most guitars is in the few thousandths of an inch... maybe 3 to 6 thou. They aren't very thick. I think polyester finishes can be 20-30 thou.

I bought a gtr with no finish once, it was blowtorched instead to sear it off. Kind of like a steak. Later on I did put a coat of lacquer on it so it handled seasonal changes better.

I don't doubt he says it's more resonant. NOBODY is going to say that they went through all that effort and money and ruined their guitar's sound. I have read hundreds of comments of people modding stuff, and it always turns out better... 100% of the time. It never fails to make a massive improvement. Call me a skeptic.

I actually have a close friend with serious musical chops that had a local finish guy knock back the finish on his Gibson 1956 Reissue Les Paul, and on his 1959 Reissue Les Paul. I personally thought it was a mistake when he sent them off. But the guy did a great job on them, and they actually look better, and more importantly, feel better to play (less plastically feeling for lack of a better term.) Both of these guitars have pretty microphonic pickups (Throbaks in both), and he swears the guitars sound more resonant.

Small board

This sounds like an easy way to ruin a nice guitar.