The Touchup

At least once a week a client comes in with a guitar that has a scratch, dent, small ding or giant gouge in the body of his guitar. Inevitably, he asks the question…

“Can you guys make this look new again?”

I shuffle my feet, trying to explain how difficult and time consuming it is. “How long would it take?”

I exhale loudly and ask, “Do you have a back up guitar?”

“How much will this cost?”

My answer, as always is, “How much is it worth to you?” These questions are not always easy to answer. Guitar finish and touch up are two of the hardest repairs that any tech can do. Even if that tech is a master, it can be time consuming, costly and may not always turn out perfectly. Most people are shocked to hear how much a finish touch up can cost. “It’s only a little chip in the finish!” they say. If you take your car into a body shop to get finish damage taken out, they will mask off the rest of the car and totally refinish the panel that has the damage done to it. We don’t often have the luxury of refinishing an entire guitar to remove dings and dents from a small portion, so touching up the damage is in order.

There are traditionally two different kinds of guitar finish, nitro-cellulose lacquer (AKA: nitro) and polyurethane (AKA: poly). Both have their pluses and minuses and there are several variations on the two finishes. Nitro is the softer of the two finishes but tends to let the wood “breathe” more, while poly is harder and more durable, but many players feel it “shells” the sound, dampening resonance and sustain. Martin and Gibson have used nitro since the 1930s and Fender guitars had lacquer finishes up until the late 1960’s. Most modern instruments, with the exception of the affor mentioned Martin and Gibson, (as well as some high-end boutique guitars), use poly or some variation of a urethane finish. Modern technologies have allowed companies like Taylor, Larrivee and Paul Reed Smith to use very thin coats of polyurethane to help alleviate some of the tonal problems associated with poly, while giving the hard protection that lacquer cannot. One strum on any of these guitars will tell you how far finishing has come.

Every repairman prefers touch up and refinishing with lacquer. It will chemically “redissolve” with old finishes, making touch up easier and sometimes flat out perfect. If there are scratches or dents, often they can be touched up by “drop filling” with lacquer. The drop fill must sit for 24 hours to let it dry before a second fill is done. The lacquer will have a tendency to “sink” into the existing blemish or surrounding finish, so several drop fills are generally required. This can be a long process. When the dent is successfully filled, we spray a thin layer of lacquer over the area, and let it dry. Then the area is wet sanded with fine grit sand paper and buffed out on our stationary arbor buffer. Often, we can make a blemish or crack virtually disappear. We don’t generally recommend touch up on vintage pieces, as it will affect the value of the instrument. Only in extreme or unusual circumstances, or if the “Vintage Value” of the instrument has already been affected, will we recommend any touch up on these instruments. Of course, we always do what the customer wants; it’s not our guitar after all!

POLYURETHANE: Poly presents another beast. Poly doesn’t let other finishes “melt” into it. We can tackle touch ups with poly in a few ways. How well a repair goes is often determined by color, texture and location. It’s easier to touch up an inconspicuous spot than a ding right on the top of a poly sunburst Strat! Generally, the area is stained with a color match aniline dye or simply drop filled with Crazy Glue (yes simple Crazy Glue). The area is then wet sanded and buffed out. This is the simplest form of touch up for poly. If a customer wants to pay more, we can drop fill, then spray a coat of color-matched poly or acrylic lacquer over the area. This presents the problem of creating a “ghost line” where new and old paints meet. We have been experimenting with different ways of blending these lines and have had very promising results using a process that we have to keep under wraps. The poly color touchups we’ve done lately have been coming out tremendously well and I think it’s just another way we can keep a hand up on the competition.Whether poly or lacquer, deciding whether or not to have your instrument restored is a personal choice. Only you can place a value on your guitar. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and after all, as one of my customers once said, “Chris, it’s not you up there in the spotlight”.

Humidity Issues
The #1 enemy of acoustic guitars is lack of humidity. Dry weather, especially in winter months, can often times be devastating to the wood fibers of your acoustic guitar. Dry weather can leech out moisture, leaving the wood dry and brittle. We see tons of top, side and back cracks here at our shop from November through to May. Sometimes (though it is rare), we’ll fix one in August from some ones air conditioner drying a top out.

Preventing this is very simple. Leave the guitar in its case when you are not playing it, and include a guitar humidifier, properly filled, in the guitar while in its case.

“But, I have a humidifier installed on my furnace”, you say. That will just keep you from shocking your roommate when you shuffle your feet along the carpet. Guitars need to have a relative humidity of between 40-50% at 72 degrees. That is pretty humid, and very hard to maintain in a home. Even the best of humidifiers and most diligent owners may still find their guitars dried out in a particularly bad season, so practice on keeping them wet!

Most common problems associated with lack of humidity…
Top Cracks
Side and Back Cracks
Top sinking
Frets popping out of fingerboard
Fretboard warpage
Neck twisting

Most of these problems can be corrected and repaired, but sometimes we see stuff so hammered from dryness, that we can’t do anything short of replacing the top or neck.It’s simple, it’s avoidable, so keep you guitar wet.

Taylor guitars has an awesome section on guitar humidity at
http://www.taylorguitars.com/global/pdfs/greatest_hits.pdf
http://www.taylorguitars.com/global/pdfs/dry_guitar.pdf
http://www.taylorguitars.com/global/pdfs/seasonal_changes.pdf
http://www.taylorguitars.com/global/pdfs/winter_tale.pdf

The Setup
The number one request we hear at the shop is “low without any buzz”. We do more set-ups than any other service; they are what keep our customers coming back. Most people do not know the joy of a professional set up. You don’t know what type of player you are until you’ve had one! The most common complaints are:

• Action is too high
• It won’t play in tune
• It won’t stay in tune

Everything else is just icing on the cake if you can get these 3 things down. Most people want the action (the height of the string off the fingerboard) low. We do this using a combination of the truss rod (which bows the neck either away from or towards the strings) and setting the height of the bridge saddle pieces or piece (acoustics). There is always a give and take to the action. If you want it super low, it will buzz on some notes. The string has to have room to move in order to produce a good, clean note. If you’re using any amount of distortion on an electric, you probably won’t even hear the buzz. Electrics were made to have lighter strings and a slinkier action, because once the amp gets hold of the note, any fret buzz usually disappears. We only worry about fret buzz when it hampers the sound of the string so badly that it can’t be ignored. Our set-up is full service. You can have someone do a tweak here and there, but we prefer a full A-Z treatment. We only stop short of leveling the frets on our set-up. Our full set up includes…

• Redress and gloss buffing of frets
• Tightening of all hardware
• Full restring and stretch-in (price of string, not included)
• Adjusting truss rod
• Adjusting tremolo or tailpiece
• Balancing output (on Acoustic/Electric)
• Adjusting action
• Adjusting intonation
• Full electronics evaluation
• Adjusting pickup heights
• Full detail polish and cleaning

These adjustments done in proper relationship to one another will produce remarkable results. Sometimes the adjustments aren’t enough. Most often, in this case, the guitar needs fretwork.