Low_fidelity2100
New member
So I got this Jaguar in a Trade awhile back. It's a Late 90's AVRI 62 Jaguar, got a great deal on the trade for it, Mostly because it looked like this at the time of the trade (and for the entire year since I've owned it, since I never felt like going to the trouble of refinishing it)...
Which doesn't seem too bad from a distance, sorta just looks like a "chewed gum" splatter finish from several feet away. Unfortunately the "finish" seemed to have been done with layers upon layers of nail polish, just sorta flung onto the guitar. Still looked sorta cool as a stage guitar that I didn't mind banging around a bit. But up close it was sort of disgusting.
You could literally feel the gloopyness of the mess, felt exactly what it looked like...Layers upon layers of Nail polish randomly flung onto the guitar, until it built up a super thick layer of weird bumpy nastiness. The guy that did this didn't even bother doing the back of the guitar...
I've been trying to sell/trade this guitar for something else for awhile. Not a bad sounding Jaguar, I just sorta discovered I don't really have much use for a Jaguar after I got it. Obviously this finish was making it difficult to trade for anything close being worth trading it for (have had offers of Epi's, MIM Fenders, etc... for it in that state).
Today I finally said F*** it and decided to just buy a gallon of acetone and see what happened. I was hoping the acetone would eat away the nail polish and leave what was left of the original finish intact, but figured worst case, it'd take the nail polish and everything else off, and I'd end up with a clean slate to work with for a refinish.
My girlfriend decided to take Progress pic's, after I'd already gotten about halfway through it...
The acetone ate right through the Nail polish. Unfortunately it also ate through what I believe was the original Inca Silver finish (can be seen sort of in the pic of the back of the guitar). I sorta just assumed these 90's AVRI Jaguars didn't have a nitro top coat at all, figured it was just straight poly, as I'd heard from tons of people...Not positive it was Nitro, but whatever it was, the acetone ate right through it, haha...
So at first I was thinking it was just taking down to bare wood, or the sealer coat. But it turns out, there was actually a Nice clear Poly under coat, wasn't a full gloss obviously, but wasn't fully matte, sort of a semi-gloss (closer to the satin side of things than the gloss side). After just about 45 minutes with acetone and rags, I ended up with this...
So I figured I'd just hit it with some polishing compound and a f*** ton of elbow grease and see what I ended up with. Literally just using some Meguire's polishing compound, old t-shirts, and about 2 and a half hours of time, I ended up with this... (I did also use guitar polish to clean off all the excess compound gunk/film, and then used some Carnauba wax for a final polish after that)
Not bad for a few hours of work, and $12 invested in acetone (had everything else on hand) right? It's not as high gloss as a factory gloss on typical poly guitars, but It's still glossy enough to look nice and not tacky. I personally don't really like a SUPER glossy finish like alot of poly guitars have, looks to much like a toy to me. I probably could have gotten it glossier if I'd tried, but I think this looks great as it is right now. What's really weird, is the guitar is also substantially lighter now, easily a pound and a half lighter. I never would have thought paint could add that much weight to a guitar.
Unfortunately I still don't really have much use for a Jaguar, haha. So I'm still planning on selling/trading it, but at least now I can probably get a way better trade/price than I could have with that terrible nail polish finish. Anyone else ever have something like this happen? I was fully expecting this to turn into some huge ordeal, so this was a massively pleasant surprise to me.
Which doesn't seem too bad from a distance, sorta just looks like a "chewed gum" splatter finish from several feet away. Unfortunately the "finish" seemed to have been done with layers upon layers of nail polish, just sorta flung onto the guitar. Still looked sorta cool as a stage guitar that I didn't mind banging around a bit. But up close it was sort of disgusting.
You could literally feel the gloopyness of the mess, felt exactly what it looked like...Layers upon layers of Nail polish randomly flung onto the guitar, until it built up a super thick layer of weird bumpy nastiness. The guy that did this didn't even bother doing the back of the guitar...
I've been trying to sell/trade this guitar for something else for awhile. Not a bad sounding Jaguar, I just sorta discovered I don't really have much use for a Jaguar after I got it. Obviously this finish was making it difficult to trade for anything close being worth trading it for (have had offers of Epi's, MIM Fenders, etc... for it in that state).
Today I finally said F*** it and decided to just buy a gallon of acetone and see what happened. I was hoping the acetone would eat away the nail polish and leave what was left of the original finish intact, but figured worst case, it'd take the nail polish and everything else off, and I'd end up with a clean slate to work with for a refinish.
My girlfriend decided to take Progress pic's, after I'd already gotten about halfway through it...
The acetone ate right through the Nail polish. Unfortunately it also ate through what I believe was the original Inca Silver finish (can be seen sort of in the pic of the back of the guitar). I sorta just assumed these 90's AVRI Jaguars didn't have a nitro top coat at all, figured it was just straight poly, as I'd heard from tons of people...Not positive it was Nitro, but whatever it was, the acetone ate right through it, haha...
So at first I was thinking it was just taking down to bare wood, or the sealer coat. But it turns out, there was actually a Nice clear Poly under coat, wasn't a full gloss obviously, but wasn't fully matte, sort of a semi-gloss (closer to the satin side of things than the gloss side). After just about 45 minutes with acetone and rags, I ended up with this...
So I figured I'd just hit it with some polishing compound and a f*** ton of elbow grease and see what I ended up with. Literally just using some Meguire's polishing compound, old t-shirts, and about 2 and a half hours of time, I ended up with this... (I did also use guitar polish to clean off all the excess compound gunk/film, and then used some Carnauba wax for a final polish after that)
Not bad for a few hours of work, and $12 invested in acetone (had everything else on hand) right? It's not as high gloss as a factory gloss on typical poly guitars, but It's still glossy enough to look nice and not tacky. I personally don't really like a SUPER glossy finish like alot of poly guitars have, looks to much like a toy to me. I probably could have gotten it glossier if I'd tried, but I think this looks great as it is right now. What's really weird, is the guitar is also substantially lighter now, easily a pound and a half lighter. I never would have thought paint could add that much weight to a guitar.
Unfortunately I still don't really have much use for a Jaguar, haha. So I'm still planning on selling/trading it, but at least now I can probably get a way better trade/price than I could have with that terrible nail polish finish. Anyone else ever have something like this happen? I was fully expecting this to turn into some huge ordeal, so this was a massively pleasant surprise to me.
