There are two basic finishes on guitars: gloss and matte. Altough I've seen some nice matte finishes, I much prefer gloss. I have a Martin 000-15 guitar, which is a all mahogany body with a matte finish. All of Martin's current 15 series guitars (except customs) have a matte finish and lots of people buff them out to gloss. It really brings out the wood grain and in my opinion makes the guitar look much better.
I've wanted to buff out my 000-15 for a while now, but have been a little hesitant about it. Luckily though, I have a cheap-o $100 Jasmine acoustic with a matte finish to practice on. So tonight I got out a few polishes and tried them on the back of the Jasmine. Everything was done with a 6" white pad on a PC. I tried these 3 polishes:
#2 Fine Cut Cleaner
#83
DACP ScratchX
Much to my surprise, the ScratchX worked the best. It cut through the matte finish quicker than the others and produced a high gloss finish. I taped off half of the back to compare before and after. In all, I spent about 10 minutes buffing the half of the back.
Here are some pics that show the dramatic difference buffing out the finish makes. Can you tell which half was buffed?
Unfortunately there are a lot of rough sanding marks in the wood that were hidden by the matte finish of this cheap laminate guitar. These are under the varnish and are not able to be buffed out.
Hopefully Martin did a better prep job on their 15 series wood and I won't have any sanding marks hiding under the matte finish when I do my 000-15. I personally like the gloss finish much, much better than matte, and can't wait to do my 15!
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