Finish maintenance question

[Kevin James]

Not sure if this is in the right place or if it should be in the luthiers forum but would machine buffing the finish on a guitar to remove light scratches be considered “tampering” with the finish?

This may be a dumb question but the back story on it is I am the original owner of a 91 sunburst Les Paul Standard and over the years the top has accumulated some light scratches as well as the back. Nothing that goes below the clear coat or into the wood, just surface scratches.

The guitar has been put away in its case for the majority of the last 15 years and I just recently took it to my local luthier to have it cleaned up and set up etc. When I picked it up he told me he cleaned it up as best as he could per my instructions to keep it to hand polishing etc, and that in order to get rid of the scratches he would need to machine buff it and wet sand it with a super fine grit.

The issue for me is I am a FREAK about the originality of my guitars. I would love to get all the scratches off, but if I ever decide to sell it (will probably never happen as this one has sentimental value as my first Gibson) I want to be able to say it is 100% original and un-molested.

So… would machine buffing and wet sanding be considered tampering with the finish, or would it be considered usual expected maintenance for a 20 year old guitar?

Here's a pic. You can't see the scratches but if your gonna post about a specific guitar you might as well include a pic, right? LOL

[Droog]

Do whatever you want, it's your guitar, but personally, those scuffs and scratches wouldn't bother me one bit as long as it didn't affect the guitars playabilty.

[Kevin James]

Originally Posted by Droog

Do whatever you want, it's your guitar, but personally, those scuffs and scratches wouldn't bother me one bit as long as it didn't affect the guitars playabilty.

Thanks for the response, it didn't really answer my question though.

[maralbil]

I don't know if it would be considered a modification of your guitar to the extent that someone would say it was no longer original. It seems to me that everything is still original, just cleaned up a bit. You might try a product that you can buy from guitarscratchremover.com. I bought some to get rid of tiny scratches that came from trying to buff out a finish myself and it worked great. It took a couple of applications but I was able to get rid of almost all of the scratches.