finish orange peel

[okstrat]

Here's a close up pic of my ge-orgeous '04 drop top. Note the reflections are 'fuzzy' though - orange peely. By comparison, my '06 is like a mirror - I could shave with it.

I have no problem with wet sanding the body with 2000 grit and then buffing it . But would the problem come back? Is this an issue with the finish sinking into the quilt? Anyone else seen this with theirs? Only other thing I can think of is a refin, but everything is stupid clean on this guitar - gold hardware that is flawless on a 5 year old guitar makes me think it spent a lot of time in a case.

http://members.cox.net/okstrat/fuzzydroptop.jpg

Pete

[tom]

looks like it's been dried out some, wood shrinkage not finish. i'd be real careful about sanding the finish. there's not much there and it you go through you're done.

[marzzz]

Uh-oh, is this something we desert-dwellers need to worry about?

[Stys]

I will gladly send some of our humid our out to the desert dwellers....for a small fee, of course.:D

[tom]

while it takes some pretty severe dry to damage electric guitars, under 35% will certainly show in the finish. usually frets sticking out is your first clue you've got a problem. finish will show soon after that.
many choose to file the fret ends while the guitar is in a too dry state eliminating it as a concern in the future. i've seen guitars come back here with fret ends subterranean by a good 1/32". keeping guitars in their case is a good defense, but if you're in a place that routinely gets under 30%(either naturally or by way of forced air heating) you should do some sort of humidification.

[okstrat]

Tom, few more questions if you don't mind... if the guitar wasn't dry - was 'rehydrated' for want of a better term - would the finish clear up, or once it gets dry, that's it? Is this why some older guitars with opaque finishes show glue lines and such?

And if the guitar was treated better from now on - not allowed to get so dry - then if I did buff it out (carefully, due to the possibliity of rub-through on the clear) would it not end up getting the finish orange peel again?

This is pretty interesting, I always thought guitar bodies were pretty dry to begin with. Buy a guitar, join a message board, learn the mysteries of the ancients! :)

Pete

[marzzz]

while it takes some pretty severe dry to damage electric guitars, under 35% will certainly show in the finish. usually frets sticking out is your first clue you've got a problem. finish will show soon after that.
many choose to file the fret ends while the guitar is in a too dry state eliminating it as a concern in the future. i've seen guitars come back here with fret ends subterranean by a good 1/32". keeping guitars in their case is a good defense, but if you're in a place that routinely gets under 30%(either naturally or by way of forced air heating) you should do some sort of humidification.

Well, here in AZ the humidity tends to stay below 20%, though we are just now entering the monsoon season (a very euphemistic description, trust me). I have owned my guitar about six months, I can "feel" the fret ends but they are not really sticking out- it is very subtle. I do tend to leave the guitar in its case when not playing, but what would you recommend to humidify the guitar, short of actually installing a humidifier in the room (not practical in my case).

[tom]

pete, you'd be surprised what"kiln dried" wood is. commercial kilns call wood dry at 8-10% moisture content. we like to see 6% so we redry most everything we use. a note about moisture content. wood will go to equilibrium where ever it lives. if you live on the gulf coast where humidity is high, your guitar will absorb moisture and you'll be up around 12%. if you live in new mexico(hi richard) where you can see weeks of 5% rh, your wood will shrink down below 4%. so depending where you live, your instruments will acclimate to your climate. places where it gets crazy humid in the summer then really cold in the winter put the guitar through crazy shifts in size. remember, every guitar finish i know of will let water vapor pass through it, so the nitro vs. poly has no place in this discussion.
figured maple is a main offender when it comes to what this looks like in the real world. partially because it has such varying density which makes it move less evenly. the other one that can be nasty is alder as it sometimes has hard darker streaks in it.
so will it go back? my history says not completely.

[tom]

marzzz, i have not kept up with the latest and greatest on in case humidifiers(living in this perfect for guitars climate). the humidipak had wonderful claims but many here have run into the problems with them. i have not heard if they have come up with a permanent solution yet.
i would check out the taylor website, as they are really good about tech bulletins on moisture since it is such a more damaging problem for acoustics.

[Benny]

In hotter months remember that your air conditioner will de-humidify as well. Check out the Planet Waves PW-GCH: it's a unit I recommend for my clients that want to humidify their solid body and arch top guitars.

[markus]

Hmmm... I seem to have the same issue with my '08 Drop Top and also with my Alder Pro Am and Classic, though not anywhere as pronounced as in Pete's case. Given that I live up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I always assumed that my guitars would gain moisture rather than dry out. Is there a way of telling whether the wood lost of gained moisture? I don't see any frets sticking out or being buried, which I guess is somewhat odd. I do see the Alder and Quilted Maple wood grain through the finish as described below. The Mahogany back of my '08 Drop Top looks just fine, which I guess is expected as Alder & Maple are most prone to this problem, correct?

Also, besides not having a mirror finish anymore is this a big problem? Can it damage the guitar in the long run?

[tom]

forced air heat and as benny mentioned, air conditioning both dry the air. quilt in particular has extreme variations in density(that's what makes the stain do such cool things), so it will show up smaller degrees of shrinkage. alder also has those small dark lines which are crazy hard compared to the regular face grain, so it's the second most prone to showing shrinkage. neck maple is so nice and uniform that it takes more to make anything show.
dryness is not nearly as damaging on electric guitars as it is on acoustics. still not a reason to ignore humidity. cosmetics are the only issue with what we're seeing here.

[markus]

Thanks Tom. Yes, we do run the heating quite a bit in the Winter months, so that might have shrunk my guitars. You think there isn't a chance that they have gained any moisture, right? I might just end up sticking some of the new Humidipacks into my cases to take care of any humidity issues.

[tom]

usually additional moisture doesn't look like lack of moisture.

[markus]

:)
Let me re-phrase my question then. What are the signs / what would the finish look like if there was additional moisture?

[tom]

the only time i've seen visible signs of too much moisture was in a guitar that was under water for 3 days. it had some finish cracks and grey stains next to the frets on the maple fingerboard:eek:

[Armando]

This happened to my Koa HDT. Here's my original post: http://andersonforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=4330

[markus]

Did you do anything about humidity control, Armando?

[Armando]

Well, living on the west coast of Florida(Gulf of Mexico), humidity is a year round thing. I do run the AC pretty much year round. This didn't happen over night either, as I mention in my post. As far as I can tell, this had no impact on the tone of the guitar and did not affect the the clear gloss finish.