To B(uff) or not to B(uff)
This 59 blonde walks into a guitar dealer and it looks pretty awful. It’s sticky and it smells like feet. Do you sell it as is? No? I didn’t think so.
Aging new guitars was an interesting new concept a few decades ago and it seemed a little silly at the time to those of us who were already into vintage instruments. It was the mid 1980’s and what are now considered vintage guitars were simply considered old. The aging concept caught on and is big business today. The idea of paying extra to have someone beat up your guitar seemed ridiculous but I have been proven wrong and, frankly, it’s nearly an art form here in 2025. They scrape them, scratch them, add dings and checking and buckle rash. They tarnish the hardware and warp the plastic and even add fake headstock breaks on certain “artist” models. What they don’t do is add dirt and all that toxic crud that builds up on a vintage piece after decades in smoky bars (remember smoky bars?). Nobody wants their guitar to rub off on their arms or clothing. The crud that accumulates from sweat, smoke and spilled beer is not something you want to be touching at your regular gigs. It is probably dangerous. I suppose the “VOS” concept which is simply fake oxidation, is as close as anyone gets.
So, that leads me to my topic for today’s post. I buy a lot of very old guitars and usually they are relatively dirt free and don’t require any cleaning at all-maybe under the guard but not much else. I rarely touch the finish but when I do, it’s with a product that isn’t abrasive (I use Virtuoso Cleaner). But sometimes I get a guitar that is so covered with something brown and sticky and smelly that I have to do something. Usually the Virtuoso Cleaner will remove it. It’s made to dissolve organic matter and much of what accumulates is, in fact, organic. Tar from cigarette smoke is probably organic too but it doesn’t come off easily and will usually require some serious elbow grease and maybe an abrasive polish. Fortunately, most of the polishes available for musical instruments aren’t terribly abrasive so you aren’t removing much, if any, finish. But when it’s been twenty or thirty years of buildup, a turn on the buffing wheel might be the only way to get it off. Buffing a guitar is a tricky maneuver. I don’t do it-I don’t even have a buffing wheel. I might do some serious hand buffing with StewMac fine compound but I’d be afraid of buffing right through the finish with a wheel, so I leave that to others more skilled than me.
The photo at the top is a 1959 ES-335 blonde that spent way too much time in bars. The buildup appears dense, sticky and truly unsightly so it made sense to clean it up. I wouldn’t buy, let alone sell a guitar that was covered in human and non human debris. But I’m not the one who buffed that one. I bought it after the buffing was done. The previous dealer who had it doesn’t remember if it was done by hand or on a wheel but it’s done and no harm came of it. In fact, it looks great and has taken on a deeper blonde color. The larger question is whether buffing out a guitar damages the value and I’m kind of on the fence about that. In fifty years when the “relics” made today are considered vintage, will the man made artificial relic work be considered a negative? Is “unrelic’ing a vintage guitar by buffing it something to be avoided? It’s not an easy question. On the plus side, nothing has been added like it would be if it was oversprayed or refinished. The finish is still the factory finish. Some may have been removed by buffing but playing a guitar for fifty years also removes finish and that doesn’t bother anybody. Plenty of guitars out there with arm wear on the lower bass bout and lots of wear on the back of the neck.
Conclusion? I would rather have a guitar that wasn’t buffed but if it’s covered with toxic crud, I’d rather somebody got rid of it. I don’t think buffing should harm the value but I think it should be disclosed so that you can form your own opinion. But until Tom Murphy and company start adding “genuine human sweat, cigarette smoke and stale beer” as an extra cost aging option, I’ll stick with clean, non toxic guitars-buffed if necessary.
This is the same guitar after being buffed out. The crud is gone and it looks and smells very nice. Plays pretty well too. I’m sure someone will tell me that it sounded better before it was buffed.
Charlie, YUCK! And it’d be disgustingly and difficult to play with all that munge. It’s hard to relate to someone like the previous owner of this guitar who had so little respect for his instrument even if he only thought of it as a tool. A responsible carpenter would never mistreat his tools that way. The fact it’s a valuable blonde dot neck makes it even worse. You absolutely had to do the deep cleaning and the results are stunning! Good on ya mate, Roger
I didn’t do the cleaning on this one but yes, I agree.
Novus #2 does a great cleaning job with a soft cloth !
Bet it sounds better with six strings though.