nicovlogg wrote
How would you do that?
Damp rag and a soldering iron. ? Damp rag on the bare wood and apply the soldering iron over the top. Another way to do it is to put a few drops of alcohol on so it soaks into the wood then light it - the expanding gasses push out the wood cells and the alcohol burns up too quick to do any damage.
BTW I heard that sanding the finish off under the ashtray bridge plate might improve tone quality, due to the contact being on bare wood. Been reading up a lot on Zachary guitars where he claims that polyutherane finishes kill a lot of tone - what's your take on this?
Polyester isn't a tone killer
per se - it's how it's applied. Consider that a lot of John Suhr's guitars are poly. A "thin skin" poly has little effect on tone and is far more durable than nitro or acrylic. Some woods like basswood, I wouldn't use anything else. Unfortunately on production line guitars it's easier to apply it thickly, which does end up choking the tone of the body wood and raising the resonant frequency quite a bit.
Generally, I use nitro, but that's because poly is also far more difficult to touch up and apply thinly.
Sanding paint off under the bridge is one of those "far too small an effect to hear" things IMO - especially on a Tele. If you're going to do anything along those lines, do the whole body and be aware that it will change the tone: it will get more resonant, but it will also get darker sounding, which may or may not be a good thing.
