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Is French Polish more fragile???
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britguy
Posts: 712
Joined: Dec. 26 2010
From: Ontario, Canada
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Is French Polish more fragile???
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This may be a luthier issue, but I thought I'd try here first: I have a couple of quality luthier-built guitars with French Polish finish. They are both only about one year old from new. Both of them have a fair number of signficant markings in the finish, almost as if they were much older, harder used guitars. In particular that little strip of face area alongside the fingerboard on the bass side, which looks like it has hardly any finish left! And I dont have a long thumbnail. . . I try to take good care of my guitars, and do not bang them around, or leave them in places where they might get damaged. Why are these two showing so much wear after less than a years use??? Is French Polish less durable than other finishes. And can they be 'refinished' at some future date, if it gets much worse?
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Fruit farmer, Ontario, Canada
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Date Dec. 18 2011 20:59:15
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Patrick
Posts: 1189
Joined: Jul. 7 2003
From: Portland, Oregon
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RE: Is French Polish more fragile??? (in reply to britguy)
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Bottom line is, how are you ever going to know which is best? It’s impossible to build two identical guitars two compare the difference. Lester DeVoe has said many times, he can’t tell the difference between the two tone wise and sticks to lacquer. Robert Ruck uses lacquer on his flamencos. Ramirez has used it for years. And as far as thinness, a well applied lacquer can be just as thin as French polish if not thinner. As for repair, I don’t buy the argument that French polish is easier, in fact in some cases, lacquer is superior. Get a big deep ding in French polish and see how easy it is to repair…it ain’t. Deep dings in lacquer can be drop filled that if done right are invisable. I have a DeVoe that was getting pretty rough. It had capo marks, a discolored area on the face, orange peel, and a few deep dings. It was looking well used (as it was). I had a guy in Portland refurbish the whole guitar for under $250 and it looks virtually brand new. I don’t have anything against French polish; in fact I have owned several guitars that had it, but some of the best I have owned were (are) lacquer. One reason you see a lot of guys use French polish is lacquer is nasty stuff to use if you are not set up for it. Neither is better than the other, just different.
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Date Dec. 19 2011 17:01:21
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3431
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Is French Polish more fragile??? (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana Are you a wide wrist movement pounder or a small circle player? Or a combo of both? How do you feel about marks on your guitars? Differently on your classicals than your flamencos? There aren't any marks at all on my Arcangel, though I've had it for 11 years. The only marks on my '67 Ramirez blanca are from handling and accidentally contacting hard objects. I've had it since it was new. It went to quite a few parties in its youth. The cedar top is pretty soft, the polyurethane lacquer thinned out considerably and got a lot stiffer as it cured over the first several years. That said, the wrist rotates considerably in some rasgueados playing flamenco. Flamenco pulgar is done from a different position than arpegio and picado. My right hand and arm movements aren't as radical as Paco's, but they do move. Playing classical I come fairly close to the "quiet right hand", with arpeggio, pulgar, tirando and apoyando played from the same position--lots of scale practice years ago. Among others, I visited Arturo Huipe in Paracho in December 2006. He had at least a couple dozen unfinished guitars hanging in a humidity controlled room, and a few finished ones. He showed me two cedar/cocobolo classicals with Fleta plantilla and bracing. One was nitrocellulose, the other french polished. They looked exactly the same. The woods, top, back and sides, could have been successive boards from the same logs. Huipe said that as far as he was concerned, the finish was the only difference. I didn't look very carefully at the nitrocellulose guitar, because after playing it for a few minutes, it didn't interest me at all. I ended up buying the french polished guitar. The french polish is fairly thick and glossy, but it is french polish, as I can tell from a little cloudiness on the back after playing it for a couple of hours in the summertime. The cloudiness goes away after the guitar is wiped down and it rests in the case overnight. I think the french polished guitar was a bargain at $1,500. I'd say it's on the borderline between a high end student guitar and a concert guitar. It's very well made, plenty loud, good intonation and setup, no serious dead spots, open right up to the 19th fret, but not as wide a tonal range as my best classicals. The nitrocellulose guitar was a couple hundred bucks less, but definitely not interesting to me. It was not nearly as loud as the french polished one, and generally seemed dead. Maybe too much lacquer--as I said, I didn't look very closely. RNJ
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Date Dec. 19 2011 22:34:15
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