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Posts: 15183
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
Golpeador removal
So, rather than ask like a noob, I did a search and found all the stuff. My conde has been beat almost through, so I stopped playing her immediately. No flamenco luthiers around. My wife saw what I was looking at and said "That looks easy!". She grabbed her industrial strength hair dryer, and went to town "defacing"my conde!!!! (with pleasure I might add). I could not watch, it was too scary. But it peeled off easily. She made an aluminum foil cone around the hairdryer to direct hotter in a small spot.
Unlike some of the online examples, 100% of the sticky stuff was left on the guitar,, which took a long time to rub off. But it worked, luckily no dings or scratches under the plate! Look!
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I wonder how long or how many hits it takes to kill a Golpeador. Mine still looks like new. I dont even see any scratches on the surface of the Golpeador! Strange.....
I wonder how long or how many hits it takes to kill a Golpeador.
Well for THIS guitar, it was (say 1x 120 bpm x 60=golpes per hr) x (1.5 hrs show times and warm up/warm down) x (2 shows per week) x (52 weeks per year) x (10. 5 years)=+or - 11,793,600 golpes! Plus juergas and not counting holidays.
Luckily I have other guitars for other days of the week. At this point they all have varying stages of wear. I will have to change the next on a different guitar in about 2 years I would say.
When the wear on the golpeador is only in a small area as is the case with Ricardo's it indicates a skilled player with refined technique. My guitars have wear spots about the size of a dime .
its not so hard when you have a lacquered surface. try using lighter fluid or alcohol on a french polish surface..! I have used turpentine with a brush , very slowly, also now googone , a good product, and also used the hairdryer way in the past (that worried me)
Take care when heating the soundboard of a guitar. The top dries drastically fast and might crack and the braces are glued on with glue that melts when heated
I would NEVER do so.
When you have to remove a bridge or a fingerboard, you aply heat on the bridge and on the fingerboard using an iron and you try the utmost to get it of before the heat enters the soundboard. VERY often the center joint opens because of the heat.
What u nead is a chemical called Butyrolactone. It will strip off all the varnish as well though, not to be ingested as it turns into GHB 'invitro'. paco
Oh -- two questions: is that the thicker the golpeador is, the deeper and louder your golpe will sound; and second, do thicker golpeadors inhibit the volume of the guitar?
The answer to the second seems to be an obvious yes, but perhaps someone can confirm on the basis of experience. My golpeador is a very thin sheet that sticks because of static. There are dents on the guitar though, which I don't mind.
Take care when heating the soundboard of a guitar. The top dries drastically fast and might crack and the braces are glued on with glue that melts when heated
I would NEVER do so.
When you have to remove a bridge or a fingerboard, you aply heat on the bridge and on the fingerboard using an iron and you try the utmost to get it of before the heat enters the soundboard. VERY often the center joint opens because of the heat.
yeah, I was worried about it so I kept some humidity in the guitar during the process with a wet paper towel. The hot air was focused by the cone (aluminum foil), so not to hit other parts of the guitar. The golpeador was too hot to touch so she used a knife as it peeled off. We moved fast, it came off in 10 minutes or so. So what was done is done, no cracks or loose braces I can tell.
How would you have done it different then? Would you say I got lucky? I have more guitars that will need this job done in the future!
Ricardo, I dont know if you were lucky, but be carefull.
If your guitar is lacquered, I would use lighter fuel, and a small brush. It comes of relatively easy.
If french polished, use white spirit, a small brush and LOTS of pacience (days) if french polished cedar top..... Thats difficult
By be careful, you mean, NEVER do the hairdryer thing ever again, and use lighter fluid from now on? I guess that is what you mean. It is just that it seemed to be fast clean and easy.
OK, so I traced the old one, cut the new one, and stuck it on. My friend helped, he used soapy water sponge, so the plate could be manuevered and centered the way I wanted. Then you push and rub and the bubbles come out easy. That blue color is the protective sheet that I will remove when I unveil her on Wed. night at my gig. It looks kind of cool, but the actual plate is transparent obviously. Bought it at strings by mail.
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Yeah, better not use hairdryers anymore. Sometimes luck plays little games.
Ricardo, I can imagine that you have a rather controlled right hand thumb, so the fact that you did not cover the rosette with the tapplate is not really an issue, but I will recommend to cover the rosette with the tapplate another time. I´ve seen some seriously "digged out" rosettes on guitars where the tapplate did not cover the rosette. I think there were something about this in the thread about the roseete on PDL´s guitar.
well it's been 7 years almost, time to change again. I took advice of lighter fluid this time. While it is a little safer if you go SLOOOOOOOWWWW.... it seemed not as clean and easy as the hairdryer thing. I used a Q tip (cotton on a little stick) and it took a long time to peel the thing off. Then, the left over mess took some hours of scrubbing to get off. I remember after the hair dryer thing years ago, the left over adhesive was like rubber cement stuff you could just roll up into balls with your bare finger and came off easy. This time was a lot harder to clean.
I stuck on the new one dry instead of using water. I was surprised, I had the same amount of streaking or silvering that I had to rub out as when I did it with soapy water. Considering how much safer it is to use water, I think I recommend it.
damn you luthiers.....I was told...and I asked REPEATEDLY....if Naptha was the EXACT same as lighter fluid and was told "YES". Are you saying Naptha is different AND better for this job???
4 years ago me organized an old guitar from Switzerland. Several dear friends helped with the transport. Only the section of bringing it from the local capitol to here involved a true dumbass chauffeur who arranged for some hours of scorching heat in a trunk.
The guitar arrived to no recognition. It was fundamentally degraded in all regards. A dead piece of material. And after so many years it is still constantly improving, hence recovering. ( Already now performing on amazing level. Really worlds apart from how it arrived!)
Only weeks ago, one certain point came to my mind. While it was stationed in Germany on its way, I asked a friend to let a luthier remove the golpeador. The man used an industrial hair drier.
Now I can´t tell which of the two torturing heat procedures had a main share on disfiguring, but for very certain will never again allow a hair drier to come near anything of wood, much lesser even a soundboard.
The chemical way like recommended above should be the better way. - And I must say that a luthier who uses a hair drier must be missing out on some empirics. ( Whilst they guy in Germay even had a professional education as instrument maker, which apparently won´t safe from dilettantism.)
Naptha is a loose generic name for a several different kinds of petroleum distilling by procudts. Butane is lighter fluid, a kind of naptha.
Naptha usually is not a solvent for cured lacquer, shellac and the usual guitar finishes. But it is a partial solvent for the organic glues used on self stick tap plates. There are more complete solvents for those glues, but they are too volatile for guitar finishes.
Get the MSDS ( Materials Safety Data Sheets) on any solvents you use, or look up the MSDS online to see how to handle the solvent. Some forms of naptha are known to be highly carcinogenic.
If you live in California (and I imagine several other states by now) you may want to ask the manufacturer about whether naphtha and lighter fluid are the same thing. I did some research a while back (so I'm a lil' rusty), but I don't think it is anymore in California. Naphtha has been banned here due to clean air restrictions. There's a substitute in there now, I think it's odorless mineral spirits. I don't imagine Zippo is making two formulations of their stuff either, one for CA and another for the rest of the states.
I removed a golpeador from a French polished cedar top, without damaging the finish. It took several days, sure, and I had my own little method for doing it, but it came off. Given a choice between lighter fluid and naphtha I'd use naphtha.
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It looks kind of cool, but the actual plate is transparent obviously. Bought it at strings by mail. 
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