iamarobotman
Junior Member
The cherry red paint on my 1967 Starfire IV also peeled away everywhere. When you hold it your shirt is full of little red flakes after playing. My solution was that I disassembled the guitar, carefully cleaned the guitar (just the dirt with some naphta, and definitely no polish as new lacquer will not stick to furniture polish or oil or silicone) and gave it to a luthier who overspayed it very thin with fresh clear nitrocellulose lacquer. Now some will cry to do this to a vintage guitar, but we are not talking a $250k Les Paul here and after all, nitrocellulose lacquer has the nice properties that it melts itself into the old lacquer and heals the demage. So now it has a protected finish again and it's ready for another 30 years or so. The whole process takes some days or even weeks depending on the thickness of the new finish as the oversprayed finish needs to dry again.
Ralf
My buddy is a head luthier at Gruhn, so this might be the ticket to keep it safe. I'm never ever going to sell it, so I'd rather it be played and functional with a light overspray like you said.