Bubble Wrap is Bad for Lacquer Guitars

[GAD]

A quick and dirty post on why you should not use bubble wrap against a lacquer-finished guitar.

Bubble Wrap is Bad for Lacquer Guitars | GAD's Ramblings

This is a quick and dirty article on why you should never use bubble wrap inside the case when shipping a guitar. More specifically, you should not use bubble wrap in any way that allows the bubble wrap to touch the finish on a nitro-based lacquer-coated guitar. The following photos were...

www.gad.net

 

[GGJaguar]

Scared straight indeed! Maybe add a note that the damage is permanent and the adage "that'll buff right out" doesn't apply here?

 

[GAD]

Scared straight indeed! Maybe add a note that the damage is permanent and the adage "that'll buff right out" doesn't apply here?

Good call! Done.

 

[walrus]

Nicely done!

walrus

 

[Guildedagain]

It's really hard to talk people out of it.

Request on how to pack can go completely overlooked, and you end up with a damaged guitar and a guy yelling at you - online - that he doesn't need any tips on packing, even though it's your money, your guitar, yada yada yada...

 

[jp]

Holy crap! In the example you show GAD, I bet the package experienced temperature and/or humidity changes. I'm also willing to bet that the guitar was sitting packed for an extended period of time for that chemical reaction to have occurred.

I've been lucky enough never to have experienced that before. I've always adhered to archtop.com's excellent packing instructions, but I never noticed that they only used newsprinted paper outside the case and unprinted craft paper inside the case, against the guitar finish. I recently read that bleeding ink can harm finishes. I've used both bubble wrap and newsprinted paper against finishes in the past without harmful results, but I'll avoid it too from now on.

Great public service announcement on your site! It might be helpful from an SEO perspective to redact the title for broader meta tag hits when people search "how to ship/pack a guitar" or "materials to avoid when packing and shipping a guitar." Just my two cents.

 

[twocorgis]

I've packed guitars with bubble wrap in contact with nitro finishes before I learned not to, and have gotten away with it. I can only figure that either I just got lucky, there were no extremes in temperature that might have hastened a reaction, or the bubble wrap wasn't in contact with the finish long enough to damage it. Must be mostly the former though!

 

[GAD]

Holy crap! In the example you show GAD, I bet the package experienced temperature and/or humidity changes. I'm also willing to bet that the guitar was sitting packed for an extended period of time for that chemical reaction to have occurred.

I've been lucky enough never to have experienced that before. I've always adhered to archtop.com's excellent packing instructions, but I never noticed that they only used newsprinted paper outside the case and unprinted craft paper inside the case, against the guitar finish. I recently read that bleeding ink can harm finishes. I've used both bubble wrap and newsprinted paper against finishes in the past without harmful results, but I'll avoid it too from now on.

Great public service announcement on your site! It might be helpful from an SEO perspective to redact the title for broader meta tag hits when people search "how to ship/pack a guitar" or "materials to avoid when packing and shipping a guitar." Just my two cents.

Thanks!

SEO is a funny subject, but main way my site gets promoted is simply by posting it on The Gear Page (TGP) and on Reddit. Many of my articles are the #1 hits on Google for the topic unless there's something better from sites like Reverb, and that's even for articles that don't get shared by people on social media.

I obsessed about SEO for a while and now I just don't care (aside from plugins that do some backend things for me). The word gets out, often just by posting to TGP. Usually with a page like the one in question, someone from TGP will like it and then share it on some other forum and then someone will link to it in their article about packing and then it's everywhere.

The article I wrote about gas cans sucking is the #2 top-hit article on my site, and I've never posted it anywhere except here and on TGP. In fact, the top three are:

1) How to capture Brian Setzer's tone
2) One man's quest for gas cans that don't suck
3) Please don't buy a Newfoundland dog

These three articles have an order of magnitude more hits than #4, and I never promoted any of them aside from posting here, TGP, and in the case of #3, on my now defunct Newf forum.

Sorry for the needlessly elaborate reply.

 

[Rambozo96]

It's really hard to talk people out of it.

Request on how to pack can go completely overlooked, and you end up with a damaged guitar and a guy yelling at you - online - that he doesn't need any tips on packing, even though it's your money, your guitar, yada yada yada...

I’ve had that happen once when I had a Guild show up wrecked in transit. Dude tried to chew me out when I tried to give pointers on how to avoid this in the future but hey, I been shipping guitars all over the country and even sent one to some small town in the middle of nowhere in Russia. What do I know eh?

 

[Rambozo96]

I also appreciate the responses. I been shipping guitars for the longest time that were all poly finished so I had absolutely no idea if bubble wrap would eat nitro, sounded like it definitely would. Even though my D-35 is not something I’d consider collector grade and some previous chucklehead’s stupid deadhead sticker did a number on the clearcoat on the peg head and other finish flaws that looked like the finish reacted negatively to a crappy cheap nylon strap I’d like to keep from adding to said finish flaws if possible.

 

[Guildedagain]

Holy crap! In the example you show GAD, I bet the package experienced temperature and/or humidity changes. I'm also willing to bet that the guitar was sitting packed for an extended period of time for that chemical reaction to have occurred.

Pretty sure one trip across the states to your house in hot weather is all it needs to harm the finish.

 

[jp]

Thanks!

SEO is a funny subject, but main way my site gets promoted is simply by posting it on The Gear Page (TGP) and on Reddit. Many of my articles are the #1 hits on Google for the topic unless there's something better from sites like Reverb, and that's even for articles that don't get shared by people on social media.

I obsessed about SEO for a while and now I just don't care (aside from plugins that do some backend things for me). The word gets out, often just by posting to TGP. Usually with a page like the one in question, someone from TGP will like it and then share it on some other forum and then someone will link to it in their article about packing and then it's everywhere.

The article I wrote about gas cans sucking is the #2 top-hit article on my site, and I've never posted it anywhere except here and on TGP. In fact, the top three are:

1) How to capture Brian Setzer's tone
2) One man's quest for gas cans that don't suck
3) Please don't buy a Newfoundland dog

These three articles have an order of magnitude more hits than #4, and I never promoted any of them aside from posting here, TGP, and in the case of #3, on my now defunct Newf forum.

Sorry for the needlessly elaborate reply.

Ah -- all you needed to say is that you post on The Gear Page. Lol. That's enough to get you slammed with hits.

Pretty sure one trip across the states to your house in hot weather is all it needs to harm the finish.

So true.

 

[GGJaguar]

The article I wrote about gas cans sucking is the #2 top-hit article on my site, and I've never posted it anywhere except here and on TGP.

The top-hit article on my site is "A Viewer's Glossary for Italian, Southern Italian, and Sicilian Phrases and Naughty Words". It was written very tongue-in-cheek for my Midwestern co-workers who kept asking me stuff after watching episodes of The Sopranos back in the day (I didn't watch the show). I never posted or discussed it, but it is consistently #1 in hits month after month (for years!). Go figure.