adorshki
Reverential Member
The short answer's "Yes", but it would have to be pretty thick and with Guild it wasn't actually paint but heavily tinted lacquer, the way I understand it. And yeah some of those colors contained a high degree of particulate solids but they were still pretty thin, in Westerly at least, in regular production guitars.Sorry for so many questions, but I figure YOU guys are the experts, so here's another one. Can paint affect the sound?
D5 might actually be painted if you're quoting Hans literally.
Sounds like you realize a D4 is basically a structural clone of an archback D25 and so that surprises me and makes me suspect there was some other reason besides just finish for the guitar never sounding too good acoustically.When talking about these guitars later, Hans told me the D5 was basically a D4 with paint and Fishman power-jack.
The sound difference between these two guitars were night and day. Not even close!
Someone said that the black paint killed the tone on the D5. Others said the guitar quality was the reason, the D5 was no match for the D25.
I wonder for example, if bracing and/or bridgeplate might have been tweaked a bit to help cut down on feedback.
Your story also reminds me of my experience with my Corona D40 which does have an exceptionally thick finish (clear), at least compared to the 2 Westerlys, and which also was surprisingly "muted" to my ears, but I think there are a couple of other potential factors in that guitar's build which taken altogether work to "hold it back", and I suspect that was happening with your D5 as well, or it could have been one of the very rare Westerly "duds".
I would give more weight to where it was built, keeping what I said about my D40's finish in mind.I am seriously looking at the Black F-50 (would be great for the shows and to play at home),,,but will the color/paint affect the tone?
I think thickness is more important than color itself, even the heavy solids.
Obviously, play it if you can, or at least get a return clause based on your concern.