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I was about to drop a new mustang bridge into my Jazzmaster this morning when I noticed a couple of nasty scratches. I know the ideal solution would be to not be so careless in the first place but does anybody have any DIY experience in repairing finishes? It's definitely not worth a professional repair or respray but I've read about using clear nail varnish and sanding it down.



Any advice would me much appreciated!!

You'll have to do a drop fill. Get some color (testors model paint works well and you could mix it to match) then brush some in the area to cover the scratch.
Then when dry, level sand it start at 800 wet sand and 1200  up to 2000.
Then move on to polishing.. the scratch will be gone. give it some polishing compound and you're done!

Hmmm, I may have a go at that. Can you recommend a polishing compound or do they mostly do the same job?

What type of finish is it? Nitro? What color is it?

I think I would try and polish it out first. I'm not sure if this is available in the UK, but I love 3M Finesse It II! It is pretty mild. Maguier's Scratch X is pretty good stuff to remove scratches as well, but I have not tried it on a guitar finish. It works great on metal and even plastic.

The ReRanch has touch up pens available in several colors. I don't know about shipping it overseas though, but maybe you could find something similar in the UK.

Regan

I think I'll try that actually, I'm not that fussed about the cosmetic appearance (being a Sonic Youth fan) but the scratches bug me. The finish is gonna be one of these new polymer finishes or whatever you call it - it's on a Candy Apple Red '95 CIJ, I imagine the CAR would be very difficult to match and not really worth the time. I have been thinking about what a guitar would look like in white with a red headstock... has anyone tried having a different coloured body and headstock, out of interest?

Good luck! Let us know how it turns out.

Dirty_boots wrote: has anyone tried having a different coloured body and headstock, out of interest?

Yeah, there was a thread awhile back where somebody was talking about a Jaguar thay had to sell.  It was Fiesta Red with an Olympic White headstock.  The headstock matched the pickguard and it looked cool as hell.  Oh, and Troy Van Leeuwen from Queens of the Stone Age has a Black Jag with a red headstock too.

The scratch repair stuff was no good for this kind of deep scratch but was somewhat effective on light surface scratches. I'm not too bothered about it now though, it's less noticeable now it's filled up a bit with gunk and is a bit darker.