Thoughts on "relicing" or reliced guitars

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owwmyfoot

slave to the grind
I'm not super crazy about buying a "reliced" model for 1000+ new. I do however think the process is sort of cool and I would like to try it out someday on my own. To me there is something alluring about beat up old guitars. Of course the sound of any guitar takes precedence over its looks to me, but hey if you gotta look at it everyday...

Thoughts?
 
owwmyfoot said:
I'm not super crazy about buying a "reliced" model for 1000+ new. I do however think the process is sort of cool and I would like to try it out someday on my own. To me there is something alluring about beat up old guitars. Of course the sound of any guitar takes precedence over its looks to me, but hey if you gotta look at it everyday...

Thoughts?
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my next door neighbour decided to do his jimmy page impression on my brand new les paul custom....only problem was he had this belt buckel from hell...so it now has buckel rash bigtime ..then i did a few gigs with it and it got slammed on the low ceiling....then the drummer hit the ride a bit too hard and the cymbal flew into the headstock taking out a chunk.....

now lately i notice that the sweat from my palms has totally disloved the gold finish from the pickup covers and headstock....

now it seems the binding is slightly coming away but nothing to worry about...

lately the moisture in the air has coated all the metal in a sort of dull finish but i think with some polish i can almost get it back....

somehow i have dinks all over it ....but to my mind it looks cooler for it..

who needs relicing when realife is at play??:)
 
Reliced guitars are still brand new (beating up the finish does nothing to "age" the core of the instrument) and lack the tone that age and use gives a true relic. If you have any doubt about this, just play a truly aged guitar then compare it to a reliced reissue of the same model and you will see, hear and feal what I mean.

Somewhere I read that it takes a piece of wood about three years to realize it is a guitar. Add a few more years to this for it to realize it is an extention of it's owner. When it has given you many blisters, cramps and backaches, and you have poured gallons of sweat and a little blood into it and given it a few dings and worn away some of the finish where your arm and hands have spent thousands of hours then you can say you have a reliced guitar. Until then you only have a beat up new guitar.

Back "in the day" beat up guitars were sold as damaged and every ding took a few dollars of it's price instead of dealers expecting the buyer to pay for their sloppy handling of otherwise nice instruments.

To the op, you asked for opinions. Now you know what I think about reliced guitars. Yes I have a couple of reliced guitars, but they got reliced the old fashioned way... by countless hours of use.
 
Yeah I have been playing a long time too. I have guitars that are naturally worn out. I have guitars even older than those guitars that are still brand new looking, because I babied them more or never gigged with them. I think that relicing a guitar to try and fool other people into thinking you've been playing a lot longer than you have is wrong. However, if you're relicing a guitar just because you think it looks cooler with some wear on it, then I think that's perfectly fine and just a matter of personal preference.

Either way, the whole process is remarkable. The use of acids to erode finishes, the careful etching with sandpaper in the right spots, the mimicking of a belt buckle on the back, it's pretty cool and is definitely an artform unto itself. I prefer the worn out look on fender style guitars and basses. However, something like an ibanez JEM, PRS, or Les Paul I think looks much cooler preserved in it's factory-fresh finish.
 
I think relicing is idiotic, especually the usual amauter jobs I've seen.

The thing most of those guys miss is while you can try to imitate wear patterns, and then "age" the worn wood, 1.) almost without fail you're going to get the wear pattern imperfect, and 2.) real worn wood and aged worn wood don't quite look the same.

So, ten years of hard playing down the road, you'll have a guitar with a mix of fake wear and real wear that makes the fake wear look even more fake. It's stupid.

If you want a beat-up looking guitar, either buy a beat up guitaer or, better yet, buy one new and enoy "relicing" it by playing the crap out of it for the next ten years. :D
 
I think it is even more dumb that buying jeans that are pre-torn, etc. And everytime I 'relic' one of my guitars, my neighbours learn how to better curse in English. It's just so phoney, and some marketing genius, somewhere, must be laughing up his sleeves at people who pay a premium for a beat up looking guitar.
 
IMO, reliced guitars are the fake boobs, the cubic zirconia, the "Lamborghini" fiberglass bodies that you can buy to put on a VW bug chassis of the music scene. But to each his own.
 
I've said this before, but since we're on the subject I'll say it again. :D

One of the things I appreciate about owning something that is well made and ages with use is the appreciation of the slow process of aging.

Leather portfolios, nice furniture, guitars, even a well-made wool rug - all of them develop a patina with age that shows my (or your) mark on it. It becomes unique because of my using of it, as opposed to your using of it. It develops a character that shows the marks of use and ownership of it, some of which can be memorable in their own right.

Falsely aging guitars is just selling a false history, or more accurately, an impression of a history. Like ggunn says, it's like fake boobs and Lambo body kits. Pointless.

I have to wonder if the market for falsely aged guitars reflects that there are some people who have a problem with being seen with a brand-new guitar. 'Course, there are always going to be people who think that something has more intrinsic value just because the price tag is higher.

Earlier today I got an email from Private Reserve Guitars advertising the Fender "Heavy Relic '52 Telecaster" with a price of $4,159.99. Please. :rolleyes:

Now, I don't have any problem with an individual taking a guitar and customizing it in any way they want. But agreeing with Drew P, all the amateur aging jobs I've seen just look like shit.
 
101 % agree with Zaphod. He just words it nicer than I could have.;):cool:
 
Zaphod B said:
Now, I don't have any problem with an individual taking a guitar and customizing it in any way they want. But agreeing with Drew P, all the amateur aging jobs I've seen just look like shit.
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...and even the better ones where it's semi plausible and doesn't look totally overdone, you just know that ten years down the road the wear is going to look really uneven, as normal wear and tear does the job that someone tried to do with car keys and black tea.

I bought my strat brand new in '98. It's beginning to show some wear, though nothing nearly like a normal "relic" job, but the thing with this guitar is not only does the wear look 100% natural, most of the dings or marks or scuffs have a story to them. The guitar sort of "speaks" to me in a way that a guitar with a bunch of miscellaneous scuffs done with some steel wool or a file or two don't - it has history, and it wears it proudly.
 
DrewPeterson7 said:
...most of the dings or marks or scuffs have a story to them. The guitar sort of "speaks" to me in a way that a guitar with a bunch of miscellaneous scuffs done with some steel wool or a file or two don't - it has history, and it wears it proudly.
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Exactly. :)
 
DrewPeterson7 said:
you just know that ten years down the road the wear is going to look really uneven, as normal wear and tear does the job that someone tried to do with car keys and black tea.
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....or shoe polish on the pickguard.....:rolleyes:
 
OK, here is the real deal.

I've said already in previous and related threads to this.
muttley600 said:
If you'd said that you were considering "relicing" the guitar I would have given you the following advice.

If you want a guitar that looks like it's been gigged daily for thirty years, buy a guitar thats been gigged daily for thirty years. If you want a guitar that looks like some numbnut has beaten the shit out of in his shed. Buy a guitar and beat the shit out of it in your shed.

"Relicing" or what is more correctly termed distressing is a technique that has been developed over the years to hide repairs to antique furniture, instruments etc to restore fresh work to match the existing patina. It is an art in itself and incredibly hard to get right.
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Pardon me for being smug but that's what most of you guys are saying, right?

Take it from me as someone who has built a lot of instruments and repaired many many more. Relicing or distressing is an art. I know how to do it on small areas to blend fresh spots into the patina of a guitar. To do a complete instrument and make it look genuine and last is the work of a specialist. They do exist, I've seen them, but as has been said they are fake finishes. No production environment can do it right.

I learned a a lot of distressing techniques from a guy that had a workshop in a building I was in years ago. He was an antique restorer and a good one. He had too much integrity to fake stuff but he had the talent and the skills.

The real deal is this. "Relicing" is a relatively new invention in this situation.

Distressing is what it really is.

It has been sold as a merit by big brands who are trying to cash in on a naive market.

All the points made so far by the rest of the group are valid.

To finish I can see the day not far ahead when I am going to have to repair a guitar that has been sold as "reliced" and despite being gigged and a few years old I am going to have to perform a decent cosmetic repair and finish it accordingly and then have to fake a "new" reliced finish on top of that. How made is that!!!!!!

Get real peeps.:D;);)
 
man I can't wait to get my new guitar and relic the s#$% out of it so that it looks nice and old and worn out. :rolleyes::D


just fuggin' with ya and sorry but I'm just so used to saying relicing. Ok well thoughts on distressing a guitar only in this thread then.
 
owwmyfoot said:
man I can't wait to get my new guitar and relic the s#$% out of it so that it looks nice and old and worn out. :rolleyes::D


just fuggin' with ya and sorry but I'm just so used to saying relicing. Ok well thoughts on distressing a guitar only in this thread then.
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Dude, so far the count is seven to one. We can wait a bit longer if you want but I think we can now extrapolate the results.;)
 
I still think it's cool because like you've said yourself, it's more of an art form. The techniques that the guy in the youtube vid uses are creative to an extent (ok, maybe not the hammer part.) I have never done it myself but thought about it after watching that vid. I would probably wuss out when I see the nice new finish on the tele I'm getting when it comes back in stock later this year.
 
owwmyfoot said:
I still think it's cool because like you've said yourself, it's more of an art form. The techniques that the guy in the youtube vid uses are creative to an extent (ok, maybe not the hammer part.) I have never done it myself but thought about it after watching that vid. I would probably wuss out when I see the nice new finish on the tele I'm getting when it comes back in stock later this year.
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You really aren't getting it are you.

My point is, I learned how from one of Europes finest and I don't attempt it. Why? Because I've seen how hard it is to do right. If it's done well it still looks like a pile of crap and if it's done really well it just looks crap. If I had to do it, and I'm good, very good, I'd take it to the guy I mentioned and he'd charge me more than the guit is worth, even a classic.

But that's all fine you go ahead and do it. You'll have a whole life time to regret it. Your call.

Oh and the guy in the vid is an idiot. Final word.
 
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