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Maple neck tint and protect


DorsetBlue
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As my maple/maple guitar neck has arrived from G&L, I thought I would start planning on the finish. My plan is to have a slight vintage tint, not the bright yellow you see sometimes. Then I want the fingerboard to be glossy like an American Standard Strat but I am not sure I want the back to be glossy.
Current plan is to use some type of woodstain and then to seal the neck using Rustins Plastic Coating but this raises a few questions:

1) What stains do people recommend that will not react with Rustins?
2) What do you do about the frets; cover them during the 'Rustins' stage, sand them gently down afterwards, leave as is.....?
3) Will Rustins be annoyingly 'grippy' on the back of the neck? If so, what are the options? Use a different lacquer on the back? Use wire wool on the Rustins finish once it has cured....?

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Not sure why you're taking the stain + Rustin approach to be honest.

I would use a tinted lacquer and do it all in one, you can get poly or nitro (harder to work but ages beautifully and feels better IMHO).

If you use a proper lacquer for guitars (e.g. Rothko & Frost) you spray over the frets then do a basic fret dress to get rid of the lacquer on the crowns of the frets (or not if you want that Rckenbacker feel).

If you want a satin finish you can a) use satin lacquer, or B) use gloss but fine sand / wire wool / scouring pad etc. to dull the finish - you'd normally need to polish gloss finish anyway, just don't polish so much on the back. If you want a glossy front I'd go with option B - it will end up being glossy again eventually with wear, but you can always knock it back again.

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I think a lot of these 'vintage tint' necks come with too many coats of tint applied personally. I'm lucky enough to have a couple of genuine vintage basses, so I always refer to these for colour. The 60s one is quite orange on the front of the headstock to be honest, but the back isn't that different from a new bass! The 70s ones are a golden colour. The trick is to use a couple of coats of tint, then switch to clear when you've got the right colour - and bear in mind, if you use Nitro it will tint more over time.

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