The Shinedown Incident – Part Two

Wow, it is next week already!  Time flies in the world of ROCK! No, not really, but I had to say it.

When we left off last week, I had just put an offer in on a Zach Myers signature guitar found on the internet, eBay, specifically.  My initial thought after submitting my offer to the seller was, “the worst thing they can do is say no.” That quick euphoria of oh man, I just did a thing, and crap, my wife is going to kill me if I win, turned to this ##expletive deleted## guitar is awfully U.G.L.Y, ugly with all those mid-aughts, autographs.  What am I going to do?

I still really wanted the guitar, but man Shinedown has really dated and horrible signatures.  My saving grace (not my daughter, that’s another story) was, this article I’ve read a million times.  One of the luthier influencers that works with StewMac, a luthier supply website, wrote up a great article on how to strip polyurethane finishes from guitars.

In the “How to strip a modern poly guitar finish” article, our author goes into great detail of the dos and don’ts of using a heat gun on a wood surface.  The content itself is strong but is dated because it is not done via a video demonstration.  How-to videos are big in this community, and with the proliferation of affordable HD video devices, it is incredibly easy to show and post a video to YouTube. Aside from this content needing a video update, what makes this article so helpful is the clear step by step instructions and story that is augmented with images.  I’m not here to critique the ever-evolving use of digital technology on content creation.  I’m here to show you how I worked around a huge problem.

Now back to the story, after about 36 hours, it was mid-day on a Saturday, my phone sends me an eBay notification.  I. WON.  My smile quickly turns to dread, not the judge kind either, I’m sitting at lunch with my wife and daughter enjoying a greasy spoon something or other, and it hit me.  I am in deep.  Not only will I have a less than thrilled wife, now I am stuck with the ugliest guitar on the planet, and there are some ugly guitars — exhibit A.

Now what to do, I’m stuck with this awesome atrocity of a guitar.  I wanted the blue one with the flame maple veneered top, so it was either pay import dues or take off the autographs.  I chose the latter, why, I’m cheap, and from the images on eBay, it looked like this was just silver sharpie.  Sharpie isn’t so permanent, and there are multiple ways to remove it.  I chose to use 91% isopropyl alcohol because it cuts through most things, evaporates fast and doesn’t damage this type of finish and terry cloth rags from ACE Hardware.

The result was a much-improved look to the guitar.  I do realize this makes me a jerk, and yes, I bought an autographed guitar to take off the autographs, but you know what, it is just some wood and metal, who cares what my tastes are compared to the members of Shinedown. No, there were no documents authenticating the signatures, but even if there was, the guitar looks 1000% better now, in my opinion

Check back next week for more.