Finish Durability: Gloss vs Matte?

[Ethereal Thorn]

Yep - it's not about matte versus gloss, it's about a good finish versus a bad one. Well done polyurethane is very tough stuff. I've done a bunch of basses, and the finishes don't chip with dings -you get a small dent if you hit it really hard, but the poly stays with the wood - it doesn't delaminate. Poorly done poly isn't so tough - if your finish is chipping, it isn't well done poly. One of the issues here is "poiy" can mean polyurethane or polyester. My basses are all polyurethane; l I think a lot of the cheaper basses are polyester - that may be one source of confusion.

Polyester is more scratch resistant then polyurethane tho and I feel it would be more expensive/ harder to apply

 

[micguy]

25556848[/URL], member: 88634"]Polyester is more scratch resistant then polyurethane tho and I feel it would be more expensive/ harder to apply

Polyester is usually harder, but usually more brittle. Polyester won’t scratch quite as easily, but when you get a ding, polyurethane will stay stuck to the wood - they both deform together. Polyesterdoesn’t do that; it stays the same shape, which means it’s no longer stuck to the wood in that spot - it delaminates, which looks worse, and on a decent sized ding, it’ll chip off, while polyurethane stays there.

If you look at the basses I’ve had for a while, from a few feet away, they look perfect. If I’d used polyester, you’d see chips. Get really close to my basses, you’ll see that there are little dings in some places, but overall they look much better. Although technically the finish scratches easier, if I go looking for scratches, I don’t see any - the finish is hard enough that they’re not a practical problem.

Polyester does take more expensive hardware to apply, but it’s used on cheaper instruments because it takes less time and labor, which makes it cheaper to produce with. More expensive instruments are more likely to use polyurethane.

 

[s7272]

So eventually, anybody knows about the matte finish on Spector Dimension? How is it?