Ya know it will be a good thread when domestic violence is brought into the fray early on...
Relics are set dressing, in my opinion. They look the part and complete the image of a band, if they tie in with the image of a band. When I saw Black Sabbath a few years back, Tony Iommi was playing custom SGs with all sorts of finish wear and abuse. For that sort of music I'm not sure a shiny, factory-fresh guitar would have fitted the aesthetic so well. Speaking of relics, Ozzy had several buckets of water onstage, and took to dipping his head into them at regular intervals. The resulting spray killed at least one radio mic.
I do think that you have to pay a chunk for a relic. Mass-produced relic instruments don't always look the part. I'm thinking specifically of those ESP ltd basses, but there are others. Conversely some real wear doesn't look right either! Those '60s Fenders with the sunburst sprayed over a white basecoat look a bit odd when they wear down, and some older Poly finishes simply develop long longitudinal cracks or chip like glass. I think a good relic finish simply signposts the player; this guitar is comfortable and practically plays itself.
Some relic finishers, like Kelton Swade to name but one, produce work that looks totally over the top. From fifty feet away, under bright lights, it probably looks exactly like what your typical blues punter thinks an old Fender looks like. To put it another way. I recently walked down a street I used to live on, and was surprised to see a film shoot in progress. They remodelled the street to look like Victorian-era London, which involved building a false wall. Walking right past it, I could see that the wall was painted with fake brickwork, applied using a kitchen scrubber and brown acrylic paint. I watched the TV show a year later, and never spotted the wall! Up close it looked fake, from a distance it looked like grimy Victorian London. Make of that what you will.
Relics are set dressing, in my opinion. They look the part and complete the image of a band, if they tie in with the image of a band. When I saw Black Sabbath a few years back, Tony Iommi was playing custom SGs with all sorts of finish wear and abuse. For that sort of music I'm not sure a shiny, factory-fresh guitar would have fitted the aesthetic so well. Speaking of relics, Ozzy had several buckets of water onstage, and took to dipping his head into them at regular intervals. The resulting spray killed at least one radio mic.
I do think that you have to pay a chunk for a relic. Mass-produced relic instruments don't always look the part. I'm thinking specifically of those ESP ltd basses, but there are others. Conversely some real wear doesn't look right either! Those '60s Fenders with the sunburst sprayed over a white basecoat look a bit odd when they wear down, and some older Poly finishes simply develop long longitudinal cracks or chip like glass. I think a good relic finish simply signposts the player; this guitar is comfortable and practically plays itself.
Some relic finishers, like Kelton Swade to name but one, produce work that looks totally over the top. From fifty feet away, under bright lights, it probably looks exactly like what your typical blues punter thinks an old Fender looks like. To put it another way. I recently walked down a street I used to live on, and was surprised to see a film shoot in progress. They remodelled the street to look like Victorian-era London, which involved building a false wall. Walking right past it, I could see that the wall was painted with fake brickwork, applied using a kitchen scrubber and brown acrylic paint. I watched the TV show a year later, and never spotted the wall! Up close it looked fake, from a distance it looked like grimy Victorian London. Make of that what you will.
