Smartwater and guitars

Blaendulais

The local police have been around our way giving out free smartwater kits.   The question is do I apply it to my guitars or will it ruin the tone/finish/enjoyment?

skunkwerx

It won't affect the tone, nor the enjoyment.. 

Reactions with the finish though, I don't know.. 

Do the plastic control backing plate. 

andy1839

Test it first. 

 All mine have smartwater. 
I usually stick to doing the tops of the machineheads and screw heads.
As long as it's somewhere obvious enough to be seen under a quick uv check they don't need much of it for a match.

Because it dries very hard sometimes the only way to get it off is to scrape it which then gets sent to the lab.
So probably best not to stick it anywhere that you wouldn't want subject to a small scrape.

skunkwerx

Personally I found it useless.

I drank an entire bottle of the stuff once to protect myself against kidnapping.. 

But it just came out the next day. 

prlgmnr

skunkwerx said:

Personally I found it useless.

I drank an entire bottle of the stuff once to protect myself against kidnapping.. 

But it just came out the next day. 

And have you been kidnapped?

Blaendulais

andy1839 said:

Test it first. 

 All mine have smartwater. 
I usually stick to doing the tops of the machineheads and screw heads.
As long as it's somewhere obvious enough to be seen under a quick uv check they don't need much of it for a match.

Because it dries very hard sometimes the only way to get it off is to scrape it which then gets sent to the lab.
So probably best not to stick it anywhere that you wouldn't want subject to a small scrape.

Thanks Andy

Guitar_Slinger

While a solution is to put it somewhere inconspicuous (not the finish) like the bridge/scratchplate/control plate or machineheads... what happens if a tea-leaf also has a scanner and replaces the part you've painted. Phwooar, what a predicament!

skunkwerx

prlgmnr said:

skunkwerx said:

Personally I found it useless.

I drank an entire bottle of the stuff once to protect myself against kidnapping.. 

But it just came out the next day. 

And have you been kidnapped?

Lol! Touche. 

I can fully vouch for this stuff now. 

andy1839

Guitar_Slinger said:

While a solution is to put it somewhere inconspicuous (not the finish) like the bridge/scratchplate/control plate or machineheads... what happens if a tea-leaf also has a scanner and replaces the part you've painted. Phwooar, what a predicament!

That's why you'd dot it on more than one location.
I can't see your typical thief carrying a whole spares kit to replace all the screws, bridge, tuners etc.

Guitar_Slinger

True, but one of the OP's questions is about ruining the finish.

I wrote my address on a SNES years ago with an "invisible" UV pen the copper from Neighbourhood Watch gave me. After a couple of years, you could clearly see it with the naked eye.  While the SNES is long gone, I still have a guitar bought around the same time.