Summer Fade Results

Results...
Here are some pics of sun faded 01' Honey Burst. A tail piece removed and pickguard.
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Yo Idge ?? Is there a diff at all?? It's quite glossy to me there bro??..Fill us in..Looks nice though!!

Peace!!:salude

i see a big one.

...ahhhh i see, i see!!...Yeah!!! It is faded...Well,well....Mr. Idge comes through again.

Man!! You must've been in QUITO,Chile..right at the center Equator...LOL!!

Do you like it?? ..are you gonna finish the rest??? How long??

Peace!!:wail

Just goes to show the power of the sun and UV light; wow!

BTW- Quito is a city and the capital of Ecuador, not Chile. Chile is nowhere near the equator and it's capital is Santiago, although it's legislative bodies meet in Valparaiso. :jim

The Les Paul Classic justs sits under a skylight in my upstairs, and MI gets alot of sun in the summer. Even though the intensity of it on June 20 is only like April sun in FL. I just wanted to fade the brown a little. I like it's color better now. I do keep the inlays covered though. Since they faded Early on. You guys seen that thread probably. It's been setting under the skylight since last summer. :jim

Bluesslinger said:

Just goes to show the power of the sun and UV light; wow!

BTW- Quito is a city and the capital of Ecuador, not Chile. Chile is nowhere near the equator and it's capital is Santiago, although it's legislative bodies meet in Valparaiso. :jim

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I knew i had my geography gone awry there for a bit, I stand corrected there Blues!! You are right...My Bad..I should look first before and check before my spiel there...Thanks!!

Peace!!!:wail

What a big difference, and it does look cool. Might do this to mine as well

Here's a pic of my 04 Cloud 9. I took this photo within a week after I purchased it new last spring. I'd say it spent a bit of time hanging on the wall at Music Machine.

Wow, that one has the opposite effect of mine, yours look lighter under the tailpiece. :tm It must of been a black light... :biglaugh:

Idge said:

Wow, that one has the opposite effect of mine, yours look lighter under the tailpiece. :tm It must of been a black light... :biglaugh:

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You know...I didn't even pay attention when I posted the photo, but it appears that yours has faded, whereas mine has ambered.

Yup. you never know what that nitro will do. But it looks good. I just checked out this black painted SG that was oversprayed 20 years ago on the headstock with nitro and it ambered bigtime over the black. It looked cool as hell. They should haved sprayed the rest. :salude

Nitrocellulose laquer will yellow/amber/brown with exposure to UV.

The "dye" used to color the guitar, either on/in the wood or in the laquer itself will fade with exposure to STRONG light, like the sun.

This is why UV tanning booths dont have very much effect on the colors. Given enough time they'll amber out the finish though.

Look at Pelham Blue metallic (nearly the same as Lake Placid blue). That color goes green with age, since the blue dye is very stable.

Take a color like Fiesta Red. It goes either "pink" or "orange" depending on the UV present. Some of them are quite nearly a "powder pink" color, but most, because of UV exposure as well as fading, are a sort of "coral" orangy/pink.

Remember, flourescent tubes are pretty high in UV, so any guitar thats been on the wall in a store, literally 10-12 hours a day for 4 or 5 years... (for some reason) is getting a LOT of UV exposure.

Interesting thread...do black finished instruments change much with light or UV exposure?

Black is fairly light stable. Blue is too. Green is so-so. Red is terrible.

Nitro will go amber with UV.

Ever notice the very yellowed binding on older white bound LPs? Had a friend that played outside a lot with his black custom (back in like 72-74). The upper bout by the switch was VERY amber, as also was the top of the headstock. The bottom of the head and guitar, and where his arm was on the lower bout, was still lookin white. I never realized what that was... until about 2 years ago... when it clicked in my mind (after reading the UV thing at www.frets.com).

Idge said:

The Les Paul Classic justs sits under a skylight in my upstairs, and MI gets alot of sun in the summer. Even though the intensity of it on June 20 is only like April sun in FL. I just wanted to fade the brown a little. I like it's color better now. I do keep the inlays covered though. Since they faded Early on. You guys seen that thread probably. It's been setting under the skylight since last summer. :jim

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I'm in Michigan too, but don't have a skylight. I thought that a skylight would work great, now I know. I was imagining somehow suspending the guitar up near the ceiling under it to get more exposure. I thought of that seen in Frankenstein where he's raising the monster up to get it zapped with lightning bolts. Raising it with the chains and the platform, "it's alive",,,"no, it's not alive, but it's faded, it's faded"..

I faded a darkburst this summer, but I did it in direct sunlight. I can see it would be iced tea if I kept going with it.

I know what you mean about the southern states, I been down there alot. A 90 degree day in the south is not the same as a 90 degree day up here, the UV rays and brightness of the sun down there are visually very noticeable and felt. The sun looks closer, and much brighter down there. Here is one of a few pics I took of some of the glorious sunsets in a rural part of Tennessee last July.


I didn't notice any difference in the center yellow portion of mine like I see on yours. However I once fadded a pre-historic with results similar to yours under the tailpiece. I thought the sun has an ambering effect on the whole top due to the nitro yellowing. But it appears that the sun turned yours lighter color, instead of darker, strange. Don't the pics and text in B.O.T.B show the sun turns the yellow part darker?

I had a clear liscence plate cover on my car, for the last few years. I just took it off as it's ambered and dulled down so much it makes the plate harder to read. I didn't realise how ambered the plastic cover had become till removing it.

Alot of this in non-scence, the only way you see the fading is if you remove a part. Analine dye is not used on the tops as it was in '58 -'59, and it not only fades very fast, but unevenly. I also belive there is a bit of differece in the appearacne of the color, analine looks less cloudy. I'd prefer to have the real deal analine dye over the metalic non-fading dyes used today. I've had a darkburst non-Gibson replica and I experienced what you read about in B.O.T.B. the chapter about the analine dye and the appearnce of the burst color. I fadded it the sun and it took about 10x less time, on one particular sunny afternoon I could practially see it fade.