After bragging about being able to easily remove pick and finger nail scratches from the lacquer and pickguard of my Martins, the kid next door brings me his Ovation. It had quite a few light scratches and hazing on the top where the pic guard would normally go. I've got every grade of fine sand paper from 2000 grade up to 12,000 and for final polish about every bottle of Mequire's auto paint polisher known to exist. Nothing I do to his guitar will remove the haze and scratches. Yes, the surface looks better but the bad stuff is still there if you look in the right light. My Martin has lacquer, his Ovation is maybe urethane. Is there a trick to getting rid of all that ugly wear? Lacquer is easy to make look brand new. Thanks

Lacquer you sort of "flow" back to gather. The catalyzed Ovation polymer is a solid. You fill the voids, blend-down the finish on either side of the voids, a little of both, or refinish.

Even after the finest sand and buff. Put a coat of carnuba wax on it and see how it looks.

Here's Mark's 1537. Came from Canada via UPS.

A mishap at Border Customs Clearing started a chain of events resulting in a very cosmetically damaged guitar that was finally found in UPS's lost and found warehouse weeks later. They scrapped the guitar and reimbursed the seller. I talked UPS into letting us pay salvage. They refused to ship it to the Mothership and the local expert wanted over a grand, as he would have to remove the finish by hand sanding. I think the Mothership removes the neck/epailets/bridge and can place the resulting unit facedown on a wide beltsander.

I work with wood, but it was the first project I've ever attemped like this. It was trial and error, a lot of advise from the experts, and a lot (did I say a lot) of methodical hand sanding/polishing. The thicker (older) finish worked in my favor. The resulting finish might have had a few minor blemishes left and is probably even thinner than the new Ovation finishes. Mark has my LifeTime Gaurantee... and I have not heard of any issues.

Mark, I went into it blind. After injuring my arm, it was the first hand work I attempted. It was a physical challenge and became real personal. When you wanted to buy her, I was so proud to share my triumph. Your guitar was the mountain I had to climb. When Moody met me, I think my hand and fingers were still braced. 

The most intriguing thing about your guitar is the un-buffed clearcoat on the underside of the top. Despite the obvious abuse it sustained, there were no finish cracks. My other 1537 has a finish crack coming down from under the floating tongue of the fretboard and the underside of its top is bare wood. The 1337 (acoustic only), which appears to have had an active life, has a very light underside coating and has not developed the typical finish cracks. We started talking about it once before, but no one from the Factory chimed in with any thoughts behind the underside coatings.

nerdydave, look at StewMac for different viscosities of CYA and then find a do-it-yourself guide about drop-filling cracks and dings (I think there is even one in a thread on this site)

You slightly overfill the ding. Once the fill cures, you shave it down with a fresh razor blade riding on a layer of scotch tape (which you had previously wrapped around either side of the blade). The scotch tape turns the razor blade into a mini-plane by allowing it to slide over the good, old finish around the ding, while the exposed blade in the middle shaves down the fill. Then progressively finer and finer sanding followed by buff/polish. Anything but the smallest ding is work and practice makes perfect.   

That is pure genius!

muzza, That's exactly what I thought when I came across that years ago. The author of the tutorial also noted that he rounded-off each end of the blade so they could not accidently poke through the scotch tape.

seesquare, these little (spring loaded) sanding sticks turned out to be more convenient than "my" fingers. 

Lady Noah's OptiVisor also became a great friend. If a repair almost disappears at 2x, it is probably going to look great to the naked eye. It even lights the way.

It was and is, my pleasure Mark.

But to put it in perspective... back then, we had only located about 15 of them.

DB, there were no other applicants. It was never for sale. All of a sudden, we started seeing more of them for sale. Many of the offers were scams, and the other "opportunities" were more of a windfall opportunity for the seller. If I remember right, the "opportunity" at that time to obtain a pristine 1537 was $1500 - $1600. Mine came from AL. He had one, he knew I wanted one, and he went out of his way to make sure I could obtain it.

Pay it Forward   Thank you Tony   Thank you Alex