Originally Posted by StratTone
Ooooo! The experience card!
Ok, let's play. I have been a professional guitar tech since the early 80's. I've refinished more guitars than I can count in nitro, water based acrylic, poly, and oil. I have shot new finishes over factory, and stripped them down to bare wood. I've shot finish only, deliberately avoiding a sanding sealer coat. I can tell you without a doubt, the finish makes such a small amount of difference in the sound that it's negligible. It's not even worth thinking about. Old Leo and his automotive finishes over the dipped base coat knew that.
Do you know why Leo had to come up with a bridge that allowed intonation adjustments? Because on a solid body guitar, the sound is coming from the pickups, not the wood. The pickups hear all. On a hollow body guitar, the wood contributes so much that there are overtones hiding the out of tune strings, so the human ear has a much more difficult time picking them out. This isn't a guess, it's well documented.
The hype about nitro V. poly-whatever, thick V. thin, old v. new, and (ugh) 'tonewood' (what a crock) is just that, Hype. It's the same hype that makes people spend many thousands of dollars on an old guitar. The whole 'older is better' argument started after CBS and Norlin fucked up the two best known guitar brands in the world. Quality control was so bad people wanted the old ones. It's now at epidemic proportions.
You say you can hear the difference between your thin skin and one of your regular finished Strats. I believe you 100%. But, I can also hear the difference between 2 MIM standards. The ONLY way to make a fair assessment would be to have two identical bodies, one finished in thin skin and one in regular poly. Then swap all of your parts, neck, tuners, pickups, bridge, everything, to the other body. Unless you've done that, you're comparing apples and oranges. Now, that'd be pretty impracticle, right? So, while I think we can all agree with the assessment that your thin skin sounds better based only on your statements, I can't go along with the fact that it's the finish doing it. The argument just doesn't hold water.