Current Standard Production finish recipes ...

[Craig]

From some discussion I recently had with James Gay [G&L Custom Shop Manager] about current G&L finishes:

Standard Production, and anything that isn't aged, is all the same finish recipe:
Polyester sealer
Urethane color
Polyester clear coat
If the guitar is a satin finish, the clear coat is level sanded and then shot with one thin coat of satin urethane,
which is the same finish we spray on satin necks.

Gloss Urethane is not a California Compliant finish because of the level of VOC's (Volatile Organic Compounds) inside it.
We can't legally spray it anymore, which is why everything is polyester.
The polyester is thinned as much as we can on anything that isn't a metal flake finish.

Metal flake is always way thicker because of the 3D nature of metal flakes laying down onto the body. There's 3-4x as much material on metal flake finishes than standard.

All finishes get polyester undercoat, sprayed on about 3-4 coats that gets leveled back flat. This is done to fill in the pores of the wood and make it smooth.

All satin finishes are Urethane Color, Polyester Clear topcoat, with a Satin Urethane final topcoat.

All standard polyester finishes are Urethane Color with Polyester Topcoat sprayed on around 3-4 coats that are then leveled and polished. They're not super thick. They're borderline too thin, given how many a week we burn in polish and have to be touched up or resprayed.

Metal flake is its own animal:
Silver metallic base coat sprayed onto bare wood.
Then we spray one wet coat of clear Urethane or Polyester and coat the body with silver flake while it's wet. When the clear dries, it locks in the flakes.
Then we build polyester undercoat onto this. It takes between 10-15 coats to fully saturate the flake. You have to fill in all the open space around and between the metal flakes all over the body.
This thick undercoat is level sanded back flat and thinned out as much as possible.
Then we spray urethane color and polyester clear over this.
These finishes will always be thicker than standard, but we do try to make it as thin as possible.