Goldtop Les Paul refinish

  A good friend of mine bought a nice Vintage V100 goldtop LP guitar. The guitar had a few setup issues but we managed to get low action and perfect intonation out of it. Something was missing though and we figured it out as soon as we compared it to a Vintage Icon lp guitar. It was the finish!  The ultra glossy and polished finish made the golden top of the guitar looking rather "cheap" and "replica" style while the matt Icon finish looks aged and classy.
  Moreover, the 60's gibby style neck was also too glossy on the back and we definitely wanted a faster, smother feeling, matt-finished neck.
  The idea was simple: we wanted to re-lacquer the hole guitar to look aged and classy while retaining the gold top colour. But the work behind this idea was quite a different story...
 First I removed as much hardware and plastic parts from the guitar. Then I masked with tape the parts that shouldn't be covered in lacquer or scrapped.
 The 2nd step was to sand down the old glossy clear coat up with high grit sandpapers by hand(not belt sanders and stuff). I sanded to a point that the guitar was matt but the colour remained untouched and all original. I was ultra careful...
 The 3rd step was to mask every little spot I didn't want to spray on and clean the guitar with a soft cloth and a bit of alcohol based cleaning fluid.
 The 4rth step was to spray matt clear coats on the guitar, one side at a time. I then sanded a few spills with an ultra high grit sandpaper and resprayed the hole thing. After a few coats, the finish was ready and it looked amazing.
 The final step was to reassemble the guitar and set it up with a fresh set of 0.09" strings in order to make it a soloing machine as it was requested!
  Now this well-priced Vintage V100 guitar looks, plays and feels like its higher priced Icon brothers without having their battle scars and being artificially marked/"aged". Good guitar ageing is the one that makes your guitar look older and mature but doesn't say out loud:  "Hey, this man did not take care of me for all these years and dropped me on the floor at every gig!".
  Here are some pictures taken during the project:

Cheers,
Thanos from Greece