There are numerous ways to paint guitars and there are people who claim that one way is better than another.
Again there are lots of opinions and arguments.
This page is to try to explain a little about the basic differences.

What's the Difference?

Polyester Paint jobs are easy and inexpensive to make look very good. Most every company uses it from Ibanez to PRS. Polyester finishes are easily identifiable by the thick glossy finish. Polyester as opposed to Polyurethane is resin based and therefore thicker and goopier. (Not great for tone). Polyurethane is much more expensive but it's thinner and sounds measurably better than Polyester.

Nitrocellulose is a lacquer and it is much harder to work with. Nitro is what all the companies from Fender to Gibson to D' Angelico used to use in the 50's & 60's. Nitro is a much thinner finish than Polyester and it doesn't clog the wood pores.

Today only a few companies offer a Nitrocellulose option, I know that I do. However there are other ways to extract good tone from wood even using Polyester or Polyurethane.

The real key of course is thickness. An easy way to measure thickness is to unscrew your strap lock or strap pin and look inside the hole. If you can see a layer of filler like on ESP, Jackson, Fender & Ibanez you will know what I am talking about.

This filler stifles your tone. It dampens the resonance so much that you get a very dead tone. Ok, that may be fine if you are playing metal but a jazz guitarist or blues guitarist will want more natural overtones than one of those guitars generates.

Part of Rickenbacker's distinctive tone is their beautifully finished nitrocellulose guitars.

Durability

The other reason people tend to think old guitars are better is not quite as obvious.

Because during the early and mid nineties those guitars were selling for stupid money. Anyone who bought one would make absolutely sure he was using a good luthier to service the guitar. In the hands of the better luthiers, many things were fixed like sloppy neck joints, poor solder joints, lousy frets, cheapy fingerboards, etc etc. This of course resulted in the fact that the guitar was great. A guitar with a sloppy neck joint will not be stable. It will sound weak, A tight neck joint results in much better tone transference and of course the guitar will hold tune better if it's stabilized. (Another Myth Debunked) remember you heard it here first.

Years ago I did not realize this fact and I made several mistakes with finishes. When I started building the Quicksilvers in 1999 I delivered a couple of $1,395.00 models that were just tung oiled. When I played the first one I was amazed at the harmonic overtones coming off the instrument. It wasn't until I built & played the second one that I was a total believer. Believe it or not, I have sold almost 600 Quicksilvers to date and except for those early 2 ones I have not sold another low end model.

I have made a statement that I would put my $1,695.00 economy model Quicksilver up against any post 1995 PRS over $20,000.00 and I would guarantee to blow it away tonally. No one has challenged me on this. That's a no brainer for me because the real expensive PRS models seem to have the most wood enhancing done and therefore they always have thicker finishes so I could hardly lose that one. To be totally honest my Quicksilver might not fare as well up against PRS's lower priced models. I have said and I always will say "The PRS lower priced 24 fret Classic models are without a doubt the best guitars PRS ever made" The pre 1995 PRS Classic sells for $2,200.00 and up post 1995 models sell as low as $1,000.00 The finishes were thinner on the older models and the wood was much more resonant. In fact the differences are obvious even to the untrained ear.

There are a lot of things written on this site about our industry leader.... PRS ? I recommend spending some time reading these reviews because a lot of the information is surprising.

Poly finishes are rock hard and they don't fade as fast as Nitro either. If you spray them on thick like PRS or Jackson does the guitar loses it's tonality. If you use a super thin coat like Hamer or JET the guitar will sound much better. Some of the best Nitro finishes I have seen are Terry McInturffs. Terry came from Hamer and he must have attended the Jol Dantzig school of guitar painting because his finishes are awesome. He might be using a hybrid of some kind, I am sure Terry won't tell me any of his secrets. Especially after I reviewed his guitar pretty badly on my site for everything else. I am not a huge fan of Terry's guitars but I always give credit where it is due. I do like his finish work.

Ease of Repair

Poly is durable but most people think it that it is not repairable. My shop has repaired some poly finishes so perfectly that they aren't even visible under a magnifying glass. When the chip is large it is much harder but it is possible. Call me for information regarding this. We Fix PRS finishes on a daily basis.

Fillers

Many production companies use a thick coat of filler on the wood before they paint it. The filler tends to hide seams and a host of other problems. You cannot do this on an instrument that you want to extract a good tone from. The popularity of the early PRS guitars started because they used clear stained finishes that made it possible to see the actual wood. It was easy to tell that there was no filler there. PRS guitars were beautifully executed in the early days. The actual quality of the wood was without a doubt the best thing to have ever happened to date. PRS enjoys immense popularity today because of that. It's a shame that they no longer do anything that even comes close to those first guitars. In fact PRS will tell you their biggest competitor is their own early model guitars. "That's another story"