Refinish Regret
My woes with MJT Guitar Finishes
My woes with MJT Guitar Finishes
I have been a long time MJT fan. I've bought many bodies over the years (first order in 2012). While I've sold a number of the guitars, my strat and tele (seen above) are keepers. Because of these guitars, I reached out to MJT in mid-2022 to refinish two Gibsons. The first was a great sounding / playing 2020 Les Paul Standard. The second was a 2002 Flying V. Both guitars had significant mistakes. I am only documenting / sharing my experience as I found the whole thing uncharacteristic of my previous experiences. It was bad and I will not work with MJT again.
I don't expect perfection nor am I expecting an exact color as I know wood is organic. It takes stain differently. I'm also not being super nit-picky here. There are other smaller issues with both guitars I'm not bothering to list here. However, between the color, finish, QA and communication issues I felt it appropriate to share my experiences with others thinking about getting their guitars refinished.
At a high level,
Their workmanship has decreased dramatically
Their QA is really bad
The communication with them is terrible, I literally had to follow up every 14 days to try to work through the issues
I eventually gave up and just got my guitars back
Maybe MJT is good if you buy an already finished body but I would strongly recommend staying away from them if you're getting something refinished.
The core issue is that this was supposed to be Gibson's Unburst. It's a color where the red has faded. They refinished it as cherry sunburst. They sent a picture twice during the process. Both times I said it was very red looking and was assured that the red would be sanded back and wouldn't be red. It was inaccurate.
The core issue on the Flying V is that they painted the stinger on off-center and didn't finish the edging. See the pictures.
Original Color taken by MJT
First pic MJT sent me. I immediately asked about how red it was and they said the red would be sanded out.
This is how it came to me. VERY much a Faded Cherry Sunburst.
In addition to refinishing the guitar the wrong color, the guitar came back with tooling marks in various areas.
Another angle of the tooling marks.
On the V, they didn't finish the top of the headstock stinger. Just left a line where you can see the original finish.