Materials
While custom pickguards are made from variety of materials, most mass-production manufacturers use various plastics. The following are the most common:
- Celluloid. Commonly associated with "vintage" guitars, this plastic is available in variety of colors and designs, but it has several cons that hinder its usage nowadays:
- This material is extremely flammable. Performers who smoke near their instruments with celluloid pickguards can occasionally put everything on fire with a misplaced cigarette.
- As a solvent based plastic, celluloid tends to shrink over the years, making the pickguard curl around the edges. It puts extra stress on the wood beneath the pickguard and sometimes cracks appear. This is very common on older Martin acoustic guitars. On electric guitars, where the pickguard is attached with screws, vintage celluloid pickguards tend to develop cracks due to stress caused by shrinking.
- Vinyl. This material does not tend to shrink and is not highly flammable.
- PVC.
- Acrylic glass.
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Famous quotes containing the word materials:
“Realism to be effective must be a matter of selection. ... genius chooses its materials with a view to their beauty and effectiveness; mere talent copies what it thinks is nature, only to find it has been deceived by the external grossness of things.”
—Julia Marlowe (1866–1950)
“He was no specialist except in the relation of things.... He took most of his materials at second hand.... But no matter who mined the gold, the image and superscription are his.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“If our entertainment culture seems debased and unsatisfying, the hope is that our children will create something of greater worth. But it is as if we expect them to create out of nothing, like God, for the encouragement of creativity is in the popular mind, opposed to instruction. There is little sense that creativity must grow out of tradition, even when it is critical of that tradition, and children are scarcely being given the materials on which their creativity could work”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)