Are Relic'd Guitars Worth It? An Honest Take From the Bench

Short answer: a relic'd guitar is worth it if you want it to look that way, and for no other reason. It will not sound better. It will not play better because of the aging. It will usually be harder to resell than the same guitar in plain finish. If you're fine with all of that and you still love the look, buy it and enjoy it — there's nothing wrong with wanting an instrument that looks lived-in.

The online version of this debate is mostly people calling each other names, so let me take it seriously in both directions — including one specific risk in buying a used relic that almost nobody warns you about.

First, what "relic'd" actually means — and what it doesn't

Relicing is cosmetic aging done at the factory or by a builder: finish checking, worn-through spots, dulled hardware, dings, and buckle rash, all applied deliberately to a new instrument. Both big makers sell it in tiers, and the tier names cause a lot of confusion because they don't line up between brands.

Diagram: the published aging tiers for Fender Custom Shop and Gibson's Murphy Lab, arranged from least to most simulated wear.

Fender Custom Shop runs roughly NOS, Closet Classic, Journeyman Relic, Relic, and Heavy Relic. Gibson's Murphy Lab — headed by Tom Murphy, who spent decades developing these techniques — uses Ultra Light, Light, Heavy, and Ultra Heavy Aged. Fender's Road Worn and Vintera Road Worn lines are the budget entry point: aged look and feel at a fraction of Custom Shop money.

Here's the part people get wrong constantly: a Faded or satin finish is not a relic. Gibson's Faded and Studio Faded models have thin, low-gloss finishes because thin finish is cheap and fast to apply, not because anyone simulated wear on them. They're a budget decision that happens to look vintage-adjacent.

A Les Paul Studio Faded T in Worn Cherry that came through the shop. Thin satin finish straight from the factory — no aging was applied to this guitar. This is a Faded model, not a relic. (Listing status: sold.)

Does relicing change the tone?

No, and I'd be suspicious of anyone who tells you otherwise with a straight face.

The argument you'll hear is that relicing involves a thinner finish, and a thinner finish lets the body resonate more freely. The thin-finish part is often true — aged builds frequently do get less lacquer. Whether that produces an audible difference in a solidbody electric is genuinely disputed, and I've never heard a controlled test that settled it. What I can tell you from having a lot of these on the bench is that finish thickness is nowhere near the top of the list of things that make two guitars sound different from each other. Pickups, pickup height, the nut, and the fretwork are all doing far more.

Scuffing a finish that's already cured does essentially nothing acoustically. If a relic'd guitar sounds great, it sounds great because of how it was built and set up — which, on a Custom Shop or Murphy Lab instrument, is usually very well indeed. You're just not paying for tone when you pay for the aging.

The one honest functional argument

There is one, and I'll give it its due: the back of the neck.

A glossy new nitro neck can feel sticky, especially if your hands sweat. A neck that's been worn smooth — whether by twenty years of playing or by a shop deliberately knocking the gloss off — feels faster and drier under your thumb. That's a real, repeatable difference you can feel in about four seconds, and it's the single most defensible reason to buy an aged instrument.

The catch is that it's also the cheapest thing here to replicate. A gray Scotch-Brite pad and ten careful minutes will take the gloss off a neck — players do it all the time. You can have that benefit without paying an aging premium, provided you're willing to take an abrasive to a guitar you paid money for.

What real wear looks like versus what relic wear looks like

Once you've handled enough genuinely old guitars, factory aging starts to read differently. Real wear is the record of a specific person's body meeting a specific piece of wood for years. It's concentrated, asymmetrical, and frequently unattractive in places nobody would choose.

Illustration: how genuine play wear tends to distribute compared with applied relic wear. Simplified — not a specific instrument.

Applied wear tends to be more evenly spread, because it's designed rather than accumulated. Checking is the biggest tell. Natural checking happens as nitrocellulose shrinks and grows brittle through years of temperature and humidity swings, and it appears wherever the finish happened to be most stressed. Induced checking is typically done by thermal shocking the body — cold to warm, repeatedly — which produces a more uniform pattern across the whole surface in a single pass.

And here's a fact worth sitting with: natural aging is wildly unpredictable, and plenty of old guitars never check at all.

A 1997 Les Paul Classic that came through the shop. Nearly thirty years on nitro and the finish is still clean — no checking, no significant wear. Age alone doesn't produce the vintage look people are buying. (Listing status: sold.)

That guitar is proof that if you want the aged look, waiting isn't a strategy. You either buy it applied, or you get lucky.

The resale problem, and the one nobody warns you about

Relics generally don't hold value the way clean examples of the same model do. Collectors pay for originality and condition; a relic is a new guitar that presents as damaged, which narrows the buyer pool to people who specifically want that look. Custom Shop and Murphy Lab instruments do hold value reasonably well — but that's the build quality and the brand carrying it, not the aging.

The bigger issue is the one I'd actually warn a buyer about. On a used relic, you cannot tell intentional wear from real damage. When I assess a normal used guitar, the finish is my evidence. A witness line around the headstock, a suspicious ripple near the neck joint, overspray at a seam — those tell me where a guitar has been and whether it's been repaired. On a heavily aged instrument, all of that signal is buried in noise. A repaired headstock break hides beautifully under applied checking. So does a refinish.

If you're buying a used relic, the finish can't do that job for you. Get clear photos of the headstock in raking light, ask directly whether it's ever been broken or refinished, and lean harder on the seller's answers than you normally would.

So who should actually buy one?

Buy a relic if the look genuinely moves you, you plan to keep the guitar, and you're buying it for how it's built rather than for how it's aged. That's a completely legitimate purchase and I'd never talk anyone out of it.

Skip it if you're hoping the aging buys you tone, if resale matters to you, or if you're buying it used from photos and can't get straight answers about the instrument's history. And if what you actually want is a guitar with honest wear on it, buy a real used one. It costs less, the marks are true, and nothing on it is pretending.

You can see what's currently on the bench in our guitars in stock collection.

FAQ

Do relic'd guitars sound different from non-relic'd ones?
There's no good evidence that the aging itself changes the sound. The thin-finish resonance argument is debated and, in my experience, swamped by pickups, setup, and fretwork.

Is Murphy Lab a Fender thing?
No — Murphy Lab is Gibson's aging operation, run out of the Nashville Custom Shop. Fender's equivalent tiers come out of the Fender Custom Shop. The two get mixed up constantly online.

Will relicing hurt resale value?
Usually yes, relative to a clean example of the same model, because it narrows your buyer pool. Well-built Custom Shop and Murphy Lab guitars still hold value decently on the strength of the build.

Can I relic a guitar myself?
The neck gloss, yes — that's low risk and easy to undo by playing it. Finish checking is a different matter: it requires nitro, it's permanent, and it's very easy to do badly. Poly and polyester finishes don't check at all; they chip.