Here are snippets from the December 2004 Guitarist article, titled, Distress Signals, Pg 76. The article looks at distressing guitars in a tongue-in-cheek manner.
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"For Gibson adherents, their axes are treasured heirlooms. They are obsessively cleaned and polished to within an inch of their lives, pampered like renaissance princes or actor's ego. Any sign of serious use beyond a little discreet wearing away at the finish is a tragedy, almost beyond words.
The ideal impression that Gibson owners would like to create is that the axe, when not actually being played, is kept in a airtight case and lovingly mantained by an ace team of techs and roadies who steam in like ER after every session.
The ideal state of a Strat or Tele by contrast is that the owner used it to batter his way out of a bar fight in Arizona sometime around 1959. The guitar was then steeped in a tank of bikers' urine for a year and sun-dried in the desert around Death Valley.
For a Fender player, every cig-burn on the headstock, chip in the finish or rusted bridge saddle is a badge of honour. A pristine, showroom, fresh Fender guitar looks as "intrinsically" wrong as a filthy, grimy, bashed-up Gibson.
But let us remember that the wonderfulness of old Fenders is due to honest wear rather than random damage. The reissue's are a joy to play but what made the old ones such a spectacular delight was the way 5 decades of serious playing had left a superbly comfortable and inviting expanse of almost-bare wood which, as far as I know, no artificial Custom Shop distressing is able to mimic."
