Earlier today when I was jammin' on it I noticed something that had for some reason escaped my glance up until now...a little bit of a mother of pearl headstock inlay peeking out from beneath the "D'Agostino of New York" decal. Curiouser and curiouser...
I was concerned about damaging whatever may be underneath as I couldn't really tell for sure if the decal was lacquered over or not, but I really wanted to get to the bottom of this. A little bit of scraping with my fingernail did nothing, but when I tried a trusty Dunlop Jazz III pick it did the trick beautifully. I've heard that many of these guitars were made in the Matsumoku factory and brands just slapped their decals on there, but I've never seen a brand just straight up paste their decal atop another brand's inlaid pearl logo...and it turns out this is not an 80s D'Agostino like I thought but a Cortez, still Japanese but likely from the 70s. Little bit of Goo Gone and everything cleaned up beautifully, leaving me with a much nicer lookin' headstock than before and a fun little story.
Thanks for reading and hope everyone is having a safe and happy Thanksgiving!
Here's the guitar in question, a close-up of what I noticed, the work in progress, and lastly the finished product:
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