Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

As I've been told not to get carried away with the cleaning cloth on gold plating and to never use metal polishes, is there any way to remove tan coloured spots appearing in the plating on my Bigsby arm?

If a remedy is available I'd like to get on top of this before it gets any worse. So do you have any suggestions out there please guys?

Ron, what you have there is slight corrosion beginning on the aluminum of the Bigsby arm, underneath the thin flash gold plating. As far as I know, there's no solution for this except to lacquer the arm when new so it doesn't happen. I replace some of my flat aluminum gold Bigsby arms with wire-type arms, as the wire arms are steel, and plated so as not to rust beneath the gold.

I had a feeling this was going to be terminal, but I thought I'd ask before trying something that could've been detrimental and thus caused me more grief.

Thanks for the info Paul it's appreciated!