I'll guarantee there is extensive top-chopping under that pickguard. Pickguards like that always go on the guitar a day late and a dollar short... I can see some of the scratches that weren't covered up.
It's uglier than Rosemary's baby, for sure.
That "tape" on the back of the neck that won't come off is blue vinyl. It came off a vinyl guitar strap that melted the lacquer we hen it was left on the guitar inside the case. It could be fixed, but the neck would have to be stripped, sanded, re-stained, and clear coated to fix it.
To me, there are 2 kinds of scratches: one kind comes from focused playing, where the player is concentrating on hitting the strings accurately and forcefully. Naturally, not every stroke of the flatpick will be accurate, so the scratches will show up close to the soundhole and rosette, and on some brands, right at the spot of bare wood that the pickguard doesn't cover around the treble side of the soundhole.
The string attack of the flatpick comes from the player's wrist mostly. Thumbpicks can also chew up a top, as the thumb has to swing to attack the string, and will also erode the wood over time in a reltatively small area.
The right hand doesn't move very far, because all the action is more wrist than arm. Often, especially when the guitar is a leading melody instrument, some players will plant their little finger on the top. This, too, decreases the area that gets scratched.
The other kind of scratches come from players that swing their arm in a big motion that puts as much arm energy into the wood as to the strings. Sometimes, those big arcs are for show, but other times, that's just the way the player plays forcefully to get max volume.
This old guitar was scratched all to hell and gone in 30 minutes, according to the owner's story I got when I bought it. The damage happened around 1937 when a drunk grabbed the guitar off its stand and played along with the band for one song.
After sitting in an attic for almost 60 years afterward, the top had cracked in 3 places too.
But after the cracks were stablized, I have never thought about fixing its cosmetics- it's a very rare plectrum guitar, and it sounds like the angels' choir after it got a new set of tuning pegs.
