Thanks for this post OP. I have a guitar that I am polishing, and am looking for products that I can apply by hand. This just gives me a little more research to do.
Most of those products *are* a little abrasive, so they'll do a little mechanical swirl removal, at least on soft paints. And using them with a rotary can make them behave much more aggressively and thus do more (true) correction. E.g., I never got any real correction out of SRP, but people who's opinions I respect say that they have, with different pads/techniques.
If you want to really *remove* some marring, I'd stick with the same sort of products that work so well by machine...stuff like Meguiar's M105/UC and M205/Swirl-X. Then maybe follow up with something like the products under discussion here.
Autoglym SRP is a superb product (I've been using it for over 30 years!) and can remove light marring by hand using the slightly abrasive white side of a German Applicator. It needs to be 'worked' well but leaves a great finish ready for your chosen LSP.
