Cleaning, oiling, polishing, etc.

[TBman]

I use Holloway House lemon oil wood treatment on my fretboards. Maybe once or twice a year. Other string changes I just wipe it down.

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by rmp

Cleaning a guitar is just part of general maintenance, I don't get why folks spend good money on nice guitars and don't maintain them.

what ever, it's not my dough...


for Products, here's some I use There's a million choices out there.

I keep it simple.

• F1 Oil by Music Nomad for fret board conditioner is pretty good stuff
• Gerlitz Smudge Off for general cleaning, water based safe for any thing
• Gibson Pump Polish good old standby, nitro and poly
• Virtuoso Cleaner and Polish
• Eterna Shine Players kit. Cleaner and scratch remover

Conversely, I'm wondering what you guys are doing to your guitars that make them need so much cleaning maintenance. I'm a player for nearly 50 years and have never had a need for all that stuff. My fretboards are fine, my tops, backs, and sides are still shiny. When I change strings, I go over the guitar with a very slightly damp soft cloth. Don't really see any need to make cleaning a guitar more complicated than that.

[EZYPIKINS]

I used Lemon Oil for years with no problem.

Have since found Gibson and Martin recommend Linseed oil.

I get the Gibson care pacs. Comes with microfiber towel. Cleaner, Polish, and Fretboard conditioner.

Lasts quite a while. Also use the 8000 grit fret erasers from StuMac. Keeps the frets shiny and smooth.

And let's not forget the Original Formula Windex.

[Brent Hutto]

Originally Posted by jim1960

Conversely, I'm wondering what you guys are doing to your guitars that make them need so much cleaning maintenance. I'm a player for nearly 50 years and have never had a need for all that stuff. My fretboards are fine, my tops, backs, and sides are still shiny. When I change strings, I go over the guitar with a very slightly damp soft cloth. Don't really see any need to make cleaning a guitar more complicated than that.

I have the same experience although I can think of a few things that lead to guitars getting grungy and having to be deep cleaned...

1) Years ago people would play "out" in smoke filled rooms for hours at a time and eventually that is going to coat the guitar. Nowadays not that many places are as smoky as every single bar, club or music joint used to be 25 years ago.

I bought an electric guitar circa 2008 that must have been one of those instruments. It was wrapped in bubble wrap, then paper, then sealed inside a sturdy cardboard box. The outside of the box before I opened it smelled of smoke and as soon as I opened the end flaps it was like an ashtray. There was I kid you not a 1/8" layer of sticky goop on the fretboard that was at least 50% accumulated cigarette smoke.

2) In the summertime people do play at outdoor jams or even go camping at festivals and stuff. All sorts of changes to accumulate dirt and cruft sitting around a campfire for 18 hours a day picking.

3) And I also think a lot of people put oil on their fretboards and "polish" on the guitars that leaves a film behind. Anything like that will attract dirt and hold it. It's easy to get in a cycle of cleaning the guitar, then oiling and polishing it, which attracts dirt so a couple weeks later you do the whole cycle again.

[EZYPIKINS]

In my band that ran in central CA from 1978-2018 I was the guitar tech, who would keep everything up to snuff.

Gigging Fri-Sat rehearsals on Sun, Tue, Thur, Things could get funky.

Bass players, all the same. Too cheap to buy strings. I started buy him strings for his birthday every year.

He would never let me clean and set up his bass. The kind of guy who would fool around with it. Loose screws, buy replacements at Home Depot.

Anyway, as the years wore on. I could hear, on stage, how out of intonation it was.

One night after rehearsal, I kidnapped his bass. Took it home and got to work.

This was the nastiest instrument I'd ever seen. Took it all apart for a deep clean.

When it came to the frets. They had so much green crud built up on them. It was like funky ramps on either side of the neck.

Was like getting a deep cleaning at the dentist. Plaque buildup, that the only wat to get it off, was scrape it off.

Once I got it down to the metal of the fret. I polished the frets. Cleaned and oiled the rosewood. Took me a couple days to get it finished.

Soaked the bridge in Windex this whole time. Got screws worked out. Everything was hospital clean. And Strobed to perfect intonation.

Brought it back at next rehearsal. He was blown away, at not only the clean look. But the playability. And trueness of the notes.

When I am cleaning, and stringing, and oiling. I look at it as a kind of therapeutic Zen time.

When finished, the reward is the effortless play, endless sustain. I usually can't help but play for at least an hour, after.

[rmp]

Originally Posted by jim1960

Conversely, I'm wondering what you guys are doing to your guitars that make them need so much cleaning maintenance. I'm a player for nearly 50 years and have never had a need for all that stuff. My fretboards are fine, my tops, backs, and sides are still shiny. When I change strings, I go over the guitar with a very slightly damp soft cloth. Don't really see any need to make cleaning a guitar more complicated than that.

then you're all set!!


I hydrate the fretboards, in the winter it's bone dry here in New England. so I do that every 6 months, it's optional, but dry rosewood can shrink and crack. it's just wood afterall.

I polish frets once a year, keeps them shiny and free from and residual corrosion from the strings

Other than that, I don't generally do more than a wipe down either.

I just listed out the products I've collect and used.

[Tim McKnight]

Lemon oil “cleaners” and polishing products that I’ve used have a large percentage of their product’s chemical formulation consisting of “petroleum distillates”. In laymens terms it’s Naphtha or paint thinner which is a solvent that will dissolve and remove natural oils and resins within the wood’s surface.

The information below was copy and pasted from a MSDS sheet of a common lemon oil product: >60% Distillates (petroleum), hydrotreated middle; Gasoil - unspecified; [A complex combination of hydrocarbons obtained by treating a petroleum fraction with hydrogen in the presence of a catalyst. It consists of hydrocarbons having carbon numbers predominantly in the range of C11 through C25. Any % concentration shown as a range is to protect confidentiality or is due to batch variation.

Nowhere on this MSDS does it list mineral oil as an ingredient. I’ve seen how these lemon oil products actually dry out the wood instead of nourishing it. When we used lemon oil it would darken the woods surface and it look great for a few hours but by the next day it was back to dry and dull looking.

We also used a boiled linseed oil product for a couple of years. After application the oil would continue to leach out of the wood for hours. We noticed that it would pool and accumulate along the edge of the frets and seem to attract dust and build up over time.

Next we settled on Howard”s Feed and Wax and used it for several years. It had orange oils in its formulation to act as a cleaner and then a beeswax component to polish the surface. It worked great but when we saw some of our guitars return home during our annual McJam event the frets seemed to be more oxidized than on other guitars. We attributed this to the acidic content of the orange oil base that may escalate the fret oxidation so we discontinued using that product.

That led me to develop our current concoction (Fretboard Revival Conditioning Balm) which was named during a contest we held here on the forum. We’ve yet to have any negative feedback from users all over the US. I’m not bragging but its honestly the best product I’ve ever used on fretboards and bridges. Thank you to all the folks in this thread who have taken a chance to try it.

[TTiimm]

The term "Petroleum distillates" covers a broad range of products - everything from benzene, kerosene, jet fuel and gasoline to mineral oil and paraffin wax.

Food grade paraffin was is a petroleum product. Everyone reading this probably eats it every day without even knowing it.

Holloway House lemon oil is is made from white mineral oil which is a petroleum distillate.

https://www.hollowayhouse.net/media/SDS-Lemon-Oil-1.pdf

I'm not trying to contradict anyone or tell anyone what to use or how to clean a guitar. Just pointing out some facts.

I'm new to guitars and have yet to need to clean a fretboard. I don't know what I'm going to use when the time comes. This thread is interesting, particularly the comment above about corrosion. It's something I hadn't thought about.

[Jimi2]

All great info! Yeah, I’ve always been low maintenance with my guitars other than humidification, so I don’t want to go crazy, but a little fretboard cleaning and treating is in order. I do get some fretboard gunk under the strings; I try to wash my hands before I play, but don’t typically wipe them down when I am done. The thought of taking steel wool to the fretboard is a little scary, but a dry cloth isn’t cutting it either.

[jschmitz54]

When I researched what to use on my fret board petroleum based products although used by many had several down sides but I’m not remembering what they were. Lemon oil was said to possibly delaminate the fretboard from its base. Steel wool although used by some and even if it’s the best stuff, oil free 0000 grade was not recommended by some people with expertise above my pay grade. Something about the fibers getting lodged where they shouldn’t and even though you think you clean it away some remains.
I mentioned earlier that I chose Fret Doctor and if I remember correctly it’s only available online through the company. If you read about the product it seemed to me to be the best choice. It’s one of the few products specifically formulated for fretboards and claims it’s good for the fretboard and will do no harm.
The key imo is to use only a drop or three on your applicator and do this no more than once or twice a year.