How to Clean Your Guitar

If you plan to thoroughly clean your guitar, here’s a few pointers that will help you to achieve such a task without taking any risk damaging your favourite musical instrument.

Cleaning the fingerboard: 

When you play the guitar, the strings, the fret wire, and the fingerboard itself are subject to the acidity in the player's hands. The frets - and obviously the strings - get rusty after a while. Also, you will always leave some dirt on the fingerboard, even if you play occasionally.

Your guitar should be cleaned well roughly once a year.  If you are going to work on an electric guitar, you should start by protecting the pick-ups by covering them with masking tape. You should also mask up and protect the top of the guitar along the fingerboard where it meets the body. Note that if you are going to work clean an acoustic guitar, then it’s best to mask the sound hole as well. (You will soon understand why you should take such care with the next step).

Using a piece of extra fine steel wool (grade 0000), rub up and down the fingerboard with the grain. After a few motions, the frets should be shiny again. Some frets might need more scrubbing than others. If this is the case, rub the affected area across the grain. When it is clean to your satisfaction, finish by once again rubbing in an up and down motion with the grain along the entire fingerboard to get rid of scratches left from rubbing against the grain, also NEVER use sand paper to clean the fretboard; as it will scratch the wood and flatten the frets.

If you are working on an electric guitar, notice how the steel dust from the rubbing is stuck against the pick up. Carefully sweep the guitar with a brush before you remove the masking tape.

You can now put some lemon oil on the fingerboard; this will protect the wood from cracks caused by extremes of temperature and humidity, as well as enhancing the natural beauty of the board. 

Cleaning the body:

If you own a guitar with a delicate vintage finish or an acoustic with a shellac finish, then I would advise you bring your guitar to a specialist.

There are two different types of finish - gloss and matt. For a matt finish, you should not use any polish compound or guitar cleaner found in your local musical shop, you will get a tasteless kind of patchy gloss finish. I recommend using a simple window cleaner instead. Drop some on a white cotton cloth and gently remove any fingerprints and grime by rubbing.

If you’ve got to clean a gloss finish, then you must be sure that there are no dents in the wood or any cracks on the area you are going to work on.

You would risk leaving unsightly white lines or white spots after the polishing operation. To avoid this, a specialist would use a polishing machine with dry polishing compound.
    
Assuming you don’t have any of these problems, then you can use a hand polishing compound. Ordinary guitar polishes leave a silicone residue that’s very hard to remove. If your guitar ever needs a repair, the silicone will prevent glue or finish from adhering, making even simple repairs more difficult and costly. Make sure that you are using a wax and silicone free guitar polish. Simply drop some on a polishing cloth (preferably, a 100% cotton clean white cloth). Rub the guitar’s surface with small circular motions. Turn the cloth over and buff the finish to its original lustre.

Some cellulose finishes such as the one used by Gibson can react with sweat. It creates a matt soft residue which could be confused with dirt. If you think that you’ve got that kind of problem with your guitar, then you should seek professional care.   

Sylvain Balestrieri, Luthier