Almost all guitarists want to take care of their guitars and maintain them, allowing them to be played for many years. One of the major ways just about any guitarist can take proper care of his guitar is to try to clean it routinely. The main problem is most guitarists don’t know how to clean and maintain their guitars. In this posting, I am going to explain to you how to clean your guitar and what products are safe to use.

I’m certain what you are thinking. Big deal, polishing my guitar will not help it last longer. That is certainly just entirely wrong. Cleaning a guitar doesn’t just help it last longer; it will likely protect against future guitar repairs. If you clean your guitar regularly, you normally examine it more in detail and find a lot more things such as if it is dry or swelling or in need of repair. Many of these early on signals could prevent harm and reduce future guitar repairs.

Okay, enough about the warning symptoms. Let’s start out cleaning. There are many of different cleaning and polishing solutions out there for guitars and the majority appear to be acceptable. In spite of this, it is not necessary to buy over priced cleaning solutions simply because they are “made for guitars.” Some simple home furniture cleaning products will work best. I like to work with a mixture of solutions to clean and polish my guitars as well as my customers’ guitars that come in for guitar repairs. Here’s what I like to do.

The best way to clean and maintain your guitar body

A lot of guitars have glossy finish. This can be great simply because that generally glossy finish is much easier to clean than flat finish. There’s two varieties of cleaning solutions: sprays and pastes or gels. In my experience, I don’t use anything but aerosol cleaning products on my guitars. I’m sure these solutions do a good job eliminating the dust and finger prints at the same time providing a smooth shine. My personal favorite spray cleaner is Dunlop Formula 65 Polish Cleaner. I commonly just spray a couple of squirts over the guitar body. On electric guitars, be sure not to spray your pick-ups, as almost any form of solution might cause oxidation on the pickups. Then have a very soft rag, ordinarily I use an used t-shirt, and swirl in the cleaner. When the grime is taken away from the guitar surface area, I take a polish cloth and buff the finish to a nice shine.

If the guitar has splits in the body or any open wood, make sure never to use any sort of cleaning product on the open wood. This could make the wood swell and ruin the finish. It becomes an type of another unnecessary journey to the guitar repair shop.

The right way to clean and condition your guitar fretboard.

Almost all guitars except for a few Fenders and Gretsches have unfinished fretboards. The standard unfinished fretboards are generally built from ebony and rosewood. Unfinished fretboards are really easy to clean, condition, and look beautiful. You will need to clean your fretboard and moisturize it whenever you switch your strings. Fretboards can normally dry out and break. You do not want to have to bring your guitar to a guitar repair shop due to an issue that might have been avoided. Here’s how I prefer to clean my fretboards.

There are many of unique fretboard cleaning solutions out there, however I always use Murphy’s Oil Soap the best. Oil soap not just helps to clean your fretboard, it also helps condition and moisturize it. The oil soap will prevent your fretboard from drying out and splitting. It will also give your fretboard a fresh nice gloss.

I prefer to drip a small amount of oil soap on top of the fretboard. It won’t take a lot at all -a little goes a long way. Then I take some #0000 steel wool and rub the oil soap on the fretboard while removing the grime accumulation. Just be sure you cover your guitar pickups so that parts of the steel wool are not getting magnetically caught on the pole pieces. It’s always smart to shine the frets while the steel wool is soaked in the oil soap. Doing this the whole fretboard and all the frets will look shiny and new at the same time. When the fretboard and frets are cleaned, you’ll want to remove the excess oil soap using a sheet of paper towel. Finally your fretboard is clean and conditioned plus your frets are nice and shiny.

You can find more helpful articles about guitar repair at guitar repair bench. Learn some guitar repair tips today!