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December edition of Vintage Guitar News and Views.
Keeping your guitars clean,yule be glad you did.
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For this months edition of Vintage guitar news and views we turn our attention to the maintenance and upkeep of our guitars ,both our playing guitars and our investments , which in my opinion they all are . Winter time is upon us ,dreary days and cloudy skies ,all but most of our outdoor jam sessions have ceased to exist, the perfect time for tuning up our guitars as well as general upkeep and cleaning, the following is standard but sometime items we either forget or put off to do, so get a space cleared out and enjoy a day with all your guitars, yule be glad ya did.The first thing I do is oil all my latches on my guitar cases and inspect the handles for signs of weakness or need of repair, I take my guitar out and place her on a nice padded work station while I clean the outside of each case with a 20 per cent mix of warm water and mean green cleaner , I use a stiff brush and dip it into my cleaner and give the outside of my cases a good cleaning , followed by a good wipe dry with a clean towel. Now while I sit my case open to dry either in my heated guitar room or place them in the sun if it shining to air dry while I move on to my guitars.
I loosen and remove the strings from my personnel players guitars and usually have no string on my guitars I offer to clients until I ship them. I inspect the frets and dress them as needed, as well as polish my frets. I clean and lubricate the Brazilian rosewood as well as other rosewood fretboards using a damp lint free cloth and buff the dry with another lntfree cloth.I will then follow with a small amount of unboiled linseed oil to lubricate my fretboard or if you prefer some other oil , then feel free to use that, I just like the linseed oil myself. I allow a little time for this to dry before I buff the fretboard dry being sure not to leave any oil or residue on my fret boards. This step does not need to be taken with maple fret boards as that are usually sealed .
Next I remove the truss rod cover if applicable and drop a little 3 in 1 oil on the threads of the rod and wipe up any excess, I then check the neck for any adjustments I may want to make and restring my guitars to tune.
As for the electronics I will add a lubricant pot cleaner to the inside of each pot very sparingly as well as the selector switch insuring to turn them back and forth to spread the cleaner around and again wipe up any excess that may be there. I then button them back up and go onto general body cleaning and polishing.
For this step I use a silicon free cleaner formulated for guitars ,available at places like Stew-mac and other websites that specialize in guitar parts and luther supplies. gently wiping the cleaners off I then follow up with swirl and scratch remover , followed by a good silicon free guitar wax , I buff to a good gloss the entire guitar as well as the back of the necks , followed by a product such as fast fret on the strings .
I then go back to the case and either use a shop vac or a carpet cleaner and follow with a shop vac to clean the interiors of my cases. Insuring that the case interior is completely dry I detune and place my electric guitar back inside, I should note that I do each step on each electric guitar or bass guitar before moving to the next step ,that way I do not have to be going back and forth through each step ,but rather have a assembly line system in which each guitar or bass gets the same treatment before moving on.
This is pretty much the same steps I do for my acoustic guitars as well, with the addition to checking the tops ,bottoms and sides for any evidence of lack of humidity , I will place a homemade humidity device in each acoustic at the beginning of the heating season and recheck every 2 or so months until the weather permits I no longer have to use the heater ,Heaters rob moisture out of our acoustic guitars and can cause significant damage if left unchecked for to long a period. My humidifier is basically a household sponge that I have soaked and wrung out all the excess water that it absorbed, place it in a small biggie that I have perforated and place that inside a larger biggie that is perforated also, drape it between the strings and let it suspend inside the sound hole of my acoustic guitar. It works great and costs a lot less than store bought humidifiers.
Now as for amps, I variac them up every now and then to keep them loose and in working order, I keep them covered and condition the outside tolex with your basic armor all, I might add that I do not hurry in any of these steps, I look forward to spending the quality time with my girls and they to benefit from the time well spent. I hope the holidays are enjoyed by all and as us all this is just my news and views ,so until next month may all your days be memorable, may all your friends stay true and may all your riffs be killer , Greg.
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, Nov 28 2008, 3:05 PM EST
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