How to Clean a Grungy Electric Guitar

Each time you play your guitar its a good idea to wipe down the strings, neck and body of the guitar along with the metal parts using a soft clean cotton cloth. This both keeps the guitar looking good and stops the strings from corroding. This helps keep the strings sounding bright for longer. Also corroded strings will wear the frets more quickly.

With the best will in the world, eventually the guitar will get a dirty build up on the fretboard and handling marks on the body. This needs to be cleaned off now and again.

IF YOU DON'T READ THE REST OF THIS POST PLEASE READ THIS !

Q. Why shouldn't I use furniture polish on my guitar ?

A. Furniture polishes contain solvents and silicon. Some guitars (Gibson, top end Fenders and some other makes) use a thin Nitrocellulose finish which is softened and damaged by the solvents. The silicone in the polish also causes problems if the guitar needs to be refinished.

To be perfectly honest, if you have a cheap guitar with a poly finish and you aren't worried about future repairs being invisible you may as well use furniture polish on your guitar rather than buy specific products.

So what should you use to clean your guitar? The best thing is a dampened soft rag (an old T-shirt is ideal) it should be damp but shouldn't leave the guitar surface wet.

This guitar is about as bad as it gets. Apart from not being wiped down very regularly, it's been put away in its case after a gig, wet with sweat and left there for a few months. The result is that the guitar's finish is dull and stained to the point that a damp rag won't suffice. The fingerboard is grimy with a build-up under the strings and the frets are tarnished. This guitar definitely needs a bit of TLC.


When working on your guitar you should always be careful protect it from knocks and sharp objects. This photo shows my improvised "Guitar Tech's Workstation" which helps protect the guitar from accidental damage as you work on it.

Step 1

We remove the strings and wipe down the entire guitar with a barely soft, damp, cotton rag. Notice that since this guitar has a tune-o-matic bridge, as well as removing the strings , we have also removed the bridge and stop tailpiece. This is to ensure that they don't fall off during the cleaning process and avoid damaging the guitar's finish.

Step 2

Since this guitar has a rosewood fretboard, we are going to clean it with a few drops of “Lemon Oil” applied with a cotton rag.

A note about “Lemon Oil”

Many guitar shops sell lemon oil as a “fingerboard conditioner” which ensures that the fretboard is “correctly hydrated with natural oils”. This is not the case, although it smells nice and gives a glossy sheen to bare wood fingerboards it is a mineral oil like diesel or gasoline and be used sparingly to clean the fingerboard and the excess wiped off completely.

Bearing this in mind we use a few drops of  lemon oil and rub vigorously to remove the grime and dirt from the rosewood fingerboard. Once the fingerboard is clean we completely remove the excess lemon oil with a dry rag ( as always old T-shirts are my rag of choice ). If the fingerboard has accumulated a lot of dirt you may need to scrape it off. I have found that old credit cards are excellent tools for this job as they shift the grime without damaging the wood of the fingerboard.

Finished maple fingerboards should be cleaned with a dampened rag.

Step 3

This guitar's frets have tarnished very badly and have a greenish oxidised surface. We now proceed to polish the frets. First totally mask off the pickups using the widest masking tape available in our local hardware shop. This is very important since we are going to use wire wool to polish the frets. During the cleaning process the wire wool sheds tiny wire scraps. Since the guitar's pickups contain magnets, these tiny pieces of wire would stick to the pickups.

Once the guitar's pickups have been masked off (see photo) we proceed to polish the frets using a small pad of “0000” grade wire wool dampened with a few drops of lemon oil. Polish each fret individually working back and forth along the fret. It should only take a few strokes to clean each fret – don't get carried away here ! Take special care not to damage the guitar's finish in the area where the fingerboard is fixed to the guitar body.

If you need to polish the frets on a finished fretboard you should mask off between the frets to protect the guitars' finish from the abrasive wire wool (see this previous post). In the case of rosewood or ebony fretboards there is no need to mask off between the frets.

Once the frets have been polished we clean the excess lemon oil off the fingerboard.

Step 4

Once the fingerboard is clean and the frets shiny, we wipe down the guitar with a clean cotton duster. Since the finish on this guitar has been dulled by sweat we are going to use a cream cleaner which we are sure will not damage the guitars finish. I use a few drops of “Planet Waves – Restore” on a soft rag applied gently with a circular motion and then buffed off with a soft, clean duster. You shouldn't do this too often since nitrocellulose finishes are quite thin. If the guitar's finish is damaged or chipped then you should take care not to apply the cream cleaner to bare wood.

Step 5

We now apply a small amount of graphite grease ( Stewart MacDonald Guitar Grease) to each groove of the guitars nut. This helps keep the guitar in tune by lubricating the strings where they pass thru the nut preventing them sticking. I have found that the best tool for applying the grease is a short section of old guitar string. Scrape a tiny bit of the graphite grease from the tub with the tip of the string (see photo) and insert it in each groove of the nut.

Step 6

We now refit the bridge and tailpiece and fit new strings to the guitar. We then tune the guitar and check the “intonation” and “action”. When I have time I'll write another post which explains in detail how to adjust and check the intonation and action of your guitar.