Guitar Care and Feeding

As featured in: Performing Songwriter Issue January/February 2005 Visit performingsongwriter.com to order back issues or subscribe.

When was the last time you thought about some serious care and maintenance for your guitar? Truth is, as much as we rely on our guitars to make our living and serve our muse, we rarely give them the attention they deserve (and need) to keep them in top working order. I went looking for guitar care products and found a huge selection. With names like Gorilla Snot, Lizard Spit, Love Potion, Wedgie and Nut Sauce, how could you not want to use this stuff?

Polishing and Cleaning
The most obvious and, fortunately, easiest thing we can do to take care of a guitar is to polish its fi nish regularly, just like a piece of fi ne furniture— especially considering many guitars today cost more than an entire living room suite! In the old days, a bottle of Lemon Pledge and an old rag was suffi cent, but today’s polishes are specially formulated for the long-term preservation of guitar fi nishes, and many of them also repel dust. Products abound, with some of the most popular coming from Blitz, D’Andrea, Dean Markley (Love Potion), Dunlop (Formula 65), GHS (Guitar Gloss), Gibson (Luthier’s Choice), Kyser (Dr. Stringfellow), Lizard Spit, Martin, Planet Waves and Yamaha, to name a few. You’ll notice several guitar and string manufacturers’ names in the list. Most of the major companies also offer extensive lines of guitar care products, not just polishes. Fender takes the award for the most comprehensive line by far. Some companies offer very specialized polishes and cleaners, such as Fender’s Color Restorer by Meguiar’s and Gibson’s Vintage Reissue Restoration Cream. Lemon oil is still a good conditioner for guitar woods, and many companies offer special variations for guitars. Warwick Beeswax is designed as a protective coating for oil-fi nished guitars.

There’s a lot more we can do to keep our guitars clean and attractive in addition to polishing the fi nish. Fretboards accumulate sweat and body oils, and if not treated from time to time, can discolor and warp. Many companies such as Dean Markley, Fender, Gibson, Roche Thomas and Yamaha offer products to clean and condition fretboards. Other products are designed to clean the frets and other metal parts of the guitar. Dean Markley offers Fret Saver, while Gibson offers a low-abrasion metal cleaner.

So how do you apply all of this gooey stuff? Most companies offer soft, non-abrasive, micro-fi ber cloths made just for guitars. Some are available either pre-treated with polish or un-treated, depending on your needs. Besides several cloths, Fender also offers an Applicator Pad that applies any liquid or paste product uniformly and evenly. Fast Axe offers a Multipurpose Guitar Cleaning Brush made of felt stripping and soft nylon bristle that’s guaranteed not to harm fi nishes and other delicate parts.

String Care
While we’re on the subject of cleaning metal parts, what about taking care of your strings? After all, they are half responsible for the guitar’s sound. Cleaning strings will not only remove sweat and oils to make them more comfortable to play (nobody likes gritty strings!), but will also improve their tone and prolong their life. D’Andrea, Fender, GHS (Fast Fret), Gibson, Kyser and Yamaha all offer excellent string cleaning products. Finger-ease guitar string lubricant, which has been popular for many years, will improve your playing speed without damaging your strings or fretboard.

Nut and Bridge Care
Most string breakage occurs not along the frets, but at the two points where the strings are in constant contact with the guitar: the nut and the bridge. This breakage is the result of friction between the strings and tiny burrs and other imperfections in materials. Lubricants to the rescue! Products include (are you ready for these?) Big Bends Nut Sauce, Kerly Music Saddle Juice and Lizard Spit Slick Nutz. In addition to preventing premature string breakage, these products can also improve string tuning, response and resonance. They’re particularly effective on electric guitars that have metal—rather than bone or plastic—saddles. Graph Tech Guitar Labs takes the solution even further, offering String Saver polymer-based replacement saddles for virtually all brands of acoustic and electric guitars. In the string resonance department, the type of bridge pin you use can have a dramatic effect on the tone and sustain of your guitar. Try replacing those stock plastic bridge pins with D’Andrea’s brass Tone Pins and hear the difference!