guitar maintenance

[sjakubek]

other than the obvious dusting, does anyone have any pointers on what to do/use to keep the woods/strings/fretboard and all that good crap clean? Not that it matters with my wonderful piece of garbage yamaha, but when those koreans remember how to make guitars again and i get my alvarez it would be nice to know. thanks!

[Brock]

There are string and fretboard cleaning solutions that you can buy at your local guitar store. Designed to remove skin oil from the fretboard/strings.

[sjakubek]

cool thanks, i'll have to check it out

[grock]

i've used a crevice tool to vacuum the inside of my guitar before. but you only gotta do that if it is noticably dusty. yeah i saw actual dust bunnies in there and was like "dude, this is rediculous". I check the bridge and the nut for wear whenever i change strings. if either is kinda worn down where the string makes contact with them it may need replacement. i check the bend of the neck often. especially now when the weather outside is changing a lot. and then adjust the truss rod accordingly. and you can always handtighten tuning machines and pickups and endpins and stuff like that too. it is never good to have a loose tuner or endpin.

i think it is also good practice to wash your hands before playing and to wipe down the strings when you have finished. it just adds a lot of life to the strings.

[JimiThing]

they fret board oil that most stores sell is just lemon oil which you can get from a hardware store a lot cheaper