Fret cleaning etc

[HiAsAKite]

Along with digging out my LP Studio recently, and starting to play again, I also dug out my first ever guitar - a 90's Encore strat copy.

I suspect its worth about £20, if that...

That said, I'd like to get to play a well as it can do, with a view to letting my kids play on it in due course.
I'm very conscious that even spending a small sum of money on it, would put me in 'buy a 2nd hand Squier strat" territory.

With this in mind, I'm going to focus on things I can do myself, plus also use it as test bed to learn guitar maintenance skills.

First up, new strings (that's an outlay of 25% of the value of the guitar!)
Next :

- the sound - clean up the electrics, - main expenditure contact cleaner and a bit of time (I could replace the pickups etc, which probable would make a big difference to the sound, but then frankly I may as well just buy a 2nd hand Squier or or even a Fender MIM

- Fretboard
- some of the frets are little marked, some wear, but also just marks from where it has been in storage for 20+years against old strings (which had corroded slightly :-( ). I'd like to clean these up.

- adjusting the action - the action was always relatively high compared to my LP - at somepoint I'd like to look at if I can adjust these by adjusting the bridge height/truss rod (if there is one? - I think there is - but I need to remove the neck to get to it))- but I'll leave that task to another day.



With this in mind any suggestions on best way to clean up the frets - looking online there's various forms of fret polish, use of wire wool etc?

Remember- aim of the game it to make sound as best as it can without spending any real money on it. This is me playing around and doing it for the learning experience

[Rod200SX]

I'd just give it a good clean and strings and see how it does. As you may find that the tuners are crap and then you look at replacing them, then if you're doing that, then it's a set of pickups and so on so forth. When you can get a bloody good guitar for even £100 these days it does mean you need to keep the sensible hat on, as you're aware! I actually did the same over the first lockdown with my beginner strat! God I'd made a mess of it with stickers

For the frets, I'd use steel wool (0000 iirc). Tape up everything and have a hoover to hand. Even tape the pickups as the metal shavings/bits will get everywhere.

Chances are the fretboard will be super dry, dunlop do some good products for guitar care and I think you get kits quite cheap that'll last you years for not many pennies.

I was planning on fitting some locking tuners to mine, along with a new set of p'ups/electrics but since I tidied it all up, I just haven't played it. My other guitars (including a sub £100 DIY Harley Benton SG copy) are just leaps ahead. I may paint it and use it as an ornement rather than to play. Hmm.

[thewarlock]

Rod200SX said:

I'd just give it a good clean and strings and see how it does. As you may find that the tuners are crap and then you look at replacing them, then if you're doing that, then it's a set of pickups and so on so forth. When you can get a bloody good guitar for even £100 these days it does mean you need to keep the sensible hat on, as you're aware! I actually did the same over the first lockdown with my beginner strat! God I'd made a mess of it with stickers

For the frets, I'd use steel wool (0000 iirc). Tape up everything and have a hoover to hand. Even tape the pickups as the metal shavings/bits will get everywhere.

Chances are the fretboard will be super dry, dunlop do some good products for guitar care and I think you get kits quite cheap that'll last you years for not many pennies.

I was planning on fitting some locking tuners to mine, along with a new set of p'ups/electrics but since I tidied it all up, I just haven't played it. My other guitars (including a sub £100 DIY Harley Benton SG copy) are just leaps ahead. I may paint it and use it as an ornement rather than to play. Hmm.

To add to this, I've tried all manner of different fretboard oils, lemon oils, etc.

In my experience, the best thing for fretboards, is walnut.

Get a walnut, break it in half, and go do town, wiping it/smooshing it all over your fretboard, then clean it up when you're done.

[HighwayToHull]

I use good old linseed oil for fretboards. No need for all the fancy stuff.

(This is for rosewood, ebony, etc of course. Maple fingerboards tend to be lacquered so don't need it.)

[HiAsAKite]

Thanks all. Appreciate all your responses for what is probably a very 'niche' question!

Good point about tuners - replacing those probably would equal the value of the guitar, albeit the ones on there are not "that" atrocious, but could clearly be much better...

Will start with wire wool and go from there, and poss linseed oil (fretboard is rosewood- or at least looks like it). The guitar neck itself is not that bad, its fairly easy to play, and looking at it, is pretty straight.
Don't think we have any spare walnuts around, but will take look :-)

Will report back on progress..

Edited by HiAsAKite on Thursday 14th January 21:22

[RichTT]

Looking after a musical instrument is not niche, just not something that the lay guitar player is ever taught. I'm sure that anyone who plays a classical instrument would have been taught how to look after it during tuition. But because guitar is quite ubiquitous everyman pick up and play it often gets forgotten about. In fact it wasn't until after a 15 year non-playing period did I even consider it. But now after buying a good guitar and taking time to set it up and learn what maintenance needs doing it has become so much better than it was 'out of the box' as it were.

I got gifted the Ernie Ball guitar care kit with fretboard cleaner and very fine grit polishing sandpaper for the frets. I think the fretboard oil is lemon oil but after cleaning the rosewood soaked up a good few applications. The fret polishing paper has made them nice and smooth as well. I think the carnuba wax for the body is a total gimmick though.

[thewarlock]

RichTT said:

Looking after a musical instrument is not niche, just not something that the lay guitar player is ever taught. I'm sure that anyone who plays a classical instrument would have been taught how to look after it during tuition. But because guitar is quite ubiquitous everyman pick up and play it often gets forgotten about. In fact it wasn't until after a 15 year non-playing period did I even consider it. But now after buying a good guitar and taking time to set it up and learn what maintenance needs doing it has become so much better than it was 'out of the box' as it were.

I got gifted the Ernie Ball guitar care kit with fretboard cleaner and very fine grit polishing sandpaper for the frets. I think the fretboard oil is lemon oil but after cleaning the rosewood soaked up a good few applications. The fret polishing paper has made them nice and smooth as well. I think the carnuba wax for the body is a total gimmick though.

Similarly, the number of drummers that don't know how to tune their drums is criminal.

When I learned violin, and pipes, it was a specialist teacher/tutor, and they went over all of those thing, how to care, maintain, repair etc. your instrument.

With things like guitar, drumkit even, people are more likely to pick it up themselves, or with friends/unnattended in school, and a lot of the those basics get skipped over because they're not as fun as headbanging whilst learning Smells Like Teen Spirit (actually probably Monkeywrench in my case)

[Lim]

If primary aim is sounding good, my first question would be does it stay and play in tune? If not that is first step. Cleaning frets won’t do much for an out of tune guitar.

So that means, intonation and pegs mostly. You might as well do action and truss whilst you are at it.

Youtube is your friend.

If you want to spend money, then I’d change the pegs first, assuming it doesn’t stay in tune already when you thrash it.

[HiAsAKite]

thewarlock said:

With things like guitar, drumkit even, people are more likely to pick it up themselves, or with friends/unnattended in school, and a lot of the those basics get skipped over because they're not as fun as headbanging whilst learning Smells Like Teen Spirit (actually probably Monkeywrench in my case)

(busted!) - albeit it was more AC/DC, RATM as well as Nirvana for me...

[HiAsAKite]

Lim said:

If primary aim is sounding good, my first question would be does it stay and play in tune? If not that is first step. Cleaning frets won’t do much for an out of tune guitar.

So that means, intonation and pegs mostly. You might as well do action and truss whilst you are at it.

Youtube is your friend.

If you want to spend money, then I’d change the pegs first, assuming it doesn’t stay in tune already when you thrash it.

Fair point - I don't remember it being that bad to be honest, and whilst it had a tremolo, I didn't really use it.
Reason for looking at the frets is I can see they have deteriorated, and need a little TLC. Hence a starting point.
And the strings were FUBAR'd anyway.

In terms of tuning - I've never focused on the intonation - I've no reason to presume it is particularly bad, but I never gone out my way to check it per se.
It probably doesn't help that I'm partially deaf, and my high frequency hearing is screwed, so whilst I can, and do manually tune using beats, which I can hear, I struggle to distinguish between high pitch out of tune notes (unless I unless I use beats).

Which is probably part of the reason I've never been that good - I can hear when things sound 'right', but when its wrong, I can tell it doesn't sound right, but I can tell why its not right, and forget trying to listen to something and play it - I just can't resolve the notes using my hearing :-(

I'll start by trying to clean up the fret/fretwires, restringing, check the intonation, and then really check how well the tuners hold the tone once I refit the tremolo, and then go from there

[HiAsAKite]

RichTT said:

Looking after a musical instrument is not niche, just not something that the lay guitar player is ever taught. I'm sure that anyone who plays a classical instrument would have been taught how to look after it during tuition. But because guitar is quite ubiquitous everyman pick up and play it often gets forgotten about. In fact it wasn't until after a 15 year non-playing period did I even consider it. But now after buying a good guitar and taking time to set it up and learn what maintenance needs doing it has become so much better than it was 'out of the box' as it were.

I got gifted the Ernie Ball guitar care kit with fretboard cleaner and very fine grit polishing sandpaper for the frets. I think the fretboard oil is lemon oil but after cleaning the rosewood soaked up a good few applications. The fret polishing paper has made them nice and smooth as well. I think the carnuba wax for the body is a total gimmick though.

I'd agree. Especially if you never had any lessons and just taught yourself from guitar tabs from books and magazines....

I did see a few guitar maintenance kits on amazon, with all these things often difficult working out what in there will be of real value versus what is just a gimmick..