How to clean your frets

So you haven’t changed your strings in a year and your once beautiful shiny frets now have a dingy green tint to them.  You wipe and wipe but nothing happens.  Here is a simple trick to get those frets back to their original shine. (Note: This tip is not recommended for maple and finished fret boards.)

Take a piece of #0000 steel wool (not sandpaper) and run it up and down the fret board until your frets shine.  Take care to cover your pickups and any electronics with masking tape…steel wool can wreck your electronics.  If your fret board is really dirty you can steel wool across the frets, but because this is against the grain of the wood, you will need to go back over the whole neck again, with the grain, once you are finished.  Now is a really great time to condition your fret board with lem-oil or other conditioning product.

Perform this every other string change, and your frets will always look like new.  Play on!

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How to identify a solid top guitar.

Solid top guitars are more desirable and generally sound better. These instruments age as they are played, giving the player better tone and larger sound over the time.

Here is a quick tip to tell if the guitar you are looking at is a solid top. (Note: This will not work on painted tops)

Look at the grain of the wood on the top of the guitar. Pick a line within the grain and follow it to the sound hole. If the top is sold, the grain will flow over the edge into the sound hole. If is not solid it will stop.

Check back often for more tips and tricks!

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