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Axe Wax Guide to looking after your Guitar

WHY is it important to clean a guitar? Why even bother! We get this a lot. My first answer to this question is… personal discipline. You spend hours disciplined enough to practice, be disciplined enough to look after your gear. Regardless of what you play or how much it cost, look after it and take pride in that.  

Secondly, there are a lot of practical reasons you need to keep your guitar clean, and it’s not just about how shiny your guitar looks!

Your guitar is made from various materials, wood, metal, plastic, all these degrade over time and depending on environmental conditions can degrade at an accelerated rate. This can effect the cosmetic appearance, fading of the finish and have a significant effect on the playability, with corrosion of parts, strings, bridge, tremolo, tuners.

Environmental conditions, temperature, humidity, direct sunlight and UV can have a detrimental effect if stored incorrectly. And when practicing and playing, elements like the oil from our skin, dust, sweat, smoke, all contribute to the “grime” that can build up over time. As humans we produce some pretty disgusting by-products, I’m talking oil and sweat through our skin. This naturally transfers through contact to the guitar when you play.

This build-up of grime can damage the inner workings and seriously effect usability and playability of your guitar

And although a dirty, well used guitar looks retro, if it’s dirty or full of gunk in the wrong places it will sound like trash.

You will never fully eliminate these factors, but you can slow down the sands of time by looking after and storing your instrument correctly.

Follow these simple steps for an Axe Wax Shine:

Keep Your Guitar In Top Condition:

  1. Wash and Dry your hands – Clean hands make this much easier. Start as you mean to go on.
  1. Remove the strings – This will make cleaning the body and fretboard far easier.
  1. Dust her down – Using a soft microfiber cloth, give your guitar an overall dust down.
  1. Inspect – Spend some time getting to know your guitar, inspect every dink, scratch and dent. Make note of anything out of place. 
  1. Clean the guitar body – Use a slightly damp cloth on nitro finishes. For Polyurethane finishes you can use a small amount of Axe Wax Vintage.76 Fretboard Oil to clean grime and dirt from the guitar body
  1. Refresh the hardware – If you want your hardware to shine, use a soft micro fibre cloth or an old tooth brush with a tiny amount of Vintage .76 Fretboard Oil to remove dirt. A small amount of GT85 can be used on metal parts to lubricate moving parts and saddles. Additionally, a small amount of WD 40 can be used to fight any corrosion. 
  1. Polish the guitar body – For Poly or nitro-finished guitars, use a small amount of Axe Wax onto a soft cloth and swirl onto the body. Work in small sections, buffing the wax off after 30 seconds to a minute as you go with a micro fibre cloth. 
  1. Clean the fretboard – Use very fine steel wool (use gloves) to remove stubborn gunk from Rosewood/Ebony/Pau Ferro fretboards. A small amount of Axe Wax Vintage .76 Fretboard Oil can be used to break down and lift the grime. Clean Maple fretboards with a damp cloth and dry.
  1. Oil the fretboard – Apply a very small amount of our Axe Wax Vintage .76 Fretboard Oil with a soft cloth to the clean fretboard. Work the oil into the wood sparingly and wipe off any excess as you go.
  1. Fit new strings – We always recommend fitting new strings when old ones have been removed. We recommend fitting British with RotoSounds. You can use a small amount of Vintage.76 Fretboard Oil to lightly lubricate your strings
  1. Store – If you are not playing your guitar, put it away! It takes seconds to place in your hard or soft case. Preferably store somewhere with a constant temperature and with low humidity. Extreme temperature changes can cause parts to swell and contract, strings to go out of tune and cracks to appear on the finish. Humidity can accelerate cracking and further cause corrosion.

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