After I had owned my very first cheap electric guitar for about 6 months I thought about changing the strings and as I had only been cleaning it with a damp cloth (without using any specific cleaning product) I thought it was be a good time to do it properly. OK, I know I should have done it before, but I was too busy learning! So, after removing the strings, I watched a video on the net about how to clean a guitar. On it the guy used a polish everywhere on his guitar and it really got me thinking as to whether it was really safe to do that, given the materials used during manufacture. I asked myself a couple of questions, such as, is the finish of the guitar effected by the cleaner and should I pay attention to the ingredients contained in the polish?

So off I went to search out the answers and here is what I found. I hope you find them useful:

Nowadays, there are essentially two types of finish that are generally used on guitars: Nitrocellulose and Polyurethane. There are some others, like waterborne finishes, but they aren't very common on common guitars. Nitrocellulose is basically a throw back from the old days, however, a couple of the large names like Fender and also Gibson still use them on some of their vintage reissue guitars. Nitrocellulose doesn't age well. However, Polyurethane is very durable and you can Koko Caliburn clean it with more abrasive chemicals, although in truth this is not recommended.

If you want your guitar to look the best it possibly can then you should definitely pay attention to what is in the guitar polish. Polish really should actually not be used that frequently. Instead try using some alcohol with a small amount of distilled water on a damp cloth to clean the sweat and grime off the guitar. Then when you completely restring your guitar you can wipe the body and fretboard down too, shine the body up a little with some polish and finish with a healthy smear of mineral oil on the guitar's fretboard.

You should really be paying special attention to your guitar's fretboard. A Rosewood fretboard, for example, will be very resilient but it can also really benefit from the occasional smearing and wiping in of some mineral oil. Mineral oil brings out the beautiful colours in Rosewood fretboards and many other unfinished fretboard woods. A finished fretboard can be treated exactly like the body of your guitar. To clean a fretboard, you can even use common lighter fuel to cut through the gunk and grease. Don't be smoking a cigarette to close or the effect you are looking for may not be achieved!

So basically you need to be really be careful what you put on the body of any instrument, let alone cheap electric guitars. You must keep abrasive petroleum-based chemicals and anything too acidic away from your guitar. You do not need a degree in chemistry to understand what some substances will do to your guitar, but hopefully this article will have given you some points to help you care for your guitar.