No matter how much you try to keep your guitar clean, it’s bound to get dirty. Even if you only play it a couple of times a month, you’ll need to clean it every now and then.
Today, we’re going to show you how to keep your guitar looking shiny and feeling fresh. But before we go into the details of how to properly clean your guitar, let’s see a couple of things you can do to keep your guitar clean for longer periods.
How to Prevent Your Guitar from Getting Dirty
While it’s practically impossible to prevent dust and dirt from getting on your guitar, there are certain things you can do to make sure that your guitar looks and feels clean for long periods of time:
- Every time you want to play, go and wash your hands. This is a simple, yet, effective way of preventing dirt from getting on your guitar.
- After you’re done playing, take a simple microfiber cloth, and wipe your instrument up and down. This will get the dirt that got on it during playing off.
- If you keep your guitar on display, make sure not to keep near a fireplace or in a room with a lot of windows, since high temperatures and sunlight may damage the wood.
How to Properly Clean Your Guitar in 3 Easy Steps
Now that we got that out of the way, let’s finally talk about the process of cleaning the guitar.
1. Cleaning the Strings
Every time you play the guitar, pieces of dirt and skin along with the natural oil produced by your body coat the strings. Over time, the dirt coat builds up and makes your strings feel worn out and sound off. The best way to prevent this is to clean your strings before every playing session.
A chamois cloth will help you polish your strings before every session without damaging them in the process. In general, you can just take the cloth and rub it back and forth until you get a noticeable amount of dirt off the strings.
2. Cleaning the Body
A quality guitar is made out of wood and like most quality materials, wood needs a good rub down every few weeks. You’ll probably have a good amount of dust on your guitar if you keep it on display. Try to dust off the guitar daily to make the cleaning process easier.
Once you get the dust off, you should take off your wires, and clean the wood with a microfiber cloth. Preferably, you should use a suede cloth. After you clean off the initial dirt, you can put some cleaner and polish to give it a nice, clean look.
3. Cleaning the Hardware
Before you ask, no, a layer of grime and dirt won’t affect the electronics in your guitar. Of course, that doesn’t mean you should leave the dirt there. Luckily, the hardware is pretty easy to clean and you won’t need too much time to do it.
Just take a dust cloth and a few Q-tips and clean it slowly. You can also chrome polish if there’s any grease residue on your hardware. Just make sure that the polish isn’t abrasive because it may damage the hardware. Some components are dipped, so try not to rub the coating off while you’re cleaning.
Final Thoughts
Once you start cleaning your guitar more often, not only will it sound better, but it will also feel better in your hands. That will allow you to play the guitar to the best of your abilities and sound better than ever. You should replace strings and other parts regularly if you want to keep your guitar feeling fresh.
We hope you found our article enjoyable and informative. How often do you clean your guitar? Make sure to share your thoughts with the rest of us by leaving a comment in the comment section below.
