I even have some sheets of that stuff called Gorgomyte you can rub on the frets and fingerboard.
I really don't understand guitar players sometimes.
Gorgomyte...like people should rub coconut food stuff and have it go rancid on their fretboards. Why?
Aaand...it's both a floor wax AND a salad dressing! It'll shine up your metal frets AND clean your wooden fingerboard! Something about that is just a bit too weird. I'm sure you can make a pina colada with it. Ask Jimmy Buffett.
Every guitar maker in the USA recommends a basic, simple item to clean the fretboard -- lemon oil. Basic scented naphtha. Put it on a rag, and rub off the dirt. Then rub off the lemon oil. Voila, you're done. Nothing more needed.
Why? Because it's been proven to be safe for guitars and it has worked well for luthiers and the general public forever. It's so simple. It's a proven commodity, and it's inexpensive.
Yet you hear guys say, "My fretboard is thirsty." Um...if it's rosewood or ebony, it's not gonna really get...thirsty.
They find perfect african rosewood and ebony in Egyptian tombs and the stuff hasn't needed a drink in 3500 years. This ebony guy was Tut's:
And Tut didn't even have someone come by every so often to clean his junk with lemon oil! 3500 years in a hot, dry tomb, and the guy is still in one piece. They also found a bunch of Tut's wooden canes, some just plain wood.
No Gorgomyte needed, no Statue/Fret/Cane Doctor Needed, this stuff got nothin' at all for three thousand five hundred years!
And you think your fretboard is going to disintegrate after a few years, gentlemen? Because it has thirsty wood that needs essential oils? That's..well...I dunno. Not gonna happen.
When I was a high school kid and had my first car in the 60s, the thing for guys who loved their cars was to put STP in the engine. I remember the mechanic at the gas station selling me the stuff, and oohing and aahing over how my Mustang would love it, and him saying, "The stuff is like honey for your engine."
Fast forward to the 70s and the 90s, STP was hit by the FTC and fined for false advertising. The stuff does basically nothing your regular oil doesn't do.
Well, what did I know. I was all of 16 and I loved my car. I wanted desperately to put an STP sticker on my window.
Guitar guys are sometimes like the sucker high school kid I was back then. They can read, they can go to a manufacturer website and find out EXACTLY what the people who built the guitar recommend for maintenance. It's simple stuff.
But guitar players don't bother with the manufacturer's recommendation. They would rather concoct home remedies like the one here who uses floor cleaning oil soap and isopropyl alcohol. They'd use boogers and ear wax if the mood suited them, or if someone on the internet said to do it, and they fall for all this guitar juice that makes as much sense for their guitars as STP did for my Mustang back in 1966.
I'm going back to playing the accordion. No one bothers cleaning their accordions, and I say this because I have yet to see a special accordion key treatment for the
suckahs. If only accordions were popular, someone could make a mint coming up with special treatments for the buttons (oh, these pearloid plastic buttons get thirsty!). Imagine all the hand-tooled leather straps you could install on your Musette!
