Does anyone know how to clean frets or polish up? I recently bought a 1986 Strat on ebay that someone had in their closet for years and the frets really could use some clean up. The frets are not damage just caked on grime. any ideas.

If its a rosewood board put a liberal amount of lemon oil on, and use a very fine steel-wool on the frets. when finished wipe away all excess. That will condition the board as well as clean up the frets.

If its a maple board, you can put painters tape on each side of the fret wire to protect the board, then use the steel wool to clean the wire.

Good Luck and send pics when she's all cleaned up

Bil

_________________
Hey, Boy Blue is back!

I wouldn't use steel wool but one of these non-metallic Scotch Brite pads.

_________________
'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

i wouldn't go anywhere near a finished guitar with steel wool...but then again im definitely no luthier. whatever happened to a washcloth and some good old elbow grease?

+1 on that.

I usually use lemon oil for the fretboard and a micro fiber cloth the wipe the excess and to make the frets shiny again.

_________________
Dean, Epiphone and Fender guitars

Ryan

Heres what you do mate.

Get the neck off the body. The beauty of fender bolt on necks is that their very very easy to work on.

Get some painters tape/masking tape and mask off the entire fretboard, as previously stated.



Dont bother going over the frets then cutting out the fret tops like that bloke. It's excessive, time consuming and imagine how bad he'll feel if he slips with that scalpel.

When you get up to your thinner frets simply cut the masking tape through the middle to fit butt it up to one fret. If your a little short of the other fret, simply cut another piece or use your offcut and layer it over the first bit of tape, butting up to the fret you were short of. It's better when their layered anyway.

Very very time consuming boring labourious work that bit.

Then get some of this.


I prefer the wadding cloth soaked in the metalpolish type. Just rip a bit off the cloth and rub it up and down the frets one at a time. When the bit of cloth you tore off gets a bit dry, simply tear some more off and use that.

Your going to notice horrible black gunk dribbling down the sides of the neck and soaking into the masking tape. It's perfectly normal and wont do any harm. Just wipe it off every now and again.

When you've done all the frets take the masking tape off and give the entire neck a decent clean.

Hey presto job done. Labourious but not hard.

Sorry I cant show you any better photo's. Photobucket are giving me jip as you can probably tell from the signature. I've got to polish the hotrods frets so will be doing that sometime soon. If I can find a image hosting site I can work, I'll upload some to that.

_________________
No no and no

jeez... i thought you meant Polish frets as in Poland.

Ha ha ha

Last night I was having a drink with a Polish couple we are good friends with (true, not just a line). The fella had a frown on his face - I guess that would be a Polish fret...

Cheers - C

Ha. Hi Jay - matter o' fact I've never tried polishing my frets with the Dremel, though I've heard of others doing it. I'm always nervous of using that machine for these kinds of things cos even at slow speeds you can wear surfaces away quicker than you realise.

However, I may have some frets to polish in a day or two so perhaps I'll give it a go and report back. I even have a tiny block of red compound specially intended for use with Dremel's polishing wheel... Thanks for planting the thought in my head.

Cheers - C

Masking tape, wire wool, metal polish.

If you think that's too much hassle, I think Planet Waves came up with a fret polishing kit last year, that included a template with a slot for prorecting the fingerboard - I forget what it was called, but something obvious...

_________________
Guitar Collector Forum | Guitar hand trainer | Play Power Chords
Guitar string FAQ | Compare Guitar Tuners

I wouldnt want to risk the lacquer burns.

The time consuming thing about the job is the masking off. The actual polish takes next to no time anyway.

_________________
No no and no

Fret Polish System

http://store.daddario.com/category/1524 ... ing_System

_________________
Dean, Epiphone and Fender guitars

Tried the dimazio system, it's rubbish. A waste of £5

_________________
No no and no