BINGO! your a good man ceri. thanks for covering me on that one.

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63supro
"The good thing is in a club situation, most of the patrons are trashed and really can't tell the difference."

I never use steel wool anywhere on my guitars partly because of the abrasiveness but mostly because the fine particles are insidious and can make their way into the pups and pots etc.I always use a coarse none metallic pot scrubbing pad.I also would never use Windex as it contains amonia.Only use approved guitar polish and cleaning products that way you're assured that your expensive investment won't come to any harm.

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'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.

0000 grade steel wool is recommended by luthiers for cleaning non-gloss fretboards, and if you just lay a towel over the body of the guitar, you wont get any dust in the electrics. 0000 grade steel wool is also very fine, and luthiers also use it during the finishing process as well. a coarse pot scrubbing pad is about 1,000 times more abrasive than 0000 grade steel wool.

Also, there is a gray area when it comes to some of these so called approved products, and if you call the guitar manufacturer, they will not always tell you one way or the other if it is ok to use. They'll say things like... It should be ok to use, or... it might not hurt anything.

Let me put it this way...

Guitars need to be able to get there moisture naturally through humidity. Guitar manufacturers know this. They make their instruments with that knowledge already factored in to their process. The finishes they use these days will last a lifetime, and the only thing we need to do is to keep them humidified and wipe them down with a damp 100% cotton cloth, followed by a dry 100% cotton cloth.

When we start getting into all these polishes, oils, and cleaning products, we are opening up a can of worms.

Polish for example can build up over time and actually change the tone of your instrument, because the finish is a precise thickness, and the polish makes it thicker. Then you would have to get something that would stripp all that build up off without damaging the finish.

Oils on the fretboard for example will soak into the wood. Over time, this will make the fretboard unable to naturally absorb humidity, and will eventually turn the fretboard into a dried out oil doped peice of wood. I'm not sure, but I think it can also effect the tone as well, and once that oil gets in there, I don't think there is any way to get it out.

I only mentioned the 0000 grade steel wool, because some people neglect their instrument to the point where they need it, and if they just did a quick wipedown with a damp/dry cloth (100% cotton), they would never need anything else.

just sayin...

[quote="bcalvanese"]
Polish for example can build up over time and actually change the tone of your instrument, because the finish is a precise thickness, and the polish makes it thicker. Then you would have to get something that would stripp all that build up off without damaging the finish.quote]

this is not true. we proved that in the paint shop decades ago.
a polish or a wax will not stick to itself in part by design.
the only exclusion is a wax or polish with polymer sealent in it, again by design. now if you go using furnature polishes they are designed to build up over usage. there again it is very limited in how much it actually
builds up, which is not as much as your led to believe.

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63supro
"The good thing is in a club situation, most of the patrons are trashed and really can't tell the difference."

Look up fine furniture then see about maintenance and upkeep.
You can buy the necessary conditioning oils for a fraction of the cleverly named accessory products.

A peak at the ingredients will reveal identical ingredients for 3 times the price.
Rosewood as well as Ebony needs to be kept oiled, otherwise shrinkage and cracks are a problem.

A few years ago I bought a serious ($1200-$1500) Classical guitar for about $150 only because it had a fretboard crack running from the soundhole to the ninth fret.
Oiled the fingerboard with Howard's feed-wax wood preserver ( Bee's wax and orange oil, a penetrating feeder for all furniture finishes and natural wood) www.howardproducts.com .
Then I put the guitar away in it's case with a humidifier and "VOILA"
a few days later you could not tell anything was ever amiss.

Guitars are really fine pieces of furniture, therefore should be treated like furniture when it concerns care.
Actually all those Endust, Lemon pledge and similar polishes/aggragate should " NEVER...EVER.. BE USED " on furniture, let alone instruments.

A good resource is to go to a string instrument source ( violin/fiddle viola, viola de Gamba, Cello etc.etc..) and see what are the recommendations for care and upkeep of 7 figure valued instruments.
If the advice can keep a 300 year old Guarneri or Stradivarius in excellent playing condition, it will be just fine for our guitars..

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"C'est parti mon Kiki "

You could have just put it in the case with a humidifier and it would have done the same thing, but with better results, because you would not have impregnated the wood with all that gunk that you slapped all over it.

The reason it cracked in the first place is because it was not humidified.

The solution is simple.

Keep your instrument humidified
Wipe it down with a damp 100% cotton cloth followed by a dry 100% cotton cloth, and it will last a lifetime.

Why do people make things soooooooooooooooooooo complicated...

Honestly, I hardly ever need any of these products.

If you wash your hands each and every time before playing your guitar and strings will last

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Guitars:
1. mid 70's Ventura MIJ Gibson l6-s clone (Pre-lawsuit) in Black with Rosewood FB and EMG 81 BR/ 85 Neck
2. ESP KH2 Neck Thru
3. 2008 Am Std Strat in 3 tone sunburst

um.........what about the sweat off your fingers/hands while your playing?

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63supro
"The good thing is in a club situation, most of the patrons are trashed and really can't tell the difference."

THANKS....bcalvanese...

Perhaps I should have clarified that care for fine acoustics differs a bit from care for solid-body painted electrics ??
Care for my 94 Larrivee C10 acoustic and Classical is different than for my 56CS, 01 MIM strats and "parts-o-stratsters".

Steel Wool !!! Perhaps when building a guitar, (only on metal parts) steel wool is not very nice for any wood product, since it disintegrates as you use it and imbeds itself in your fretboards fractionally small crevase's.
not to mention that you'll be imbedding slivers of steel wool into your fingers for quite some time. (don't touch your eyes)..
I don't know who your so called luthiers are but I certainly would not take my guitars to them, that is unless you prefer the distressed relic look.

In addition, a damp cloth I would never use, especially on a rosewood or Ebony fingerboard, or even a lacquered maple fingerboard.
That wet/damp cotton cloth will transmit water into the fingerboard, at the point where frets meet the fingerboard, minuscule gaps are present. Over time that minute amount of water will damage the neck as it infiltrates below the finish.
Contrarily to the general consensus, if one was to look at a guitar under a microscope, one would see numerous fissures in the "protective" finish on a guitar, which is exactly the reason not to introduce H2O unnecessarily.
Wood and the finish will expand and contract at different rates.

After a gig of sweating and grime, (beer,food and whatever) gets applied to your guitar, adding more water is definitely not a good idea.
I agree with wiping down a guitar after each use, but disagree on the methodology.

I've been a woodworker for over 30+ years, building cabinetry for kitchens, built-ins, building custom homes, renovating colonials and capes, working on wooden sailboats, Oak, Teak, Fir, Poplar, Mahogany and a few other woods which are not much fun to work with because of their density and propensation for splitting when under duress, as in Ipee and other south american exotic woods.
Adding that I've taken apart and refinished many of my own instruments since I was a teen, and along the way screwed up a couple...but... OK... go ahead and apply a damp cloth to your guitar and let's see what it looks like in about 10 years.

As a closing note, for advice as to instrument care, I go see my friend "Otto", that is Matt D'Ambrosio at his shop, a fine luthier of archtops and acoustics, he recently repaired a priceless archtop for Stephen Stills which was broken into pieces by someone having sat upon it ???

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"C'est parti mon Kiki "

I mask off all the pickups and cracks with blue painters tape so the iron filings stay out. Then I uses 00000 steel wool and polish and clean the neck with the grain. Then I dust everything off with a Purdy Nicrol paint brush. I'll soak a small section of a clean paper towel with Fornbys Lemon Oil and apply liberally with dabs and gentle rubbing. I let it soak for about five minutes and then buff with a new clean paper towel. I'm sure that some of you will cringe over this technique but I've been doing it for about 45 years with no problems.

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Robert Moog - "Hey... where do all these patch cables go?"

For those putting water or damp cloths on their instruments... only use distilled water as tap water contains minerals and salts that can harm wood. I keep a hygrometer in my violin case and only wipe the instrument with a dry microfiber cloth. I never put anything on my fiddle.

For cleaning strings, another tip from the violin world is to rub them off with a piece of cork -- but not one from a wine bottle. Cork does a great job cleaning off dirt and oils while extending the life of the strings. Violin strings run up to $60 a set so you want to make them last.