A friend recently gifted a 1950s era Silvertone acoustic guitar to my son. It’s pretty beat up and I want to give the finish a good cleaning and then see what else can be done to it cosmetically and structurally.
There are several “guitar detailer” spray-on products available online which I’m willing to try. Does anybody have any experience and/or advice for me?
Thanks in advance.
Replies
I always start with water and get slowly more aggressive. Water and patience cleans up more than people give it credit for.
Water then windex then Naptha (lighter fluid) is as far as I'll go on an unknown finish.
The Stew Mac polish is good, as are most guitar polishes but it's wasteful to use them to get grime up when cheap stuff will do it. too.
Naphtha is what I use. White gas is naphtha but I worry that there could be unknown additives so i dont use it and straight up naphtha which was always available at paint stores has become hard to find. I decided that lighter fluid should be pretty pure--- but how do you know? Windex contains ammonia, that would concern me. Many, many guitars are finished with nitrocellulos lacquer but not all are. Plain old water. I use Martin guitar polish after dirt and grime is removed. Even with naphtha I always stil test somewhere even though I have never had a reaction to any finish using it.
Thank you Ben and Pants for the responses.