Cleaning dirty frets

The Big Kahuna

The Big Kahuna

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Less of a ukulele, and more of a guitar question (although frets are frets tbh). The Ibanez RG350 EX I've just picked up (at a bargain price) has been well gigged, and the frets haven't been cleaned for ever as far as I can tell. There's no fret wear, they're just corroded/very dirty. I'm just wondering if a wipe with the finest steel wool along the length of each fret (after taping the fingerboard, of course) would be the best approach.

Cheers
 
Steel wool works great. No need to tape off the fret board if it is ebony or rosewood. The steel wool will clean up the whole thing. (You probably want to tape off the body around the end of the fretboard, though.)

In fact, you just reminded me that I need to get some steel wool...
 
I just did this with a mandolin whose frets had become dirty and tarnished over time. 0000 steel wool was not aggressive enough in my case. I used a seven grit nail buffer, like this one, which worked great.
 
Do we really need to jump straight to steel wool? How about a q-tip with a little isopropyl and elbow grease? If under the grunge those frets are mirror finish, steel wool is going to dull them.
 
Isoprop' aint gonna touch these mate. There's a decade of sweat, acid and gunk on and under the frets. Nothing I haven't seen before, but it's many years since I've done any pretend-luthiery on electrics.
 
Gonna rewire it as well while I've got the strings off, and I'm going to strip and clean the trem and locking nut. The "Cosmo Black" finish that Ibanez applied to their hardware, especially the Edge III trems, was tragic.
 
if its an electric guitar, tape off the pickups as the steel wool can short it all out
 
I'd like to point out that these are the strings that were on it when I got it, hence the fact that they are wound on the pegs from the bottom upwards :wallbash:

There is also a tiny bit of cracking in the neck binding at each of the frets. I guess this is just due to shrinkage in the neck. I've had electrics in the past where the fret ends became slightly proud in winter as the fingerboard shrank slightly. It's purely cosmetic here though...another good reason for bound fingerboards.
 
Brasso and some paper towels. It will dissolve the fingerjam and polish everything up at the same time. 0000 steel wool is about the same as 600 grit wet&dry paper and you can do a lot better than that on frets/fingerboards.

cheers
 
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