Indian laurel is a valued tonewood for guitar fretboards because of its high density and hardness. Its rich yet bright tone and beautiful aesthetics of laurel make it a highly sought-after fretboard wood. If you own a guitar that has an Indian laurel fretboard, then it’s only a matter of time before it needs a proper cleaning. In this quick guide, we’ll cover how to take care of an Indian laurel fretboard, along with some good practices.
Every guitarist worries after having intense practice sessions, months of sweaty rehearsals and gigs, of seeing their fretboard becoming dotted with gross, ugly deposits. These accumulations of dirt can be a real nuisance, especially if you don’t clean the fretboard of your guitar regularly. Here are some techniques and tools to help you clean your Indian laurel fretboard.
Preserving Your Indian Laurel Fretboard
If you want to avoid lengthy, laborious cleaning duties in the future, you should start by wiping off the strings and the fretboard with a lint-free cloth after each use. You can use a soft cotton rag or a fancy guitar cleaning cloth made specifically for this purpose. Although it’s easier to clean the strings when the tension is relaxed and the strings are lifted from the nut, if you’re in a hurry, it can also be done with the strings in their normal, tuned state. Go down each string along its entire length and diameter and you’re finished. If you want to treat your fretboard and strings to something a little more fancy, you will find many special cleaners and conditioners available. These cleaning conditioners not only help to preserve your strings, they can also protect your Indian laurel fretboard by preventing deposits of dirt from gathering over time. Naturally, this will ultimately result in a longer life span of your strings as well.
How To Clean Your Indian Laurel Fretboard
In order to clean your Indian laurel fretboard, you’re going to need to take off all the strings on the guitar. Taking off all the strings on the guitar makes the entire cleaning process much easier to complete.
Note: Consider taking your guitar to a guitar technician if the guitar happens to be a pricey vintage and have yet to change the guitar’s strings, as removing the strings on your guitar can actually cause your vintage guitar to malfunction if not re-strung properly.
1. Use alcohol wipes to clean the fretboard.
You should know that the Indian laurel fretboard on your guitar needs to be cleaned as soon as you see a small amount of discoloration or dirt on the frets that you use most often. After you’ve removed any or all of your guitar strings, you’re going to want to take a few alcohol wipes or swabs to clean the fretboard.
By taking a wipe at a time, you’re going to want to clean each section of the fretboard thoroughly to ensure that you’re cleaning off all the grime and oil off of the fretboard.
2. Using lemon oil on a clean rag
Once you’ve cleaned the fretboard, use some lemon oil with a clean dry rag (like the one you have in your kitchen), applying the lemon oil to the fretboard in a generous manner, allowing the lemon oil to set for a minute.
If your Indian laurel fretboard is highly damaged, you should consider letting the lemon oil sit for 10-15 minutes. Using a dry cloth, rub the oil into the fretboard and wipe clean until the oil residue goes away.
If you’re uncomfortable with using some 0000-grade steel wool or you just can’t find it, you can also use a toothbrush!
Using a toothbrush to scrub a fretboard that’s in poor condition really gives the option to get into the crevices on the wood and scrub out all the dirt, without having to worry about damaging anything.
While some people prefer to leave the strings on when they’re cleaning and conditioning their fretboard, it’s important to know that getting the lemon oil on any strings will really kill the life of your strings.
Maybe you’ve just found out that conditioning the fretboard of a guitar was a thing, so maybe you’ve realised that you will need to pay a lot of attention to your guitar in the future and of course, it will only preserve the life of the guitar.
If you have a guitar with an Indian laurel fretboard and need some extra care, you can apply a second layer of oil to the fretboard and leave it to soak into the wood overnight, without touching it! The next day, you can buff the fretboard with a clean cloth and re-string.
Conclusion
An Indian laurel fretboard only needs to be conditioned if it’s drying out or if you’ve noticed that it has already dried out. If you happen to be a guitarist who is touring a lot and/or doing a lot of outdoor shows, you should only need to condition your fretboard once every three to four months.
If you happen to only be playing your guitar at your house, how often you clean and condition your fretboard will depend on how dirty and dry the environment is at your home.
Remember, just like the Indian laurel fretboard on your guitar, the rest of your guitar’s body also needs some attention. For example, dirt, grease, and grime can build up on the saddles and the bridge of the guitar. Cleaning the rest of the hardware of your guitar is just as simple as cleaning the fretboard.
If you keep your guitar in an environment, that’s properly humid, you should only have to condition the fretboard 1-3 times a year!