Lacquer or Loogey???

I've noticed a spot or splash or something on the fretboard of my new fender w/ a birdseye maple neck. I've asked the local shops, "whats a safe method of getting it off???" They all say something different. One says dont put anything on it, one says its gotta be buffed, and the store I bought it from says I could scrub it with soap and water??? What the ???? It looks like it could be lacquer from when the guitar was made, or even as simple as a loogey. It's pretty hard though... I tried to scrape it softly w/ my pick, but no luck. Whats the best way?

use a credit card or similar plastic to scrape finger gunk off and recently cleaned the neck of my Ibanez with 00 gauge wire wool (the finest,least abrasive, wire wool).

On my cheapo guitars i use beeswax polish and/or wire wool - note these are all rose-wood boards, polish CAN can dry out necks [according to it's formulation,etc] so i won't use it on my more expensive guitars. Maple boards tend to be sealed and most guitar companies recommend they are only scraped clean of gunk. I have also used linseed oil to clean/treat rosewood boards and this is what Gibson recommend. Have a look at Fender's website to see what they say about cleaning your fretboard and follow the official line then you have the least danger of any wood damage.

Be very cautious when using steel wool, most wire wools are made of conductive material, very fine metallic residue can find their way to your pick-ups, and could even short them out. If you use it, first tape off your p/u's and make a cover for the rest of the guitar out of poster board, cardboard etc.., the residue is hard on a finish too, use it, clean everything, and then remove the cover, tape etc, those fine little crumbs of wool are extremely hard to get off the pole pieces of a fender p/u, ( don't ask me how I found that out). I like some of the synthetic type pads and wools and even an old piece of leather are great for cleaning fretboards, alot of the syn stuff is made in the 00-0000 range, Cigarette Lighter fluid ( NAPTHA) is a good solvent for using general cleaning, dried snot, blood, body oils etc, off the fretboard, neck and body, just enough to dampen a cloth, sorry no huffing, I use pure lemon oil or carnuba wax to treat rosewood or ebony fretboards, laquer, etc, finished maple fretboards don't need any treatment.B/F, is this thing on your fretboard, down in the finish, sticking up out of the finish, ?

metal bits from the wire are a pain in the posterior alright! :)

Its a bit harder like lacquer or something. Definitley on top of the board, not down in the wood. I want to take all the strings off and solve this then, but i dont want to affect the guitar, or intonation(what is that anyway), and get my new strings (from 9's? to 10's?) back on my guitar properly!!!!!!

just to explain that intonation means, in my explanation of it, setting a string's length so that a note will sound correctly where it's supposed to be played, ie- on the high E string at the 5th fret the note sould be A, if it's incorrect you could get a note which is sharp or flat.

Don't worry excessively about it just for now, that can be explained in detail later.

I guess we're talking about your Squier here(?)- in general Fender and Gibson seem to send out guitars with 9s as standard so those are probably what you've got, if you're fairly new to playing then 10s will wear your fingers a bit much, so stick with 9s for a while longer (the 9 or 10 refers to thousandths of an inch).

Here's a halfassed workaround i use for strat types, slacken the strings, pop them out of the nut and rest them against the side of the neck (4,5,6 to the left-1,2,3 to the right)tape them gently if they wont stay - this should give you room to scrape away fairly strongly with a plastic card at your blemish. You could try pstring's naptha suggestion if it wont come off with simple scraping, he know what he's talking about, using a fair amount of care you shouldn't hurt anything.

If the strings are off for an hour or so you may not have to do any intonation work.

Intonation is a big word,but, hell if i can do it..

I cant type as well as some so instead of explaining how i do intonation i'll let someone else explain it better,i won't point you at Fender's site as it's gone to shhite for product support, but this explanation used to be on their site a long while ago.

http://www.o-ma.com/hog/techtips.html#1

Good Luck, you should be fine.



[Edited by James8831 on 03-24-2002 at 04:04 AM]