How to take care of your guitar
If you're a musician who owns a high-end guitar, you know how important it is to take good care of your instrument. Not only do you want to protect your investment, but you also want to ensure that your guitar sounds and performs at its best. Here are a few tips on how and why you should take care of your high-end guitar
These tips are general care tips for anyone and are either common sense or simple operations you can perform on your own. Below that section, you will find a detailed plan of the major maintenance operations, and when you should have them executed on your instrument.
Remember, always bring your guitar to a professional when in need, and favor luthiers that have a reknowned background, studies, and professional experience to avoid any bad experiences
GENERAL CARE
Keep it clean : A clean guitar is a happy guitar. Your guitar can accumulate dust, grit, and grime over time, which can alter how it plays, looks and sounds. Use a soft cloth to wipe down the body, neck, and headstock of your guitar to maintain it clean, and use a guitar polish to get rid of any lingering dirt or grime.
Keep it humidified : Natural materials like wood are sensitive to fluctuations in humidity. Too little humidity will cause the wood to dry up and become brittle, which will impact your guitar's tone and playability. Use a humidifier to preserve your guitar case's relative humidity at 45–50% to keep it in good condition.
While we all love seeing our instrument displayed in our living room or studio, I would strongly advice for keeping your guitar in its case most of the time, if it’s not your everyday workhorse. This will help you deal with humidity peaks and temperature variations.
Protect it from extreme temperatures : Extreme temperatures might harm your guitar. A hot automobile or direct sunshine are not good places to leave your guitar since the heat may cause the wood to swell and possibly shatter. Similar to this, keep your guitar away from extremely cold temperatures because the wood may shrink and become brittle.
Protect it from impact : Your guitar is a delicate instrument, and it can be easily damaged if it is dropped or subjected to impact. To protect your guitar, handle it with care and use a hard case when transporting it. Small impacts will deteriorate the finish and look, but major impacts can affect the geometry and structural integrity of your instruments. Try to avoid both (as obvious as it seems !)
MAINTENANCE PLAN
To keep your guitar in mint condition and get the most out of it in terms of playing comfort, you need to bring it to a professional regularly. Most players neglect this side of high end instrument ownership, and it can have numerous negative effects. You will find below a plan, with the detailed operations and when to have your intrument maintained. Remember, ask a professional, don’t do anything to your guitar that will affect its playability, quality and value.
Changing strings
You should change your strings regularly, ideally when they start loosing their brightness (unless you’re looking for a more mellow & dampened tone, with flatwounds for example). The frequency depends on many factors, such as your everyday playing time, your strings quality and properties (coated strings & gold strings last longer than standard strings), how much you sweat, and so on.
A good thing to do if you want to extend your strings life is to clean them after each use, either using a special product, or a simple microfiber cloth.
General setup
Performing a general setup on your instrument can take a professional between minutes and hours. If you keep your strings gauges similar, there should’nt be a lot of work, but in many cases there is quite a few steps to take.
Unless you’re living in some extreme part of the world with daily variations, we recommend 2/3 setups a year, syncronized with the major season changes. A general setup must absolutely include a nut checkup, truss rod adjust, string action and intonation adjust, between other things.
Fretboard hydration
Hydrating your fretboard is a crucial step in keeping your guitar in its optimal condition. This will allow your fretboard’s wood to keep its properties, maintain the frets in their slot by avoiding overly dried areas, and make it more stable facing humidity variations. This should be done at least twice a year.
General cleanup
A general cleanup of the instrument should be done at least once, preferably twice a year. This should include a dirt & dust cleanup, retightening of the hardware & parts, screw waxing, pots & electronics cleaning, and all the necessary detailing.
Fret leveling
We suggest checking your fretboard and frets’ geometry once a year, after a major seasonal change. If necessary, leveling the frets again, crowing and buffing them back to ensure a perfect fretboard profile. Note that whenever you’re modifing your frets’ height and geometry, your nut will have to be checked and adjusted accordingly.
Refrets.
We suggest regular players to have their guitar refretted every 2 to 3 years, depending on how intense your musician life is ! If you do the maths, after at least 2 or 3 fret leveling, your frets should be pretty low, if not inexistant if you don’t have mighty jumbo bass frets. This would be the right time to refret your guitar, give your fretboard a leveling, and do a major maintenance.
TO SUMMARIZE
Whenever it’s needed
Changing your strings
2/3 times a year
General setup
2 times a year
Fretboard hydration & general cleanup
Once a year
Fret leveling
Every 2/3 years
Complete refret
By following these simple tips, you can help ensure that your high-end guitar stays in top condition, and continue to enjoy it for years to come.
Don’t hesitate to reach out Belforti Instruments to plan your maintenance operations !
