Guitar Cleaning: Get Rid of Finish Haze - Naptha, Rubbing Compound, Scratch Remover, Polish

okay so what we got here is a Les Paul base that I just got and uh we've probably all come across this at some point or another and that's the dreaded hazy finish and it's usually in an area where somebody sweats on a guitar bass a lot like this is the armrest area and it's actually hard to get this to come out on camera real well it's kind of worse than it looks on camera um and it kind of extends all the way up here and it's on down below on this this is one of the worst cases I've seen of it so that's why I decided to film this one um and actually off camera before I even started this I tried a million different products on it and usually I can get the that haziness to fade um but this one's being pretty stubborn so so far I have tried let's see something called um virtuoso premium cleaner which is a good just um basic cleaner that'll get um dirt and stuff off of finish it's not too abrasive it won't hurt your finish at all um that didn't work I tried uh something that I use it's a mix of just a a spray cleaner and some Windex that kind of seemed to work a little bit all these seem to work a little bit but didn't really get rid of it um I tried Dunlop 65 which is actually a string cleaner but it's just a real good cleaner for anywhere on the guitar and then I tried a couple um swirl remover type products uh after none of those worked I went to lighter fluid which is actually about the same thing that people call naptha um and that actually kind of worked what it seemed to do was just cut down some of that um years of sweat and dirt and now kind of what's left here is um just this most stubborn part of this that just won't go away and I'm going to show you what I do sometimes when I get to this point I get one of these um little uh pads that you can attach to your drill and this is like a velcro deal go to Amazon .com and you're supposed to wet it so I spray it with a little water um it's pretty much you know car wax 101 you wet the pad and then you put a little bit of the wax or whatever you got that you're gonna put on your car a few spots and then you can kind of set it on the Finish and then just spread it around at first at a low speed and then you don't want to go too hard on it but a little faster and then usually I'll check how it's progressing before I do any more and you can see it's it is cutting through some of that Haze this is the most stubborn case of this kind of finish Haze I've ever come across and it's not gonna possibly come through on camera but I can see it cutting through that Haze over here and it's kind of cleaned it up right here and it's still got a little strip probably the worst part where the person's arm rested for years so I'm going to put a little bit more of this uh mcguiars on here it's a swirl remover it's not a super abrasive one it's kind of like a a low abrasive one I've never had this hurt um the finish of a guitar before but again I'm not working on a guitar from the 50s or the 60s here it's not a vintage piece and I wouldn't do that on a guitar like that but this has got a pretty nice thick finish and clear coat on it so I think it can handle it I'm also using one of the softest pads there's different different um firmness of pads and the firmer you go the harder it's going to be on your finish but also the uh the more it's going to cut through do it or whatever you're trying to get rid of so I'm using a very um easy pad right now what this uh pad and drill is doing is just uh doing what you can do with your hand but a lot faster because he can sit there and do about the same thing by hand it's just going to take you a lot longer and yeah I do see progress here um let's see how that's coming on the camera okay you can still see right here a little cloudy but other than that it's really starting to clear up sometimes you can't completely get rid of this stuff in my experience I may not eventually be able to completely get rid of that just don't know it really depends how much time you want to spend on something like this too it's slowly but surely seeming to get rid of a little bit more I mean this is years and years and years of some guy playing this bass and just never cleaning probably by all means in the comments let me know what you guys do because I know there's probably a million ways to attack something like that it's gotten pretty good now but there's still a tiny bit a little tiny bit of haze left

Channel: Still Kickin Music

Views: 4,336

Keywords: guitar finish haze, guitar cleaners, how to clean a guitar, guitar naptha

Id: CIqpUGmR4GM

Length: 6min 41sec (401 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 02 2022