Fingerboard Care Confusion

Hi,

I have a 2001 Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay 5H and its fingerboard is really dirty and needs cleaning. I have been warned not to use certain things on an unfinished maple fingerboard, but how do I tell if my fingerboard is "unfinished" or finished? It seems to me that truly unfinished maple fingerboards would not be very common (ebony, rosewood, pau ferro generally are unfinished, but not usually maple). So how do I tell if my neck is "finished" or not for this purpose?

Once we haved established whether the neck is finished or not, which product is best for cleaning a dirty neck?

(This could be a future sticky.)

	Unfinished Maple	Finished Maple	Rosewood, Pau Ferro, Ebony	Ventilated?	Mask?	Gloves?
Naphtha	?	?	?	yes	yes	yes
Gorgomyte	?	?	yes	no	no	no
Mineral Oil	?	?	yes	no	no	no
Lemon Oil	?	?	yes	no	no	no
EBMM Wonder Wipes	?	yes	no	no	no	yes
Pledge	?	no	no	no	no	no
Denatured alcohol	?	?	?	yes	yes	yes
Miracle All-Purpose Cleaning Cloth w/ Coconut Oil	?	?	?	yes	yes	yes
Rubbing alcohol (70% isopropyl)	?	?	?	yes	yes	yes
Simple Green	?	?	?	yes	yes	yes
0000 Steel Wool	?	?	?	no	no	no
Murphy's Oil Soap 3:1 w/ H20	?	?	yes	yes	yes	yes
Mineral spirits	?	?	?	yes	yes	yes
Water sprayed on cloth	?	?	?	no	no	no

FWIW, I cleaned my StingRay's apparently-finished and very dirty fingerboard with Gorgomyte today and it took off a lot of gunk, but not all of it and that stuff is pretty expensive.​

 

Part of my confusion stems from wondering whether encountering truly "unfinished" maple on a completed production guitar/bass is at all a frequent occurrence. Although many are "satin" finished (and that finish seems very light) and not "gloss" finished, the former still constitutes a "finish," right?

 

I know people use sandpaper, sanding blocks, and/or steel wool on fingerboard but I would think that would be best left as a last resort because I assume it would remove some of the actual wood material.