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How to safely remove glue residue from fretboard

thorstiborsti

thorstiborsti

Aug 22, 2014
411
379
Lakeland, FL
#1
I have a Sire D5 bass. The previous owner decided to apply block stickers to the fretboard which by itself is fine, if they were applied straight and centered. They were not and are making my eyes bleed so I want to remove them. They are sticking to the fretboard pretty good and when I started to peel one of the stickers back I noticed glue residue being left behind.

TLDNR; What is the safest way to remove sticker glue residue from a glossy fretboard without potentially damaging the coating?
 

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#2
Low-tack tape (like blue painter's tape) can potentially work as long as you can pull the stickers off in one piece and the glue residue remains tacky: Tear off a piece of tape, stick it to the glue residue and pull. Reapply the same piece to the same area and pull again... repeat until the glue is all pulled off. Use a fresh piece of tape when the one you have has lost its tackiness or is so gunked it's not pulling anything more. You should be ready to have to apply and pull repeatedly over the same area as each application might only remove a little at a time, but if you see no progress at all after a couple tries it's probably not going to work.

Those precut fretboard stickers are intended to be removable so the glue residue shouldn't be too persistent. If the previous owner had instead cut their own blocks out of contact paper or got the stickers from Temu or similar unreliable source, the tape trick might not work.
 
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#5
It's a gloss board so it's varnished with a poly finish which is very durable. Just about anything but brake cleaner or acetone will be safe to use. Try the above suggestions and rub the crap out of the residue. Use a cotton cloth (old t-shirt, etc.) which the goop will grab onto the cotton and lift off the board.
 
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#13
Wow. That came straight from the Bizzaro universe. Yeah, this a textbook case of why one should not multitask or eyeball a surface when applying stickers on something like this. Not one of them is on correctly. You're right. It hurts my eyes too. :facepalm:

Please post an "after" photo when you remove the stickers. . Good luck. :)
 
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#15
Gilmourisgod said:
It's easy to forget that any tape is just slow drying glue, sooner or later it's….glued. The faux "inlays" have gotten pretty convincing, but they still offend my Wanabee Luthier mentality somehow.
Click to expand...
An honest attempt at doing block inlays that are deliberately scattered around *could* work in the hands of the right luthier. I'm thinking something like how @Freekmagnet designed the bubble inlays for his bass fretboards.
img_1085-scaled.jpg


OP's example definitely wasn't it, though. :smug:
 
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