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Double Bass Products to clean finger board and strings?
- Thread starter leskjbass
- Start date
Alcohol and Windex will both dry the wood ... not what you want. I'm not a proponent of using anything other than a Scotchbrite pad. Others advocate a small amount of various oils - sparingly and infrequently.
I’ve been using alcohol for 40 years and my fingerboard hasn’t dried out yet. Nick Lloyd recommends non- ammonia Windex and 0000 steel wool here:
No offense, but I’m going with Nick!
An automotive shammy and elbow grease can make for a slick and responsive strings/fingerboard. Work each string and rub, rub, rub the fingerboard underneath the strings. If not mistaken, the shammy has a bit of lanolin or some sorta organic that slicks up things the more you work it.
I'm using alcohol (technical ethanol) and a wool cloth. I clean the bridge from the rosin first, then the strings (under tension), then with residual wetness the fingerboard, and sometimes also the body around the bridge.
Then I do strings again with lighter fluid, as the rosin won't easily get all off with just ethanol.
In the end, I apply Dunlop 65 blue string cleaner, which contains some oils I think, and which make the strings feel a bit friendlier.
All of these chemicals I use sparingly.
I'm doing this for years now, and no problems either with ebony fingerboard or with shellac top. Mostly I do it before bigband gigs, where I use no bow. The clean strings sound shinier.
Over time I'm using less and less rosin, which results in less and less dirt on the bass and strings; this hard cleaning described above I use only 1-2 times a year. Mostly I just clean the bass with cloth, which I do regurarly every (other) week.
Then I do strings again with lighter fluid, as the rosin won't easily get all off with just ethanol.
In the end, I apply Dunlop 65 blue string cleaner, which contains some oils I think, and which make the strings feel a bit friendlier.
All of these chemicals I use sparingly.
I'm doing this for years now, and no problems either with ebony fingerboard or with shellac top. Mostly I do it before bigband gigs, where I use no bow. The clean strings sound shinier.
Over time I'm using less and less rosin, which results in less and less dirt on the bass and strings; this hard cleaning described above I use only 1-2 times a year. Mostly I just clean the bass with cloth, which I do regurarly every (other) week.
Make sure to be careful with alcohol if you are using gut or gut core strings as that can cause some issues.
I use B&D alcohol wipes (get ‘em at the drug store) on my strings. One or two pads per string will remove a lot of gunk. My bass has a poly finish, I just wipe the ebony with a rag
