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Ultrasonic Cleaner

#21
Also another question: Wouldn't it be possible to get a long enough ultrasonic cleaner "bay" that has the scale of the string?

Then, you could build a construction that TUNES THEM UP to pitch, or even a bit more, before turning on the ultrasonic. Bringing them up above regular pitch (a bit), should stretch them enough so these small bubbles would get into these smaller spaces that occurs when stretched over the top...
 
#22
Honch said:
WILL FILLING THE ULTRASONIC CLEANER WITH ISOPROPYL ALCOHOL TOO, make them strings even cleaner, or better, or :

WILL IT IGNITE AND EXPLODE?
Click to expand...

There's at least two kinds of isopropanol widely available in the US as 'rubbing alcohol.' There's 70% and 90%.

I wouldn't use the 90%; the 70% should be safer on all fronts.

That said, I wouldn't use either of them in an ultrasonic cleaner. I have one which I use fairly regularly to clean airbrushes and technical pens. I use warm water and a splash of ammonia (non-sudsy). Followed by a plain water rinse. The ammonia is especially effective on the binders in paints and inks, but I'd expect it to work just fine on skin oils too (the 'slippery' you feel with an alkaline is the base turning your skin oils to soap...)

So - were I to use an ultrasonic cleaner on strings, which I haven't yet - I'd probably start with the splash of ammonia -or- a bit of Simple Green.

After that, a rinse or rubdown with an alcohol (isopropanol is fairly safe, readily available, and cheap, but denatured could work too) or - what I'd probably use - brake cleaner.

Especially of you live in an area where you can still get The Good Stuff. I don't much like the 'green' formulas - despite them being more 'environmentally friendly' - because IMO they don't work nearly as well. But probably even so the best of what you can get, commercial degreaser-wise...
 
#23
Yeah, don't use flammable stuf in ultrasonic cleaners. Just read up how they work, and they literally rip the water molecules away from each other, with a process called cavitation. The miniscule bubbles that result can get up to 10,000 degrees F. The collapsing bubble is what breaks the dirt off the object.
Now, onto my experience. I don't have a cleaner, but I have a sonicare toothbrush. I usually clean my strings with dunlop 65, and on my acoustic, i get about two wipes down the string and I stop getting black gunk on my cloth. So I took my strings (freshly cleaned and still on the guitar), put some more string cleaner on them, and ran he toothbrush down them. Now please understand, the string are nice and shiny, even before brushing. Now, I took the cloth, and no matter how many times I ran it over them, I kept getting tons of black gunk off. Way more than I thought. This just goes to show that ultrasonic cleaning works so much better than even using cleaner/conditioner. Plus the strings sounded better than when they were new.
 
#24
I had always envisaged ultrasonic cleaners as just getting rid of the dirt and gunk between the windings of the string (which is probably the major cause of degradation in the quality of the sound of the string), but reading about how they work the action must clean the whole surface of the string as well.

I can't believe why more people don't use them as it is a much better method than boiling strings. Unless you're in a position whereby you can afford to replace the strings on a regular basis I would strongly recommend them. I have 6 basses and there's no way that I could afford to keep buying sets of strings for all these!

That reminds me, time to do mine again. :)
 
#27
Baker69 said:
They seem to be more effective than boiling the strings, and as no high temperatures are involved there shouldn't be any risk of damaging or 'softening' the metal.
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The melting points of the metals that strings are made of are so much higher than that of boiling water that I seriously doubt that temperature in that range has any effect upon the metal.
 
#29
Very interesting! I've been using an alcohol soak tube for the last couple years, but I'm thinking the agitation might do an even better job at bringing strings back to life.

Anybody tried both methods? Comparison, please!
 
#30
good deal at Harbor Freight, for a 2.5 liter unit:

Invalid Link Removed

*After cleaning with one of these, dry with a lint free towel, then dip the strings in 99% alcohol to promote evaporation of the remaining water. This will minimize rusting/oxidation potential. Particularly for nickel/nickel plated strings.
 
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#31
I've used denatured alcohol in the past, for max 5 minutes, letting the machine cool down for at least 15 minutes before starting the cleaner again. Before coming in contact with the cleaner I touched my heater to discharge any static electricity.

I don't think it was a very wise thing to do but I'm still alive. I'll strongly NOT recommend this, if you wan't to be stupid like me don't come crying if your house burns down.

I'm gonna use aqueous degreaser next time and follow up with an alcohol soak. Aqueous degreaser is not that bad, I've used it to clean up 20+ years old gunk off bridge parts by immersion with excellent results. It's a replacement for pertoleum distilate and disolves a ton of stuff alcohol won't touch like oil, grease and wax. More importantly it's not flammable.
 
#32
aqueous cleaners are actuallly usually approved for ultrasonic cleaners. As agitation is pretty much required, for them to be most effective.

Honestly, Dawn dish-soap is one of the best safe degreasers. The one issue is that foaming may not be manageable in an ultrasonic cleaner.
 
#33
What do you do about the wear spots where the string meets the frets? By the time my round wound strings are dead enough to need a cleaning like this, they have little wear marks in them over just about the entire fretboard. Isn't this a problem?
 
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#36
Sounds like Im going to have to get an ultrasonic cleaner now...

I wonder if there would be any benefit to cryogenically treating the string after cleaning. I guess the dry ice or whatever it was might be as expensive as a set of strings, but for people doing a few basses or more at a time it might be economically feasible.
 
#38
Stone Soup said:
What do you do about the wear spots where the string meets the frets? By the time my round wound strings are dead enough to need a cleaning like this, they have little wear marks in them over just about the entire fretboard. Isn't this a problem?
Click to expand...

I am a cheapskate on bass strings. The double ball ends I just turn around, so the dents and wear marks are at the bridge end of the string. Doubles their lifetime! Those wear marks and dents you can't get rid of. But after that lifetime, no ultrasonic cleaner, isopropanol, or dish soap will ever get anything back. Time to change and buy new ones.

But I'd rather try this method (ultrasonic cleaner) to prolong string life, than ANY coating on strings there is out there (pitched to prolong string life). Now, coated strings is something I would NEVER run in any Ultrasonic.

OK then:

Isopropanol + Ultrasonic = big no no. They don't match. Unless flambé should be beneficial to strings surface... ;) Like cryogenic freezing, but the opposite.
 
#39
The thing is with the huge string length one, is that while - if I was Ultracleaning it, I would like the string to be turned around, like on a skewer barbecue (!). Since bubbles are coming from beneath, they just clean the parts they hit in a straight line from under. You have to stop after 5 mins, and then "turn" the strings around, so that the surface above this part gets cleaned properly too. I can't think of that the small bubbles finds their way around a spheric surface.
 
#40
i have been using ultrasound cleaners for over 20 years at work. i have tried in the past cleaning bass strings to see if it works.

my ultrasound cleaner is usually filled with a phosphorus acid / tenside solution to dissolve mineral residues as well as grease. but the low PH causes most alloys to tarnish so using acidic solutions does not work well for strings, i even had a set of stainless steels that turned black.

another time i tried a set with a PH neutral cleaning solution. (you can also use dish washing liquid if you don't have anything special) that worked really good, after a 12 minute cycle in 50 degrees the strings look, feel and sound like new.

after cleaning i rinse the strings in battery water and blow them dry with compressed air.
 
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