How to clear and care for an electrical guitar?
Body, scattering, tablets, scattering potentiometers, wires and amplifier: how to care for your electrical at home and when to leave work to the luthier.
A guitar with an electrical face is focused on three fronts: wood and metal (body, mast, scattering and string), electronic (tablets, potentiometers, selectors and jack) and sound chain (wires and amplifier). The basic thing is simple: to dry strings and scattering after touching, to clear the body with microfiber, to roll up the wires and to light and put out the amplifier in the right order.
Many noise that looks serious are solved at home in minutes. Others, such as soul tightness or tidal tipping, are luthier's work. Here we explain what's what.
To sum up
- Clean the diapason after its wood: maple with a moist cloth only with a moist cloth and a pink or ebony stick with oil for diapason once or twice a year.
- If you put them up, cover them up: the metal particles stick to their magnets.
- A scattering potentiometer usually improves by turning from end to end, otherwise, contact cleaner or luthier, never multiuse lubricant.
- Connect with the amplifier at zero and turn it off before shutting down the cable.
- Rings, low screws and height of pills you tighten them up, soul, thin octavation, scattering and welds, better the luthier.
Body, mast and diapason
Most of them have quite a high-end polyurethane or polyester varnish. Some, especially old or high-end models, wear a more delicate nitrocellulose lacquer: they react with some dusts and vinyl, as with some cheap stands and straps and can be seamed or soften at the contact point.
- After his touch, his body, his back and his bridge have been put through a dry microfiber.
- For grease and prints, barely moist microfiber or a guitar cleaner applied to the cloth.
- In matt or satin finish, do not frying with polish: you get light with patches.
| Diapason | How to recognize him | How to clear up |
|---|---|---|
| Maple with varnish | Clear and bright, as with the rest of the mast | Bean barely moist and dry. Without oil: does not absorb and remains sticky |
| Red pallet, ebony, pau ferro or the like | Dark, matt, with the pore of the wood in sight | Wet and moist with a wooden stick and once or twice a year a few drops of oil for a diapason withdrawing an excess |
Stages and ropes
The strings of an electrical are thin and the sweat them quickly oxidize. Seal them after they play and change them as they sound out, feel rough or stop tuning at 3: 12 and step by step [how to change guitar strings]](/blog/como-cambiar-las-cuerdas-de-la-guitarra).
Take care of the string shift to check the scattering. If they are empty or stained, you can polish them as follows:
- Cover the tablets with masking tape or with a plastic bag attached with tape.
- It protects the wood with masking tape at and at the end of each frast, leaving only the metal to be seen.
- Fitted with a metal polish cloth or a scattering polish.
- Remove the tape, clear with microfiber and, if the diapason doesn't have a varnish, apply some oil.
Why cover up the tablets? Because their magnets attract any metal particle, and the wool of loose steel thousands. Those tipples stick to the poles and make noise. If the tires have furrows where you play more or the ropes always get at the same point, that's no longer cleanup: it's levelling or change of scares.
Pills, potentiometers and jack: noise and solutions
The tablets are cleaned with a soft brush or dry microfiber with no fluids. For noises, this table cover the most common cases:
| Symptoms | probable cause | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Raw or "scattering" with a turn of volume or tone | Dust or oxide inside the potentiometer | Turn from end to end several times and if you continue, electronic contact cleaner or luthier |
| Clicked as you move the pill selector | Fitted selector contacts | To move them several times, if they persist, contact cleaner or luthier |
| Sound that goes and comes as we move the cable | damaged cable, or loose or dirty jack | Test another cable and if you miss the same, check the jack |
| The jack turns or sinks | The nut's loosed. | Filling it without letting the jack turn inside |
| Fold that goes down at the touch of the ropes or bridge | Normal in many simple coil guitars or a bad ground connection | To get away from screens and lights and if excessive, luthier |
| Unrefined or "wavy" notes at high storage | Fills too close to the ropes: the magnet draws them | Drop the pill with its screws a little |
With the loose jack, hold the jack inside the cavity (or with a key of the same size) while you tighten the nut out. If you just turn the nut, the jack turns with it, the welded wires turn and end up letting go.
Never use multi-use spray lubricant at the potentiometers: it isn't a contact cleaner, it leaves residue and attracts powder. If you have to open up the cavity or the pounding, turn off the guitar and take photos before you move anything. And if welded isn't your thing, the electronics are from the luthier.
Cable and amplifier
Cables
- Wrap them into broad circles, following the natural curve of the cable, never around the elbow. The technique of alternating a regular and an inverted turn, using sound technicians, prevents knots and lengthen their lives.
- Unplug by pulling the connector, never from the cable.
- Don't step them and double them at closed angle next to the connector: that's where they break.
- If you have a spare cable, and with any noise, first of all, you have to change your cable.
Amplificador
- Connect the guitar with the amplifier off or with the volume at zero.
- Turn up and up and up and up.
- At the end, lower the volume, turn off and only then turn off the cable. Unconnect with the light equipment results in a strong blow that punishes the speaker.
Give them ventilation without locking them up and put them on them, clear them with a dry cloth and connect them to a voltage regulator. If they have a tube (bulb), use the standby mode if they have them, don't move them while they're hot and never light them without the connected speaker: you can damage the output transformer.
Basic home or luthier care
| Tarea | At home? | Comentario |
|---|---|---|
| Switch and clear | Yes | with extra care if the bridge is floating |
| Filling strap screws, clamps and jack nut | Yes | Unforced: a last screw will be swept into the wood |
| Up or down pills | Yes | Small changes, one side at a time, comparing the volume between pills |
| Retiring the soul | with guide | Spins of an eighth or a quarter back. If it's hard, don't force it. |
| (tuning at 3) | with guide | The chair of each string moves with new and tuning ropes |
| Levels or changes to storage | No | Requires tools and experience |
| Welds and change of pills | No, but experience | A mistake leaves his guitar silent or with noise |
| Calibrate a Floyd Rose floating bridge | No, at first | Each string affects the other and it's easy to mismatch everything. |
To check octavation you have to have a precise tuning machine and you can use the [guitar tuner online]](/herramientas/afinador/guitarra)A good complete calibration (soul, string height, octavation and tablets) makes an enormous difference how easy it is to play. Do it by buying the guitar, by changing string calibre and by noticing that comfort changed with climate.
Where to save and how to get her
- On a firm floor stand or a wall paddle, never leaked against an amplifier, that vibrates and can put it down.
- Check the strap buttons: if they are loose, the guitar will fall while you play standing. A strap secure costs little next to a party clamp.
- For class or essay, padded cover, for travel or a full bus, better rigid case.
- Never in a car to the sun. On hot ground, heat and moisture purify bridge, clamps and strings very quickly and in Bogotá, the season changes move the mast and height of the ropes.
If you're starting with [electric guitar]](/clases/guitarra-electrica)and ask your teacher to check your equipment at first classes: sometimes what's stopping his advance isn't his fingers, but his high strings or his bad cable. And if you haven't been buying them, it's good for you how to choose your first electrical guitar.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my guitar's potentiometer sound as I turn it?
It's usually powder or oxidation inside the potentiometer. Turn it from end to end several times and if it doesn't get better, it's cleaned with an electronic contact cleaner or replaced. It's bad but usually worse if you ignore it.
How often does an electrical guitar get heated?
When you buy them, when you change their calibre or type of strings and when you notice that they have been changing the height of the strings or tuning. For many people that's once or twice a year, more if they travel between different climate.
Can I clear the electrical guitar with alcohol?
Not on the body or mast: can opac or damage the varnish, especially if it's nitrocellulose. A barely moist microfibre cloth or a guitar-specific cleaner, applied to the cloth, is sufficient.
What do I do if my guitar's noise with a cable?
Then the problem with the cable, but with the guitar. Check if it fails to move it around a connector: it's usually a broken welding there. Some wires can be repaired and if not, replace and save the new good wrapped up.