Guitar Setup – Guitar Care
31st August
Guitar Care is so important, and often many people underestimate how important it is.
Here are a couple of quick points to ensure you get the best out of your guitar for a long time.
- Keep your guitar out of the sun. Many people don’t realise that your guitar (being made of wood) will change shape (especially the guitar neck) if you let it heat up, and cool down. If you store your guitar where direct sunlight shines on it during the day, it will go out of tune all the time as it heats up, and then cools down each day.
- Wipe down the strings after you play it. Your guitar strings will last so much longer if you wipe them down with a soft cloth after each practise session. You may not notice the amount of sweat that comes off your fingers and gets deposited onto your strings. This can lead to your guitar strings rusting, and this will greatly shorten their life, and will effect the intonation, so that you may find it hard to tune the guitar and keep it in tune.
- Guitar Stand. If you can, place your guitar in a stand when you are not playing it. This will reduce the change of it being kicked (on the floor), or sat on (on the bed). Both of which can cause damage. You’ve invested in your instrument, keep it in top condition.
- Try not to let your guitar get too dusty. This is especially important if you have an electric guitar. The switches and pots (volume and tone controls) can get crackly if you let dust get inside them. Try to wipe down your guitar every so often to keep it dust-free.
That’s it for this post. I hope you have been getting value from these posts, and I’ll continue to post every so often, so check back when you can.
Feel free to leave a comment if you like, I’m interested to hear what your thoughts are on any of the topics I have discussed in any of my posts.