The best guitar cleaning & restringing products

Here at Guitarbitz, we're always re-stringing and cleaning customer's guitars as part of our workshop services at the shop in Bath, so we have used pretty much every cleaning product under the sun - so we thought we'd share with you our best guitar cleaning products that you can buy online and in store!

Before we start any work on the guitar we set the guitar down onto our bench and use a D'Addario Headstand to allow us to secure the neck and get the headstock some nice clearance from the table, allowing us to loosen the strings and do all our cleaning nice and easily without having to move the guitar around too much. An absolute must have item to make your re-stringing so much easier!

First of all when we get a guitar in for a clean up we loosen the strings and snip them off, we love to use the D'Addario Pro Winder for this as it has a really quick string winder plus some handy snips at the bottom.

Also it includes a bridge pin puller so if you're restringing and cleaning an acoustic guitar, this really is a must have item!



Once the strings are off it's time to clean the fingerboard! If your guitar has a dark wood fingerboard, like Rosewood, Pau Ferro or Ebony, the wood is quite porous and needs to be hydrated and cleaned.

We like to use the Dunlop System 65 Lemon Oil spray, it's nice and cheap,
lasts for ages and does the job really well. Spray it onto the fingerboard, let it soak in, then massage the oil into the wood, leave a few minutes, then clean it with some kitchen roll / blue roll or a clean cloth.



Next, it's onto the body, and this would be for a glossy finish, if you have a satin finish then there's not much point in polishing it as it's not meant to be shiny!

Firstly to remove any light surface scratches you'll need the magic D'Addario Restore polish, this stuff is incredible at getting rid of plectrum scratches and marks, just massage it in lightly using a clean cloth and rid your guitar of its scratches!


Once you've restored the guitar, it's time to add some wax to protect it from further scratches.

We use and recommend the D'Addario Protect Guitar Wax which is fortified with carnauba, this will add a nice layer of protection and shine for your beloved guitar.

FYI: this product shouldn't be used on satin, cracked or damaged finishes!



The penultimate stage is to polish the guitar with some Dunlop 65 Guitar Polish & Cleaner. This fantastic polish will get your guitar shining like it did when it left the factory!

Again, it's nice and cheap but for sure is one of the best we've found. Use a nice guitar polish cloth to clean the guitar with the spray, we like to use the Fender Dual-Sided Super Soft cloth, not only will this polish the guitar nicely but the micro fibres will pick up any dust that may still be on the guitar.



Finally once the guitar is just about ready to go a quick wipe of GHS Fast Fret will make sure the strings and silky and ready for some epic playing!