PSA: Pink Stuff as Fret Polishing Compound

[Bacchus]

... seems to work!

The Pink Stuff is one of those miracle cleaning compounds. It's basically a mild abrasive that breaks down as you work it to become finer. It seems to have a bit of mild detergent and maybe some baking soda or something in there too (it seems to soften and loosen things a little just by sitting on it) but it doesn't seem to be anything too aggressive to use on a fingerboard, with proper taping off of the frets etc. I think it's an American product that has found its way over here recently (like Magic Erasers), but I'm not sure.

I was looking at sprucing up a tired guitar. After cleaning huuuge amounts of gunk off the fingerboard, I realised how bad the frets were looking. I thought about getting a polishing kit from somewhere, but decided to give this a go first (polishing is polishing, no?).

I carefully masked off one fret near the top of the neck to test it. It works!

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I then masked off the whole neck and applied the paste. I decided to be a little bit liberal with it. I wondered if whatever chemicals in the paste would help me out, so I wanted enough that each fret was definitely coated and had time to soften/loosen as I went down the neck.

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Making progress. The black gunk I'm taking as a sign that it's working. That must be oxides and whatever other crap being cleaned off.

The first picture below shows a fret near the top that is a bit damaged. Wonder if this stuff will be aggressive enough to take out those scrapes. Possibly, but I'm not sure I have the spare elbow grease to bother trying. Might do at some point, as a bit of an experiment.

"What's the black stuff around the frets etc."

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The paste stiffens as it dries, and seems to become a little less aggressive when it's wet (which is obvious). So right at the end, for a final polish, I dampened my cloth and wrung out as much moisture as I could from it. I then scrubbed up and down the fingerboard. This picture looks a lot wetter than it is, because of the suddiness and frothiness. I was careful with this. Dunno how much this step achieved.

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Tape off, and a final wipe down:

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OIled up to the lemons whilst I wait for the Amazon man to get here with my strings:

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All in all, I'm calling that a win. It looks much better, and I'll definitely be doing this to my other guitars as and when they need it.

[NickD]

Nice job! What guitar is that? Looks like a jazz box.

Another tip, especially for getting the frets super smooth is to use those four sided foam nail filing/polishing things, they get rid of any lingering filing marks.

[Bacchus]

These jobs?



I originally bought the Pink Stuff as I thought it could be useful for turntable dust covers and defogging headlights. It still might be, but I don't have an orbital buffer or anything, so I'm not going to find out.

[NickD]

These jobs?



I originally bought the Pink Stuff as I thought it could be useful for turntable dust covers and defogging headlights. It still might be, but I don't have an orbital buffer or anything, so I'm not going to find out.

Yep, I think mine came from the Pound shop, or Savers.

[Thom]

Great job, neck looks great!