Guitar maintenance: a complete guide to maintaining and customizing your instrument
For some musicians, the guitar is more than just an instrument; it has sentimental value. Whatever the price, whether you're a seasoned guitarist or an amateur, you'll certainly want to pamper your instrument!
And to take good care of your electric or acoustic guitar, regular maintenance is essential. Cleaning, changing strings and adjusting the sound will ensure your guitar's optimum performance. Have you owned a guitar for years? Would you like to maintain it and personalize its appearance and accessories?
Find all our tips for cleaning, managing intonation, maintaining quality and customizing your precious guitar!
Why is it important to maintain your guitar?
Optimize the sound quality of your guitar
Regular guitar maintenance is essential to ensure a clear, precise and in-tune sound. Worn strings and dust build-up can degrade a guitar's intonation and dynamics.
Maintaining your guitar ensures that you can play the right notes in the right conditions. Tuning or changing strings, adjusting the position of the bridge or saddle and cleaning the instrument: all these steps are essential to avoid distortion or poor intonation of your guitar's sound.
Extend its life and value
In addition to ensuring cleanliness and optimizing sound quality, guitar maintenance also extends the life of the instrument.
Taking good care of your guitar is the best way to ensure years of optimum performance. Checking and tightening every part, electrical problems (if it's an electric guitar), proper storage and regular cleaning are all techniques you can use to preserve the condition of your guitar.
While some people own several guitars and see their instrument as a simple tool for playing music, many musicians see the purchase of a guitar as a real investment! Maintaining a guitar means adding value over the years, while keeping it in good condition if you ever want to sell it.
🎸 Are you a beginner guitarist? Acoustic, classical or electric: follow our advice to choose your guitar !
4 tips for maintaining your electric or acoustic guitar
1. Choosing the right environment to store your guitar
Mainly made of wood, guitars are sensitive to heat and humidity. You should therefore avoid storing your guitar in a damp area, near a heat source or in direct sunlight.
Above 60% humidity, wood (a porous material) can swell and expand. As a result, your guitar may lose its natural resonance, and the soundboard of an acoustic guitar may bulge slightly. And, with very low humidity, the wood can contract and crack, and protruding frets can spill over.
Ideally, you should store your guitar in a room at a temperature of between 18°C and 20°C, with a humidity level of around 50%, to ensure good string height and good support for the bridge, frets and neck of your guitar.
The way you set up your guitar can also affect its lifespan. The tension generated by the strings makes the neck work. The pressure exerted when storing your guitar should be from the inside (string side) to the outside (back).
💡Ouradvice: store your guitar in a clean case or on the wall, using a wall hook that presses against the head so as not to cause any twisting.
2. Clean your guitar regularly
Whether you use it every day or once a year, cleaning your guitar is the basis of good instrument maintenance. Some passionate guitarists even recommend cleaning their guitar after every use.
Our tips:
Remove dust from the body of your guitar with a soft, clean cloth. Stubborn marks? Make cleaning easier by dampening your cloth. Don't stop at the guitar body: clean the headstock too! The most important thing is not to let dust settle in and around your guitar.
Clean any deposits or residues that may have accumulated on your guitar's neck. Some products are specially adapted for cleaning ebony or rosewood necks. Steel wool (used gently) is particularly useful for removing deposits.
Want to give your guitar a thorough cleaning? There are "all-in-one" cleaning products and solutions adapted to each part of your guitar. Do you have an electric guitar? Clean the oxidation areas that can form on metal parts.
3. Changing and maintaining your guitar strings
Without strings, guitars emit no sound. Maintenance is therefore essential. As well as tightening and tuning them, we recommend changing them at the first signs of wear: when the sound of your guitar strings becomes dull, tuning becomes more difficult or you feel them becoming rougher under your fingers. Some musicians change their guitar strings every two weeks, others every six months. It all depends on how often you play and how demanding you are!
How do you take care of them every day? Wash your hands before playing: this reduces the build-up of dirt and grease on the strings. Wipe your guitar strings after each session with a clean, dry cloth to prolong their life. And, to remove residues and protect the metal against oxidation, use a suitable cleaning product. Some brands offer sprays or wipes specially designed for this purpose.
💡 If you're just starting out and don't yet know which strings to choose, test several pulls (thicknesses) or materials to find the ones that best suit your playing style.
4. Complete guitar tuning
There's no secret to keeping your guitar in perfect working order: a complete tuning is essential. Here are the different possible settings:
Adjusting intonation: a poorly tuned guitar can sound right when unloaded, but out of tune as soon as you play a barred chord . Adjusting the position of the bridges, string by string, until you find the right vibrato length, enables you to play the right notes along the entire length of the neck.
Adjusting action and string height: too high an action makes playing difficult and tires your hand, which is not plucking the strings. If the action is too low, the strings can curl. To adjust the action, we set the height of the bridge and the truss rod (the metal rod that passes through the neck), which holds the neck in place.
Correcting neck twisting: a twisted neck can render certain parts of the neck non-functional. A slight correction is sometimes possible with the truss rod, but for a real straightening or in the case of a screwed neck, it is advisable to consult a professional. The truss rod is found on most electric and folk guitars, and sometimes on scale classics too. It is carefully adjusted (a quarter turn at a time) to avoid damaging the neck.
Sanding frets: some frets wear more than others. As a result, contact with the string becomes irregular, and "friezes" appear. In this case, we proceed with a "planning" operation: we sand down the frets to bring them all to the same height. If the frets are too damaged, you can consider a complete refrettage to give your guitar a real facelift.
💡 F or an electric guitar: In addition to mechanical adjustments, take a look at your electric guitar's electronics! If you know a thing or two about electronics, you can clean potentiometers, check solder joints and eliminate false contacts. Also check the tuning keys: if they are seized up or too loose, the tuning becomes unstable. A little lubricant can do wonders!
💡 F or an acoustic guitar: remember to inspect your guitar's bridge. If it comes loose, have it glued back on quickly to prevent the string tension from tearing it off. Check the saddles (at the top and bottom of the neck): they should hold the strings securely without jamming. You can also polish the back of the neck to make it more pleasant to play. And if the varnish is too worn, a final polish will make your guitar look as good as new.
How to customize the sound and appearance of your guitar?
Whether electric or acoustic, all guitar models can be customized to your image. So why deprive yourself of the chance to give your instrument a fresh, personal touch to its sound and look?
Shape the sound of your guitar with tunings (intonation, strings, neck)
Tuning your guitar to your musical style makes all the difference. Rock? Folk? Bossa nova? Every detail is important when it comes to respecting the codes of a musical genre.
Here's how to fine-tune the sound of your guitar:
Change the type of strings: the thickness of the strings has an impact on the guitar's tension and response. Thinner strings are more supple and better suited to fast solo playing. Thicker strings provide roundness, sustain and betterchord support. The choice is yours!
Adjust string height to modify playing comfort and resonance. A lower action facilitates fast solos and bends, while a higher action gives a more percussive sound.
Adjust intonation so that every note is right, including the high notes. This will help you avoid out-of-tune chords and false solos at the 12th fret.
Play the truss rod to adjust the curvature of the neck and improve the feel under the fingers. A neck that is too deep or too straight can make certain notes muffled or uncomfortable.
Take the time to try out different tuning combinations to explore your guitar's sonic palette!
💡 Need a few tips to get you started on the guitar? Lessons, tutorials and songs: try SimplyGuitarthe ideal app for learning the guitar!
Customize the color and appearance of your guitar
Beyond the intonation of the sound, your guitar can also become a truly personalized object. A few adjustments are all it takes to assert your style, without affecting the instrument's performance.
Here are a few tips for giving your guitar or its accessories a makeover:
Change string color and material: some brands offer colored or sheathed strings. Blue, red, purple: stand out from the crowd with a color that's out of the ordinary!
Modify the pickguard: black, pearlescent, tortoise, mirror... There's a multitude. Have fun!
Opt for a new guitar strap: the strap is the ultimate rock accessory. Leather, woven, colored or more classic: the choice is yours.
Install new bridge pins: this type of detail can add cachet, especially for acoustic guitars.
Inflate or change the pegs to improve tuning and enhance the vintage or modern look of your guitar to suit your taste.
And if you're feeling artistic, why not repaint the body of your guitar? A little paint (with the right products, of course!), a few motifs or a hand-customized design can transform your instrument.
Make your guitar totally unique with stickers or designs
Want to own a guitar unlike any other, like musician Edward Van Halen's iconic "Frankenstrat"? Express your creativity and make your guitar as original as your musical universe! You can, for example, stick stickers on the body of your guitar. Whether colorful, vintage, discreet or flashy, they'll add character to your guitar at a fraction of the cost. Be careful, however, to use stickers that are easy to remove (or designed for instruments) if you want to keep the finish of your original guitar intact.
Like to draw? Customize your guitar yourself with your own design created with a paint marker (like Posca). Take inspiration from cult models or imagine your own graphic motif. Are you a fan of a famous guitarist? Take advantage of a concert or autograph session to get your guitar signed by your idol!
🎵 Now that your guitar is ready, in shape, tuned and in your image, it's time to get started! Play your favorite guitar pieces and upload all your tablatures to theNewzik application :
Annotate and share your tablatures,
Record your workouts,
Find your extracts anytime, anywhere!
Now all you have to do is play your wild riffs over and over again! 🎸
