Re: Cleaning frets with a maple board?
It's 2016, guys...give the steel wool to your mom so she can polish her brass lamps and pick up one of these cloths.
Again, if you have a Maple board, especially one that is satin finished, worn or unfinished, you'll want to mask off or protect the fretboard as the polishing does create a black residue on the cloth that can be difficult to remove if it comes in contact with the wood. As I mentioned before, I have used it on Maple boards with gloss finishes in good condition with great results, but they took a little extra wiping/cleaning afterward to make sure the residue was completely gone.
I know Gorgomyte advertises that you can polish the fretboard at the same time as the frets and I have used both the Gorgomyte and Miracle Cloths to do just that, but I have noticed 2 things:
1) If the piece of cloth is fairly damp, it may deposit too much "conditioner" and leave more porous cuts of Rosewood, etc with gray or white dots showing in the pores.
2) Doing only a very light and fast rub on the fretboard to help loosen up the grime and then finishing up with a proper fretboard oil treatment, such as Gerlitz' Guitar Honey, yields even better results on the wood. Although it's difficult to see on darker woods, there IS a thin layer of polishing residue left behind on the wood and the final oil treatment really finishes the whole thing up nicely, leaving the fretboard darker, cleaner and better refreshed than just the Gorgomyte/Miracle Cloth alone.
