Mineral Oil/Spirit/Solvent?? for increasing string life

H

Hank-

Well-known member
Hey, I was just searching the different things people do to extend the life of their strings, from wiping them down with cloth after playing to using Fast Fret and stuff. I came across the use of mineral oil treatment & WD40 treatment as well. Now to me WD40 smell is something I can't tolerate for long, Pledge(spray)-I have some really old spray can of it in an old house that must have expired by now maybe, it's lemon scent which I can tolerate. But I was wondering if stuff like this is safe if it gets inside your body. You know some people have a habit of touching their face or scratching their beard, etc. lol so eventually some constant exposure to these may cause skin disorders :eyecrazy:

So what about the mineral oil variants that get used in those baby oil things, I guess that would be safest to human skin but does it have a similar characteristic as that of those that get's used in something like Pledge? It would be interesting to know :flowers1:
 
Re: Mineral Oil/Spirit/Solvent?? for increasing string life

Could work to an extent on plain strings, but wound string would die too quickly if you lube them. Any string 'cleaner' does the same job.
 
Re: Mineral Oil/Spirit/Solvent?? for increasing string life

constant mesh said:
Could work to an extent on plain strings, but wound string would die too quickly if you lube them. Any string 'cleaner' does the same job.
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Some famous country player- I think Danny Gatton- used Lemon Pledge for years. Personally, I prefer Dunlop String Cleaner and Conditioner.
 
Re: Mineral Oil/Spirit/Solvent?? for increasing string life

I just thoroughly wipe strings down with a cloth after playing
 
Re: Mineral Oil/Spirit/Solvent?? for increasing string life

I use a cloth with lemon oil, same lemon oil I use to condition the fretboard, so, two jobs at once, but most gets wiped off the board while wiping the strings, so there's not a buildup of oil on the board
 
Re: Mineral Oil/Spirit/Solvent?? for increasing string life

LReese said:
I just thoroughly wipe strings down with a cloth after playing
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+1

A combination of this and washing my hands before playing seems to extend string life a bit.
 
Re: Mineral Oil/Spirit/Solvent?? for increasing string life

I just wipe them down (the underside too) after I play.

I had a friend who studied jazz (bass player) at the University where I went. He just used to boil his strings for a few minutes to rejuvenate them. Seemed to work pretty well.
I never bothered with guitar strings but bass strings are a bit more expensive so...
 
Re: Mineral Oil/Spirit/Solvent?? for increasing string life

1) Play with clean hands. Just take a minute to wash your hands between pizza, chips, buffalo wings, and picking up your guitar.

2) Change your strings once in a while. If you are noticing corrosion or rough spots on the strings with your fingers, the strings probably sound dead. Since strings losing aural presence tends to be gradual, you might not notice the difference until you have a new set of strings on the guitar.

3) If you're changing strings, wipe the fretboard with a soft cloth. Many players use lemon oil or various brand name fretboard conditioners. I just use food grade refined coconut oil on my rosewood boards. Just make sure that you do not use any type of vegetable oil that can go rancid; otherwise your fingerboard will get sticky and smelly.

A clean, conditioned fretboard with new strings, along with clean hands will feel and likely sound a lot better than just trying to take a shortcut on string cleaning.
 
Re: Mineral Oil/Spirit/Solvent?? for increasing string life

I use Dr Duck's Axe Wax. Put a drop on a cloth and slide it up down the strings individually. The amount of black gunk that comes off is surprising especially after a gig and it keeps that 'zip' you get from fresh strings.

Sent from my LT26i using Tapatalk 2
 
Re: Mineral Oil/Spirit/Solvent?? for increasing string life

I use Pledge to polish my guitars. I change the strings when they need to be changed. A set of strings will last a month or so, depending on how much you play on them. I estimate that I can get about 50 hours of playing time out of a set of strings. They cost about $3.75 per set. That's about 7 cents per hour. how much more do I need to save by cleaning my strings? now there are some people who perspire a lot when playing and they go through strings much faster, but I don't really see the point in trying to get more life out of them. I wipe them down when I am done. Other then that I change them when needed!
 
Re: Mineral Oil/Spirit/Solvent?? for increasing string life

$3.75 a set for D'addarios would be a dream for me lol
In my part of the world it's $8.5 for the nickel wound EXL120 set, Ernie Ball Custom Slinky is $1 less, Rotosound is a $0.5 less than that, while Elixirs are $15.5 a set. So basically Elixirs end up being the better option for me as far as string life & price is concerned. I don't like their feel on wound strings, too slick for me. But I've ordered two sets of those to put on my secondary guitar, the one that I'd leave for studio work(if ever lol), I rarely play with it so a nanoweb set on that will last more than a year & half for me :D

So most of you guys haven't tried using Pledge or Johnson & Johnson's baby oil on your strings? lol
I'm still wondering what it would be like to have that baby oil on it, it's supposed to be a mineral oil variant, sorta cheap as well, what if it ends up giving sticky feeling when bending strings? That would be a problem :scratchch
 
Re: Mineral Oil/Spirit/Solvent?? for increasing string life

Plain water on a damp cloth will remove 99% of the gunk on your strings.

Then wipe them dry, and follow that with a light coating of the Dunlap 65 String Cleaner. That will leave a very light coating to prevent rust and corrosion.

This has been my routine for about the last 15 years; before that I used a lemon oil product that is no longer available.

My strings stay bright for a long time...most of the time I'm replacing them due to fret wear.

Bill
 
Re: Mineral Oil/Spirit/Solvent?? for increasing string life

Lemon pledge (used to, maybe not these days) has some.actual lemon in it.

Lemon and other citrus has acid in it and thus it helps clean strings. I suspect that is why some people have used it over the years.

Tomatoes have a lot of acid too. Maybe try a bottle of spaghetti sauce to wipe them down the next time!


The Dunlop.cleaner works extremely well, the ernie ball wipes not a sintense, but they work too. . But I do not really care for what the Dunlop.cleaner does to the sound. I wouldnt say it makes them sound new...they end up sounding harsher than new. Scratchy..grating..until you dirty em up again.
 
Re: Mineral Oil/Spirit/Solvent?? for increasing string life

I wash my hands before playing and clean with rag when Im done.i put C L P break free on my strings once in a while it seems to help
 
Re: Mineral Oil/Spirit/Solvent?? for increasing string life

 
Re: Mineral Oil/Spirit/Solvent?? for increasing string life

Forgot to mention...



I have found that NOT stretching my strings out, and instead just "playing them in" makes them last about 1/2 again to twice as long, maybe more. Some string brands will stabilize quicker than others, bht it is much less stress than stretching them in ways they never were meant to be stretched.
 
Re: Mineral Oil/Spirit/Solvent?? for increasing string life

JeffB said:
Lemon pledge (used to, maybe not these days) has some.actual lemon in it.

Tomatoes have a lot of acid too. Maybe try a bottle of spaghetti sauce to wipe them down the next time!
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Spaghetti sauce, hmmmn, that would serve double duty! :bigok:
dominus said:
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:haha:
JeffB said:
I have found that NOT stretching my strings out, and instead just "playing them in" makes them last about 1/2 again to twice as long, maybe more. Some string brands will stabilize quicker than others, bht it is much less stress than stretching them in ways they never were meant to be stretched.
Click to expand...
That's interesting, I've never been able to keep a set so long to notice intonation or tuning suffering from the core weakening over time from stress. I used to break strings on my acoustic, in the last 6 yrs i haven't broken a single string on my electrics while playing & I bend them often too :knockedou
 
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