It’s Valentine’s Weekend! In the spirit of love, today let’s go over why you’d want to use lemon oil on your guitar fingerboard to care for it. There are a number of reasons you may want to do this, and these are the three main advantages:

1. You may have noticed your fingerboard looks dry and sickly. Exposed wood can get dried out, and the lemon oil helps rehydrate it.
2. Dead skin and other gunk (like grease if you’ve played after just eating pizza) can rub off your fingers and stick to the fretboard. This looks disgusting and can make the fingerboard sticky, making it slower to play.
3. Lemon oil application can help slightly darken lighter-colored fingerboards, making them look better.

Now you know why you should use lemon oil, let’s explore how to actually apply the stuff. In the video, I use the Dunlop 65 Ultimate Lemon Oil and an Ernie Ball Microfiber Cloth though any cloth, even an old (but clean) sock, will do. The entire process listed below shouldn’t take more than a half an hour of your time at most.

1. Apply liberally all down the fingerboard.
2. Let oil sit a few minutes to soak in.
3. Use cloth (or old, clean underwear) to remove the dirt, dead skin, gunk, and excess oil from the fingerboard. Make sure to go mostly with the grain of the wood.
4. Repeat 1-2 times per year as needed.

Gear Used in the Video:

Dunlop 65 Ultimate Lemon Oil: http://amzn.to/1RA3GEK
Ernie Ball Microfiber Cloth: http://amzn.to/1WjWUlC
Discontinued Epiphone G400 Custom (3-Humbucker Edition): http://goo.gl/NVQmY3

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