fretboard conditioning..... snake oil?

martinedwards

I've played guitar for 30 years or so.

the longest I've owned a single guitar is about 20 years (yamaha FG420/12)

I've built 90 mandolins, guitars, basses, electric and acoustic......

when I make a guitar, I finish the fretboard with a rub of mineral oil, whether it be rosewood or ebony. (maple is different obviously)

I have never returned to the fretboard to re-oil or apply any further gubbins.

I have never had a problem.

Am I therefore the luckiest guy alive, or is there actually no need for any of that lemon oil etc......

kevin65

My yamaha SG is 26 years old and the fretboard has been lemon oiled once. I have a fender strat for the last 16 years that sat in its case most of the time so not even exposed to the natural oils from my hands and was lemon oiled once. Both fretboards are rosewood and are in perfect condition. Probably no harm every year or two, but too much is worse that not enough, it will end up saturating the fretboard.

Strings.ie

I've seen cracks in fretboards caused from drying out but then I've seen Guitars 20+ years old and the fretboards are fine with no treatment.

However, an un-oiled fretboard does have a dry, scratchy feel to it, almost greying in colour. A drop of the lemon oil seems to bring it back to life. I'm a fan.

Ravelleman

Part of it is a visual thing. Dry rosewood isn't as attractive as recently oiled rosewood, in my view.

I suppose you could call it snake oil but I paid about €3 for a bottle of lemon oil about 5 years ago and still have more than half of it left. If it's a ripoff then they're doing it very badly.

il gatto

Lemon oil leaves a nice sheen, but makes little difference to playability. Your fingers barely touch the wood most of the time.
What it does do is get rid of that build up of gunk off the board. The lemon cuts the grease. Main reason I have it around. When I do a string change I get rid of the crud.

Gaspode

I have a couple of guitars coming up to 30 yrs old still getting gigged and I've never put any oil on the fret boards. So far so good.