Nitro neck is gummy and sticky!

[brentm]

Thought I would ask the folks here... I'm a bit stuck on the sticky nitro neck. I have an Eric Johnson strat (first year) and the nitro should be about as cured as it gets..

Here's what I've heard...

1. Naptha (tried it 3rd).
2. Virtuoso guitar polish (tried it 1st).
3. Meguiar's car wax (tried it 2nd).
4. 0000 steel wool.
5. Scotch brite pad.
6. 3M in between coats sanding pad.
6a. Burnish with a brown paper bag.
7. Eat more leafy greens (change perspiration pH).
8. Deal with it.
9. Rinse and repeat as necessary.

The polish method gets me about an hour of playtime before it starts to gum up.... but I have a feeling my big sweaty acid hands will cut that stuff in 10 minutes this weekend. We're playing a BBQ fest outdoors tomorrow and I'll be sweating like a whore in chruch.

Please let me know if you have direct experiencing correcting this issue.

Thanks!
-Brent

[Reeltarded]

Is that a clean Asian whore, or just a typical whore.. possibly going into labor?



Even though it's a lacquer, there is a LOT of plasticizer in these new finishes. I could go into all the rants on that, but instead I will say you can't make it slick.

My answer is always to remove the finish and keep the neck dressed with that #0000 steel wool.

Please don't hit me.

Another fix is to french polish the neck. It's undoable, and feels great! (not as good as bare wood but just like vintage finishes)

[brentm]

French polish? Sorry, I can't help my mind from going there...

anything I can do for my giglet tomorrow??? I'm not ready for those kinds of commitments (french polish or bare wood).

[Structo]

Short of removing the finish, try some fine grit sand paper such as 1000 or 1500.
You just want to remove the gloss.

Don't use steel wool unless you want your pickups to look like fur balls.

[Reeltarded]

I use dead pickups to clean my bench. lol

I agree with Tom on emergrency fix-up, but I would get a little more angry and throw some 400 or 600 carb at it, and then buff it with talc..

#0000 wool is about 1500-ish grit.

Keep baby powder around.

[doveman]

Repost from TGP ... from a couple of years ago ... I might need to do it again one more time as it is starting to get a little sticky again. But this helped a lot.

'''

I recently bought a LP Traditional ... seven months ago to be exact. I had a bit of a sticky neck syndrome. Since I had never seen this before, I did research at the the time. I lot of things were suggested including leaving it out of the case ... it will eventually cure completely. I've had the guitar for seven months and it has gotten considerably better just letting it cure. But it was still too sticky. There are reports of LP taking years to completely cure.

Early in the research, I found something that made a lot of sense. StewMac sells MICRO-MESH sheets and pads that are somewhat like sandpaper but designed to polish the lexan windows in jet airliners. They have an extremely consistent grain size. Designed to start with a more coarse sheet and continue working towards lighter grains they can make the airliner's windows clear again. Although more expensive than sand paper, they will work on guitar finishes too.

Well ... I bought several months ago ... but have not had the guts to use them on my expensive LP ... until now. It worked wonderfully. To keep the story short I went through it twice using a middle of the pack grain ... then taking back to the full shine. It felt pretty good. Just know that you can take the finish back to the original luster with the finest 12000 grain ... although it may get a bit sticky again.


So I went back and followed the following procedure:
Get a bowl of water ... towel to lay the guitar face down on ... and a clean cloth
Wet the 1500 (most coarse) sheet ... not soaking just moisten it up to help the grains (wet sanding). Using slight hand pressure back and forth the length of the neck. I kept it basically to the lines at each end of the neck but did not tape it off or anything. I imagine it was about 20 light strokes. Remove any water, material (sort of a milky water liquid) from the neck and any droplets on the rest of the guitar. At this point the neck will look dull but not as dull as if you had used steel wool
Repeat the process with 1800, then 2400, then 3200, then 3600
Repeat the process with 4000 (at this point it's looking pretty good but slightly dull - you may want to stop here)
Repeat the process with 6000 (this is where I stopped - I then polished the guitar - it's still a bit dull but looking nice - no sticky - plays like butter)
If you like repeat with 8000 then 12000 (it will shine as good as new after these but may be a little sticky but not like before)
Clean up the sheets with water then let them dry - I understand you can use them for years
Now ... these can reportedly be used to fix body finish (even plastic pick guards) problems but you'd have to remove hardware to do it. I have not tried it and I'm sure it would be more difficult but the back of the neck is a piece of cake.

Basically, stopping where I did doesn't really remove a lot of finish. It just adds some light wear to the finish. It looks like it's been played for a few years. There is no stickyness ... and I'm now comfortable that I can make slight adjustments. Not something you'd want to excess ... it might eventually wear through the finish.

[Randy Magee]

I use a stiff felt pad and 0000 pumice to make the neck slick, the finish the polishing with rottenstone. That what the furniture people use for a mirror finish...

[brentm]

@Structo - I think thosenumbers are closer to where I might start my grit. 400 or 600 seems a little rough.

@doveman - Thanks, I had read that post a while back in my google searching. I do have a set of Micro Finishing Papers from Stew Mac - not the micr-mesh sheets... but those sound good too.

@randy magee - thanks - I'm not sure what those products are to be honest.

---

I did get a message back from the guy who setup my guitar. Whatever he did bought me a few months of not worrying about it... although his theory is that I picked up my guitar in February and wasn't sweating as much as the summer months..

"As far as what your neck was cleaned with, I use naptha to remove neck crud and follow that with Gerlitz # 1 carnauba wax"

Overall, I'm a bit perplexed by the whole situation. My poly necks don't exhibit this behavior.... Or at least a good quick wipe with water and a paper towel and you're good to go. Are we trying to rough up the surface, or make it smooth?

[Jana]

My .02

I avoid put anything on the neck--no wax, no cleaning stuff of any sort, nothing. In all my years of torturing people with my guitar playing, I have not found anything that eventually doesn't either react with the finish or the sweat in my hands to become sticky.

When I clean the neck, I just rub it good with a clean wash cloth--maybe slightly damp if there is a lot of crud to remove but then that is followed with a dry cloth.

A perfectly shiny surface is not good either--that seems to make the neck feel sticky from the surface tension between the neck and the skin. 1500 grit paper seems to be about the right grit to break the shiny stuff and leave a finish somewhere between matte and gloss.

Baby powder works for those especially sweaty gigs.

[doveman]

The sheets I mentioned are about 2 inches wide - not the small pads.

[cbass]

I wonder if you could french polish over the nitro?Shellac will stick to about anything.I don't think alchohol will cut through todays plastisized lacquer.

If not I would sand that bastard down and FP the whole thing.
FP is the only finish I ever put on the necks I build and I'm setup to spraylacquer.
Plus it gives me a good excuse to keep some shine around.

[Structo]

Brent,
I know Harvey Gerlitz (the maker of the wax and Guitar Honey fretboard oil)

Cool dude.

For a poly neck I have read that briskly rubbing the back of the neck with a brown paper bag can rid it of stickyness. (haven't tried that one).

For nitro necks, there seems to be two kinds of players.
Those that have sticky hands and those that have dry hands.
As mentioned there are different kinds of nitro lacquers.
Some have more plasticizers in the formula for durability.

I have built a few guitars in my day and the best finish I have found for the back of a neck is Birchwood Casey Tru Oil.
It is a gunstock finish and is not really an oil per say.
That is, it goes on like a hand rubbed oil finish but it dries hard and durable.
It is the slickest feeling finish I have ever used.

Best of all it is very easy to apply on a raw wood neck.

Since your guitar is an EJ sig guitar I wouldn't mess with it too much because of the value but you could always buy another bolt on neck and finish it the way you want or buy a pre-finished neck.

But that would do away with the nice quarter sawn EJ neck.

So not quite sure what the answer is other than lightly sanding the back with fine sand paper.

[Reeltarded]

The best finish you can buy for a vintage outcome is the cheapo sub-$2 stuff at Walmart. I flip the cans and drain the gas, then puncture the cans and drain them into my gun.

This finish will age, discolor... real deal. They will outlaw it, so run amuck!

Deft is a brand. Shh tell no one.

[cbass]

Interesting.Will have to try that.

I

[brentm]

Thanks Structo - I don't think I could do much beyond a real light sanding on the back of the neck. The first year of these strats, they used figured maple. It's really quite a sight.. especially in the sunlight. Not often will you find a figured maple neck on a non-custom shop strat.

For now, I did the naptha wipe.. which I think took off that Meguiar's Car Wax... In my searching, I think the stuff I used has silicon in it. So I took all the strings off, gave it a good naptha bath and hit it with some of that Gerlitz #1 on the back. New strings are coated, so it should buy me some time today in the sun.

It feels better, not really digging the coated strings tho... I swear my EXL120's lasted longer than one rehearsal in the past. I really like the idea of stainless strings, but I worry about the hardness of the strings causing premature fretwear... perhaps I'm just over thinking this... new strings always sound great and I don't mind changing them.

Thanks for all the suggestions!