Just wondering what you guys/girls use to keep your Collings' in nice shape. I just want to maintain a clean guitar, and my week-old D2h has received quite a few smudge marks. What do any of you recommend as a safe, regular cleaning method? Thanks.

Chris Lewis

I've tried everything and obsessed at length over this issue. The best regular cleaner for your guitar is distilled water on a clean soft cloth. To protect the guitar against light dust scratches, the best stuff I know of is Petros Polish. It's the ONLY stuff I know of that is silicone-free. (Virtuoso polish, the recent Martin polish and virtually all others contain silicone.) I'd only use the Petros once or twice a year though to prevent a buildup of carnauba wax.

www.petrosguitars.com

You should use a couple of bungee cords and strap that sucker to the luggage rack on top of the ol' SUV and then run it through the car wash. Guarantied to clean all the finger grunge off.

But seriously, as Phoenix said, some clean water on a soft cloth. I don't use any wax or polish under normal circumstances, but I have used Virtuoso to clean very badly gunked-up (technical term) finishes. I am very happy with the way Virtuoso cleaner restored some very dull and milky looking finished on a couple of older, very well used guitars.

Please don't use the car wash method. I guess I feel the need to make sure people here know I was joking. It seems that many over at AG forums have a hard time with jokes, except of course their own.

There, I feel better now.

OK, just one more comment. Most of the time I don't even use water on the soft cloth. Just a clean, dry, soft cloth to wipe off the guitar is all it needs most of the time. I wipe it off everytime I finish playing it. It only takes a couple of seconds and keeps gunk from building up.