Robben Ford Discussion

[frank0936]

Daved,
I live the very humid Southeast. We play a lot of outdoor gigs. Is there anything that you know of to help keep down the stickiness on the guitar neck and strings? I played a gig about 2 weeks ago and I was about 20 feet from the Bay. By the end of the first set my hand was sticking to the neck! We had to clean strings at every break and they still felt sticky. Anybody else with any experience in this feel free to jump in, too!
Thanks,
Frank

[markt52553]

Baby powder... I've see a couple of country player use it, Ray Flack for one. Works good, looks a little weird on a rosewood or ebony fingerboard.

[frank0936]

Thanks. I know that there's one kind of powder that you don't want to use because it gets gummy with moisture. I think it's a powder that contains cornstarch.
Frank

[JohnnyZ]

Frank,

Don't know if this will help, but I recently had interesting replies in the Rickenbaker forum where I asked for advice to remove the stickiness on my 620's neck, however, it wasn't due to heat and humidity as in your case. The Ric 620's neck is varnished to a high polish and I suspect a family member was playing it (against my orders and knowledge) probably with not so clean hands and not cleaning anything afterwards. Anyway, simply rubbing it with the supplied official Rickenbacker polishing cloth did nothing to remove the stickiness even though it appeared clean and mirror shiney, nor did my clean and completely dry hands keep from sticking..

So, the consensus-from -xperience in the Ric forum was to clean the neck with Meguire's Scratch X, available in most department and auto parts stores. This, supposedly, cleans everything off right down to the finish. Then, again, overwhelming consensus was to apply a super-slick wax named Xymol, an expensive car wax not so readily available but can be found. While I cannot atest to these methods, the end result from the forum members is better than expected satisfaction regarding the long-term slickness of the neck, as well as that new car shine... :-)

I haven't tried any of this yet, but I've bought the Scratch-X and the diapers (ooops! I forgot to mention that 100% cloth diapers are required for scratch-free cleaning and polishing!), and I plan to clean my Ric's neck in the next day or two...

Anyway, maybe this helps, maybe it doesn't, but I thought I'd offer a possible solution... :-)

JZ

[frank0936]

It's worth a try. Thanks, JZ!
Frank