Warwick Thumb body cleaning.

[Leeroy897]

Evening, 

i have a Warwick Thumb in Walnut, but over time, the wood has taken on sweat/dirt etc and has discoloured. 

 

It could also do with being treated with a polish?

any ideals (if any) for trying to get the wood clean again. 

Thanks in advance.

[jebroad]

Is it an oil finish? If so, the oil will naturally deteriorate over time so i would recommend using a light abrasive to take off the top coat of oil and re-oiling it. Not too sure if this is the best solution though. 

[MoonBassAlpha]

Would Warwick wax mixed with elbow grease clean that up?

[warwickhunt]

Wire wool or very fine glass/sandpaper, followed by reapplication of wax.  There are vids on the net of ways to apply warm/melted wax to natural wax finishes for Wick basses.  

 

[Leeroy897]

Thanks for the feedback. 

I’m going to get some beeswax wood polish and try to remove the grime. 

[Kev]

Id suggest you try cleaning it before doing that, as all youll be doing is locking the grime in.  Very fine grade wire wool works a treat.

[dyerseve]

12 minutes ago, Kev said:

Id suggest you try cleaning it before doing that, as all youll be doing is locking the grime in.  Very fine grade wire wool works a treat.

yes you have to do this or you will make it worse!

Its not a quick or easy job though! you need to remove the strings, neck, hardware and electronics ideally if you want to do a proper job. Ive done this to a few different warwicks now and great results can be had but you need to know what you are doing or you will make a mess of it...

[dyerseve]

On 13/08/2018 at 22:04, Leeroy897 said:

Evening, 

i have a Warwick Thumb in Walnut, but over time, the wood has taken on sweat/dirt etc and has discoloured. 

 

It could also do with being treated with a polish?

any ideals (if any) for trying to get the wood clean again. 

Thanks in advance.

Beautiful bass! Must be a custom option to have walnut especially on a broad neck!

To get the bass looking like new you will need to rub the body down with fine wire wool - I use grade 00. To do this properly you need to remove the strings, neck, all the hardware and all the electronics(take photos so you know how to put it all back together!). If you are competent weilding a screwdriver and a soldering iron then this should be do able in about half hr. 

once you have all that removed, take the bass outside(you will make a lot of mess!) and go to work using the wire wool to rub down the body to remove the surface wax which has become discoloured with sweat and dirt from your hands. It is a lot of work as the wax will clog up the wire wool so you will need a lot of it.

You can start off with a more aggressive grade like 1 or 2 but it all depends on your experierence as you can scratch the body with the grades and then you need to remove the scratches with the finer grades...

once you have removed all the wax and youre left the raw wood and you are happy there are no scratches, rub it down with white spirit and let it dry - again do this outside because of the fumes.

Once it has dried you can then use the Warwick wax to refinish the bass by rubbing the wax in to the wood – you can melt the wax with the heat from your fingers as you rub it in to the body. Go steady with the wax though, better to apply many thin “coats” with time in between to allow the wood to soak up the oils from the wax…