Good Maintenance, Good Sounds

by: Kinanthi Renaningtyas
061214041

Guitar is one of the most popular musical instruments around the world. Guitar is easily played by anyone, anywhere, anytime to produce such melodies which are beautiful and easy-listening. Playing guitar can be considered as a hobby, but some people make their job from their skill of playing guitar. Melodious harmony which comes from a guitar performance not only produced by the skill of the player, but also comes from the quality of the guitar itself.

This article leads on how you maintain your guitar, especially the acoustic one. There are two types of guitar, the acoustic and the electric. The main difference of both things is the electrical support which helps to produce the sound in electric guitar, while the acoustic one comes from the air resonance through its sound hole.

As you know, guitar made from wood. Usually the body and the fret board made from maple or mahogany woods. Meanwhile, for the nut and the bridge made from real tusk or artificial tusk as strings pedestal.

Here are few steps on how to maintain your guitar to preserve its sounds quality:

· Cleaning (keywords: duster, wooden body cleaner, string cleaner fluid)

You need extra care to clean your guitar, especially on its string. Firstly, you have to spray the wooden body cleaner on the surface of the body and then rub it until the dirt is removed completely. After that, you can continue to clean its neck and its strings. For the strings, you have to wet the duster first by the string cleaner fluid, and then you wiped the strings carefully and slowly from end to end while occasionally the strings are drawn-drag to vertical direction from the neck. (See the picture below)

· Tuning (keywords: tuning forks)

Each string of the guitar has it standard tone, E-G-B-D-A-E. But, the strings also suffered from looseness, so you have to tune it up occasionally. The trick to tune your guitar using tuning forks is quite simple. All you need to do is tap your tuning fork softly to produce its resonance, and then put the tip of the tuning fork inside your ear. The sound heard is the A, B, C, D or G sound depends on the type of the tuning forks. From the resonance that you hear, you can adjust the tone on the strings required.

· Putting (keywords: guitar stand)

You cannot put your guitar randomly if you want your guitar stay longer with you. You need guitar stand to hang your guitar instead of laying it randomly that can cause damage. Your guitar can be trampled or can be kicked as the results of your carelessness. And also you have to notice the temperature of where you put your guitar. The temperature suggested is the room temperature which is approximately 20-25⁰ C.

· Storing (keywords: hard case, soft case)

Hard case is very important if you want to store your guitar quite longer. The shape of the hard case is made as the same curve of the body. So, your guitar will be protected from mold, dust, and dirt. Soft case has the same purpose, but usually the soft case is used to store your guitar when you want to bring it outside because it’s lighter than if you bring the hard case.

As an old saying goes “you don’t know what you get till it’s gone”. You should love your gadget and take care about it. Good maintenance of every gadget that you have will preserve its use longer than it used to be.

Guitar amateurs usually only care about its tuning rather than caring about the whole parts of the guitar, so sometimes their guitars cannot produce a good sound, because a good sound created from the support of all parts.

Preserving our gadget needs our extra time, extra care, and extra money, but that’s the part of our responsibility of having the gadget. It would be better if we maintain our gadget well than let it ruins earlier than it should instead of buying the new one.

I hope that this article will guide you to keep your guitar well. The older guitar, the more it produces good sounds when you do a good maintenance for it. And usually an old guitar with a great performance will have a high price to be reselling.

Source:
# direct interview with band personnel, the guitarist of Pedhe Rock Indonesia, Itok Rachmat Wijaya

Facebook: Pedhe Rock Indonesia
# pictures downloaded from http://www.google.com