Weed smell... let's see how good this boomer crowd is on this task

I've never been a fan of the effects of weed, but I do like the smell. Not sure how that would translate in an instrument saturated in it.

Sorry, thats all I got.

I did this with an old Telecaster once. It stunk. It cleaned up ok but the fretboard still had the smell. I did a few applications of rubbing alcohol, and that basically neutralized the smell. Then I applied an application of Howard’s Feed N Wax to restore moisture.

Worked like a charm.

I wore gloves.

Interesting. Isopropyl blushes lacquer every so often, but otherwise is pretty darn safe on instruments. I guess I hadn't considered it because naphtha didn't touch it, but they are awfully different.



Any romance in grimy guitars is lost once you work on them for a living. Seriously people, clean your guitars before you take them in. It is like eating onions and limburger and then a box of oreos before going to the dentist. Except worse, because the grime on guitars often has lots of DNA.

A coworker of mine has a client that somehow manages to get a lot of hipster beard oil all over his guitars. He says similar things that it takes a while for the smell to dissipate.

Hey, maybe take a hit? Just kidding. Alcohol makes sense. Garnish with lime.

If you get an acoustic guitar in with heavy weedstink, pick out all the dustbunnies and roll 'em up in a Zig Zag.

I keed! I keed!

But it would probably work.



I am always grossed out by filthy guitars, but the ones with beer, BBQ sauce, tobacco and weed funk are particularly offensive. Some are so bad I refuse to bring them into the house.

I personally like the smell of some decent herb ...

Brings back some ancient memories...

Several years ago I was working on a no-name MIC guitar for a client. It was fresh out of the box and needed a setup. As I moved my left hand to detune the strings, the G string, which had a 1" long end sticking out of the tuner post, jabbed me pretty good in the index finger knuckle. My first reaction was a string of adult-oriented adjectives.

Three seconds later I thought about some factory in China turning these things out, where some of the workers are bound to be suffering from hepatitis.

Hep C can survive for two months on a dirty needle. I got out the alcohol and a fresh Xacto and treated it like it was a rattlesnake bite. I called my doc and two weeks later I got tested for Hep C. It came back negative.

Did I overreact? I don't think so. I've been to some hellholes around the world and I once tested positive for exposure to Hep B. That gets a person pretty excited.

2 side notes:

The weed smell - about a decade ago I worked at a hair salon (slight diversion from my regular IT gig) with a guy who was a tattoo artist. At first I thought this guy needs to see some sort of gastroenterologist because he smelled like he’d shat himself after eating a skunk. I was too polite to say anything but he really had a problem. But, as it turns out that was the smell of the weed he would smoke a little too regularly...

And hep C - I was cleaning up this same guy's tattoo room and received a needle stick. In spite of wearing gloves, being careful, and leaning toward the side of hyper vigilance when it comes to gross stuff I have to pick up, when I picked up a piece of garbage there was also a lurking piece of a shading needle he dropped on the floor.

There were 2 owners. They played good cop bad cop. When I was upset and said I needed to get tested, good cop said to do what I needed to do. When I got back from the clinic, bad cop accused me of making it up. I didn’t work another shift there.

Luckily the tests came back negative. But Peegoo’s story reminded me how stressful waiting to find out results is/was.

Every one of us could probably feel that as you were describing it.


Although I usually skewer the pad on my first finger joint, which then proceeds to bleed and I have to stop and go get a band aid to keep working.