How to clean this…

[Heath]

It’s not a Guild, but I do trust you guys the most. I have this ‘82 Aria Pro and the tail piece and bridge have lots of pitting. What would be the best way to clean these up? Thanks!

 

[SFIV1967]

I would remove all metal parts from the guitar. You have pictures to see where and how everything fits together, I would next put all in an old plastic container and spray it all with oil like WD-40. Next I would take all apart, all screws out and so on. Now I would all bath in machine oil (like available for sewing machines), take it out, put all on paper towls and dry them. When in the oil you also could use an old toothbrush to remove hard dirt. I would not use any metal polish as that looks not so good on vintage guitars. Just use some old cloth like from a T-Shirt at the end and rub everything dry and assemble and reinstall.

EDIT: I just see that you probably can't remove the 6 screws and saddle pieces from the bridge so just when in the oil do turn the screws left and right to move the saddle pieces all around and thereby cleaning the screws.

Ralf

 

[Smiert Spionam]

I mostly try not to clean things too much -- better to leave the old patina alone. But if it's really flaky and gross, you could use a fiberglass eraser brush to remove some of the corrosion -- they work well for this kind of thing, and they don't leave the kind of cleaning marks that you would get from rubbing (especially with steel wool, which WILL leave marks).

 

[GAD]

You can’t really “clean” pitting but you can clean out all the grunge like Ralf recommends above. You can polish it a bit but that looks pretty severe so I’m dubious as to the results you’ll achieve. If you want it to look like new I’d seek out replacements.