The rosewood fretboard on my PBG tele has a "dry" look to it - it's been that way right from the start (12 months old now), and a few applications of lemon oil haven't seemed to make much difference. Should I be applying something else to the fretboard to give it a darker more consistent finish? Or should I be more generous with the lemon oil?
I've used tru-oil on the rest of the neck and body so that would be an easy thing to do but not sure if that's best option.
You can see on this picture the difference between the bits of the fretboard that regularly come into contact with my hands and fingers, and the bits that don't - the later are dry, the former are closer to what I would expect from rosewood.
I’d be more generous with the lemon oil. I’ve had some boards that took up to ten applications before it stopped soaking in very quickly and the wood remained dark. I will keep applying it until the point where it’s still sitting on the surface after a day. I then wipe the excess off, wait another day and restring. You do need to take the strings off to be able to get it on the board evenly.
Depending on your local climate, if it’s generally very hot and/or dry, you may need to oil the board up to every three months. I’d suggest about once a year in cooler, more humid, climates.
TruOil is very different to lemon oil. You can apply it to a rosewood board, but you are going to get a different feel to it and a semi-gloss to gloss look, depending on how much you apply.
When your board looks this dry, you can't really over-do it with the lemon oil. I suggest keep oiling it, every single time you change your guitar strings. I think on my jazzmaster, I followed that process for 3 years before the board was finally at the state where I could move to oiling annually.
Once the board won't take any more, then you just need to top it up. In that instance you don't want to put too much on, or else you'll just have to wipe most of it off again as you don't want a layer of oil sitting on the board. But I've oiled a lot of dry fretboards in my time and I haven't come across any negative side-affects from making sure the board is well oiled.
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