Scratchplate glue

suspiciousminds

Today i've fitted a soundhole pickup to my fender acoustic but i had to remove the scratchplate first - i used a hairdryer to remove it however there's lots if glue left around the soundhole.
Can anyone advise whats the best thing to use to remove the glue?

ICBM

If it's a polyester finish you should be able to use most solvents on it safely - nail varnish remover (acetone) or 'label remover' (some sort of powerful organic solvent, not sure what! But very effective). Possibly a god idea to try it somewhere least visible first though, like the top edge of the headstock.

suspiciousminds

Hmm, tried nail varnish remover tonight and all it seemed to do was smear it about.

thermionic

You can buy "label remover" which is supposed to be good for removing sticky residues from stuff in general. I have no idea what the solvent in it is.

ICBM

suspiciousminds said:

Hmm, tried nail varnish remover tonight and all it seemed to do was smear it about.

If it did actually dissolve it you just need more, and plenty of clean kitchen roll.

thermionic said:

You can buy "label remover" which is supposed to be good for removing sticky residues from stuff in general. I have no idea what the solvent in it is.

The stuff Maplin sell is something based on whatever the chemical in lemon skins is! It smells very strongly of it. (I assume a synthetic version of the same organic chemical, although I could be wrong.) It's a very powerful solvent though, and will attack a lot of plastics (CD jewel cases for example), so be careful with it on guitars…

Polyester finishes are immune to almost all solvents though, so modern far-east-made guitars are usually fine.

further

Try WD40 it's worked for me on an old strat that someone had stuck a pick holder to.

thermionic

That would make sense ICBM, I've used citrus degreaser (bike chain cleaner) to remove stuff like that before. That has a strong orange smell though, I think it's made from the peel, although there's probably a synthetic element to it.

suspiciousminds

Strange as it sounds but masking tape has pulled it off a treat.
Happy days.

ROOG

Blu-tac lifts some forms of gloop!