Curator Fretboard Conditioner

A two-ingredient fretboard conditioner for unfinished rosewood, ebony, and other dark hardwood boards. No solvents, no silicone, and no drying oils.

Use it on: unfinished hardwood fretboards and bridges, including rosewood, ebony, pau ferro, wenge, ziricote, cocobolo, bubinga, ovangkol, Indian laurel, and walnut.

Do not use it on: maple or other pale woods, which it will permanently darken; dyed or ebonized boards; or crazed or checked finished boards, where oil will wick through the cracks into bare wood. Finished boards in good condition do not need it.

What is in most "lemon oil"

"Lemon oil" is rarely lemon, and rarely oil. Most of what gets sold for fretboards is a thinned-down furniture polish carrying solvents, silicone, or a drying oil that hardens inside the wood over the years and leaves a board gummy and sealed.

Curator is two ingredients, and neither one of them dries.

What it does

A dry, chalky, grey-looking fretboard is wood that has given up its natural oils to years of string changes, stage lights, and dry winter air. Curator brings the board back to a deep, even color and keeps it supple instead of brittle, which is what matters at the fret slots and the edges of the board, where wood cracks first.

Why it darkens the wood

It will darken your fretboard. That is the point, and it is worth understanding why. Dry wood is full of microscopic empty cells, and the air inside them bends light differently than the wood walls around them. That mismatch scatters light back at you as a dull, washed-out grey. Oil fills those cells with something much closer to the wood's own refractive index, the scattering collapses, and the true color of the wood comes through. It is the same reason a wet stone on the beach looks rich and saturated until it dries. The difference is that Curator does not dry, so it does not fade back.

Directions

Apply a few drops to a clean cloth. Work it into the board, let it sit a minute, then wipe off whatever the wood did not take. Two or three times a year is plenty for most players, and a string change is the easiest time to do it.

Ingredients

Caprylic/capric triglyceride (fractionated coconut oil), Simmondsia chinensis (jojoba) seed oil.

No fragrance, no silicone, no petroleum distillates, no drying oils. Nothing added to make it smell like a product.

How it is made

Mixed in small batches in Laguna Beach, California, by a luthier with a background in chemistry.

2 fl oz (59 mL) in cobalt blue glass. Store at room temperature.