How to Clean a Guitar Amplifier

Video Transcript

"So let's talk a bit, a little bit about how to clean an amplifier. It's a pretty basic procedure. Here we have the back of an amplifier, which is a tube amplifier, and of course here is where you'll have your exposed or semi-exposed electronic, you know, really, the brains of the amplifier, and the, you know, the all, where all the sound is generated and all the electronics are located. Now, you have to be very careful when approaching these to touch them in any way, so you have to be very careful when you're attempting, if you want to clean around this area of the amp, the only way I would suggest would be with a, some kind of a pressure, air pressure, the aerosol, where you would spray and you have your, you could spray some of the dust out very lightly. But you do not want to get too close to any of these, any of the parts, even with the aerosol, because it can add to moisture, it could lead to moisture. So you have to just be very careful. It's not so necessary to clean this part of the amplifier, it's not that critical, I mean people are gonna, people are going to have their amplifiers for their lifetimes never clean behind here. They may change their tubes, but inside the amp around in the speaker cabinet is another story. You can run your vacuum down in here, you can run, put a brush on it, always with a brush attachment on, and you can get some of your dust out. You definitely always want to use one with the brush attachment, you want to use the hose with the brush attachment so you're not going to be banging up against anything and you have to be very careful of your speaker wires, you don't want to get anywhere near them and their connections, you just want to go around just the bottom of the amp and just clean some of the dust that quickly accumulates there. Now, that can be done on a, you know, a regular basis. Other than that, really, it's just a damp cloth, you just want to use a damp cloth, you don't want to use really any kind of solvents or anything that might leave marks on your vinyl, so on and so forth. You just want to, you know, just use a damp cloth, wipe it off, it's very simple, it's nothing very complicated. And as far as cleaning your pots and so on, you can use a little, you know, spray a little lubricant in around the knobs if you feel, if they're making noise, so on and so forth. As far as the grille goes, you're just going to use the vacuum cleaner with the brush attachment on it, and the same for around here, you want to be very gentle on the knobs and so on."