Best way to clean up smoke damaged electric guitar?
 

I am doing the standard moist cloth with water, any other safe but effective cleaners?

Naptha is commonly used to clean guitars and is safe for all finishes that I know of.

depends on too many factors.

By smoke damage, do you mean it was in a house fire and absorbed smoke or do you mean it was a smoker's guitar and it stinks or do you mean some smoke got on the soundboard ?

No idea what you are referring to, so no idea how anyone could give you advice.

It's an electric guitar, no soundboard.
I meant smoke from a house fire. Japanese Tempo/Palmer Matsumoku.

Depends upon the finish. Hopefully the smoke is on the surface and didn't get into the finish material.

If it was mine, I would disassemble it and remove all the hardware.

Then I would wash it with Naptha thoroughly.

Finally (if its a gloss finish) I would polish the whole guitar to strip off a small layer of finish using a polishing compound wheel like a auto polisher (not wax buffer).

I have had to repair some smoke damaged guitars (house fires etc)

The only way to get rid of the smell, is to strip and clean the guitar, then wet sand the outer layer of lacquer and either buff or flash another coat of clear over.

The smell embeds itself pretty seriously into the finish

The parts that come of, alcohol cleans them pretty well.

Steve

There is a cleaner and polish out there with no petroleum distillates that is called Legend. I have used it very successfully to clean a guitar that was in a house fire. While it did not make it look like new it was an amazing change, and took off most of the smoke damage, the customer was very happy.

Son uses Auto Shocker CLO2 Odour eliminator to remove cigarette smoke from cars. (He is a detailer by trade and can even polish a turd.)