Hello there, back again with another excellent review of possibly my favourite instrument care product by MusicNomad. This time we will be looking at one of the best guitar and bass fingerboard/fretboard care oils in the market, Music Nomad Fretboard F-One Oil. In this Music Nomad Fretboard F-One review article, I will introduce the Music Nomad company to you and talk about their wonderful F-One Oil.
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MusicNomad Company
For those who have never heard of Music Nomad company, here’s a quick introduction and a little bit of their history. Music Nomad is an American company founded by Rand Rognlien. Mr. Rognlien was the owner of the Car Care company throughout the ’90s and 2000s. He specialised in this segment and managed to develop over 100 Car Care products and become a market leader in this segment. Being also a musician, guitar and bass player, he wanted to achieve more in the music field and launched MusicNomad.com in 2008.
Surprisingly, the MusicNomad website was initially a platform where musicians could discover ranked and reviewed resources to help them produce, sell and support their music along with hundreds of articles, tips and tricks on music making. As Mr. Rognlien wanted to keep everything free of charge for musicians, he also started thinking about creating a revenue stream to accelerate the growth of the MusicNomad company. Thomann's 70th Anniversary Offers
Therefore he used his extensive experience in manufacturing highest highest-quality cleaning and care products by having worked with experts in the business and eventually created the MusicNomad product line. They tested all the possible cleaning, care and maintenance products such as polishes, and waxes in the music industry and improved upon them as they did not like everything about what the market offered.
Their unique formulas along with their utmost care in choosing the best and most environmentally friendly ingredients such as White Brazilian Carnauba as well as UV Protectants, and Gloss Enhancers feature 100% non-toxic, non-abrasive ingredients. Even the bottles they use are made of 100% PET which is the most earth-friendly, recyclable plastic.
In 2010, MusicNomad released its guitar and drum care product line which can be purchased through over 3000 dealers in 40 countries. The feedback, awards and compliments that they have received in the music industry have been outstanding and they keep rocking!
Check out all the articles featuring MusicNomad here
How I Met MusicNomad Products?
It was almost exactly 10 years ago (2013) when I first got Music Nomad products including their Guitar One, F-One Oil and Guitar Polish. As far as I remember, F-One Oil was possibly one of the first guitar fingerboard care products that featured 100% essential oil. I was very surprised that this product was already designed and released to the MI market back in the day. I even got inspired by this product and attempted to create my own essential oil mix.
Check out my How to Care Guitar Fretboard? – Lemon Oil is not really lemon oil! article here
If you are one of my regular visitors, you would know that I really like to try different instrument care products and provide you with as many details as possible so you don’t waste your money on the products that have false claims.
Back in the day, I even attempted to create my own mixture as I had access to cold-pressed essential oils. In that era, I could only access Music Nomad F-One Oil in the Turkish MI market and after I compared it with my own mixture, I came to the conclusion that they knew what they were doing. However, it was a pretty good experience to try my own mixture on my guitars.
After I moved to Europe, I was eyeing Music Nomad products on Thomann, however, for a long time they only featured a few Music Nomad products and F-One Oil was never in stock. So I tend to look for alternatives. There’s an unfortunate trend in this product segment that many companies just sell mineral oil to musicians and people swear by how the identical ingredients in these products make such a huge difference. Check out the best guitar pickup company, Seymour Duncan here!
Even when you just have a look at the best sellers in the Guitar Cleaning Products category, you will notice that there are many products just contain mineral oil that comes in different packages. The saddest one of all is the GHS Fast Fret, a cleaning & maintenance product that contains a couple of mls of mineral oil.
Check out my GHS Fast Fret review here
It’s the same for the products with the name “Lemon Oil” which in fact just mineral oil with added synthetic ingredients that make the product smell like lemon! What I’m trying to do here is to educate people and give them a different perspective. I feel like one could be better off just buying a litre of mineral oil from Amazon and replacing GHS Fast Fret, Lemon Oils and many more instrument care products that contain exactly the same ingredients.
While I was not able to buy Music Nomad F-One Oil in Europe, I found a great alternative by Sandberg company. I think these are one of the few options if you want to go natural.
Check out my Sandberg Fingerboard Oil review here
But luckily, the Music Nomad product line is now in stock on Thomann’s website. When I noticed that, I immediately added multiple Music Nomad products to my last order and received them successfully!
Music Nomad Fretboard F-One Oil
Music Nomad Fretboard F-One Oil is the only essential oil that the company produces. Its formula is based on a complex mixture of ultra-refined seed and tree oils that you can use on your fingerboards/fretboards and make sure you clean, protect and retain the original characteristics of your beloved instruments.
I thought F-One oil had lemon oil extracts to remove stains and dirt, but according to their website, F-One oil is free of any lemon oil extracts, waxes, petroleum distillates, silicone or water. The reason for not adding lemon oil extracts is that it can dry out the fretboard over time and requires more frequent care.
As with Sandberg Fingerboard Oil, Music Nomad F-One oil also claims to be 100% naturally produced oils and is safe on all unfinished fingerboards such as rosewood, ebony, pau ferro and even maple. One thing that is common with both products is that, unlike the vast majority of guitar cleaning and fretboard care products, they claim to be 100% natural and do not put a warning on the bottles as to what needs to be done when swallowed.
Obviously, Music Nomad does not share the exact formula, but they already provide a lot of information regarding what it doesn’t include. As Music Nomad uses a 3rd party company to bottle these, they can not guarantee that they contain any nut traces. So if you are extremely allergic to nuts, you may pass this.
They suggest using F-One Oil every 4 to 6 months if you play every day and if you just play once or twice per week, use it for every 6 to 9 months. In case, you are interested in it, it’s a vegan product as well.
The shelf life is estimated at around 3 years, however, there are many people who have been using the same bottle for more than 3 years. Unless bacteria get into the solution, it may go off. But based on my experience, I had never had any issues with it when I first got it around 10 years ago. I used it for many many years until the bottle was empty! 🙂
Music Nomad Fretboard F-One Oil Review
As you can already understand from the article, I have been a big of all Music Nomad products. F-One Oil is no different and delivers what it promises as always!
Applying F-One Oil is very easy and identical to any guitar fretboard clean & care product. Just put a couple of drops on the fretboard and rub it in with a cloth. It is recommended to wait for a few minutes if your fretboard is not that dirty. However, if it is very dirty, you may need to wait for 5 to 10 minutes so it’s soaked in and can remove the gunk easily. Martinic Plugins - Precisely Modeled Vintage Instruments and FX Plugins
Music Nomad already published a video on how to apply F-One Oil, so I’m not going to shoot an instructional video for this. However, you will be watching my instrument care & care maintenance videos featuring F-One Oil soon!
As I keep saying, there are only 2 solid products that contain 100% natural essential oils. So I’m also planning to publish an article to compare Sandberg Fingerboard Oil and MusicNomad F-One Oil. However, as a quick comparison, I can say that Sandberg smells a lot more intense than Music Nomad F-One and also seems to be denser than F-One.
F-One costs €11.90 at the moment for a 60ml bottle whereas Sandberg Fingerboard oil costs €8.80 for a 50ml bottle. Basically, you pay around 0.2€ per ml for F-One and €0.18 for Sandberg Fingerboard Oil. So pretty much the same cost, both very high quality and a single bottle can be used for many many years. Music Plugin Deals at Pluginboutique.com
As suggested by MusicNomad, F-One Oil can be also used on unfinished maple boards and here we are! I just tested it on my Ibanez RG565 and really love the results! It did not cause any issues, colour changes or any stain! You don’t believe me? Just watch the video below:
MusicNomad F-One Oil Test on Unfinished Maple Fingerboards
I can definitely recommend both products but as I mentioned I prefer Music Nomad F-One over any product. I’m always extremely satisfied with Music Nomad products and what they promise and deliver, very trustworthy company!
Check out my Music Nomad Amp & Case Cleaner review here
As always, I have never been endorsed by any brand to publish a paid article containing positive reviews, it’s the same with Music Nomad products and this particular article. I’m a big fan of their products and would like to promote them as they totally deserve more success!
Thanks for visiting my blog and supporting me so far! I will hopefully see you in the next review here!
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