Cleaning spots on a gold plated instrument...

[Dylan King]

Hey gang,

I'm looking into shining up a few gold-plated instruments and have read about many different ways to do it. There's the aluminum foil and baking soda method, non-ammonia glass cleaner, toothpaste, Tarnex, "wash with soap", use silver polish, and a few others. One thing that's certain is that if it's done wrong, one can loose parts of the plating in the process.

The horns have some blotches and spots, and some places that look like actual tarnish, which is probably the silver underneath. These are Taylor and Monette instruments, so I'm sure they were finished in a professional manner.

Any good advise or stories that you can share would be greatly appreciated.

-DK

[pgym]

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[Z-Tuba Dude]

Funny you should mention this. I just polished my 1923 Buescher Jumbo sousaphone bell, which has a gold wash. I used (silver) Tarnishield.

I understand that gold itself, does not tarnish. It was actually the silver plate underneath the gold wash, which had tarnished.

I do not quite understand how polishing the gold wash, with Tarnishield, gets to the silver plate underneath, but it worked!