Cleaning and polishing

This is the most back to basics question possible, but I’m very interested what the elders say. Despite working on guitars for over 20 years, I still don’t feel totally thrilled with my process for cleaning and polishing guitars. As a touring tech I wipe down instruments daily, but I still sometimes feel like I have swirl marks especially around knobs and switches, or streaks that aren’t completely perfect. I’ve tried just about every product out there for cleaning and polishing depending on what’s appropriate for the instrument, from deionized water to virtuoso cleaner and polish, everything from Martin, Gibson, and Fender, the Dunlop 65 stuff, music nomad, various waxes, novus, and car products like meguiar’s, especially the #7, 9, and final inspection show car polishes.

I’m curious how diligent you are in using fresh, clean polishing and cleaning cloths, vs cotton rags or old t-shirts, and how you clean your cloths and rags. I had one vintage car detailer tell me that they use a cloth with a higher nap like a bath towel to give a more aggressive cleaner a little more bite when buffing out grime and hand polishing and have tried that as well.

It’s not that my results are bad, but that I don’t feel like I have a quick and consistent method that yields “perfect” results. One client in particular has a late 70s LP custom with a kind of soft feeling finish that has gotten quite a hazy patina over the years, and I’ve never been able to get it back to a great shine with hand buffing no matter what I’ve tried.

Lastly, I’ve noticed some of the struggle is due to handling grimy stuff on stage–lots of dusty cables, tape residue, etc etc build up on gear and cables on tour, and keeping my hands really clean can be a challenge–i even feel like sometimes during re-stringing my hands might pick up a bit of oil from the strings. I’ve been looking for a good no-rinse hand wash or cleaner I can keep in my tech station to use before handling guitars. I’ve tried a couple things that claim to be no-residue, but they still leave my hands feeling a little sticky. I’ve also tried using a light moisturizer after cleaning, but i still feel like there’s a residue I might not want on there.

Any tips and suggestions from the masters for best practices in this area would be appreciated, thanks in advance!