She said "You're stinking up the house!"

[Frank Parish]

This may be just a tad off the steel guitar topics but if you play steel guitar and get payed for it there's a fair chance you're going to play in bars and places where people smoke. I think my wife could pass for a bird dog because she can smell me before I get out of the van sometimes! I came home last night from a NYE gig like always and she said I was stinking up the house because I smelled like smoke! Well DUH..how can you play in a bar and not get that stuff on you? I smoked for years but haven't for a long time now. I never realized that smoke can cover you up like that until I took some speaker cabinets out of a place we'd been playing for months one time and they were just terrible and I cleaned them outside and then put them on the back porch! Is there something you can spray yourself with or anything at all to ease the smell? I can't smell much of anything so it has to be bad for me to get it but this gal can smell an ashtray at 100 paces! What's your routine when you come home from a gig where they smoke?

[Sherman Willden]

I've found that Ben-Gay can cover most any smell. For the cigarette smoke you would probably have to cover most of the open body places. A lot of the smell is probably on your clothes so you might consider keeping clean clothes in your transportation.

Just a thought;

Sherman

[Don Discher]

We have a spray up here in Canada called "Febreze"
this works great,i'm sure you have it as well.I spray my cases,vehicles,clothes etc.

[b0b]

Smoking isn't allowed in California bars anymore. My music room smells much better now.

Used to be, when I came home from a smokey bar gig, Mrs. Lee would make me take off all of my clothes before I came into the came into the bedroom. She said it was because of the stink, but I think she had an ulterior motive.

[Danny Hall]

I think some folks over react to smoke. The folks on TV and Radio have been teaching us that the sky is falling in oh so many ways. Will she stand around a camp fire? Mine can't get enough of that, but some poor guy enjoying a cigarette out front of a supermarket makes her mad as a wet hen. And she used to smoke 2 packs a day!

Having said that, I will say that it does stink the place up pretty bad. I've been quit cigarettes 22 years now but I love to get together with the boys and puff a cigar once or twice a year. Same thing with my pipe.

When I do that, I'll strip in the garage and come in the house direct to the shower. I just can't see any other way. I once had a cigar in MY pickup with both windows down all the way. She rode with me in that truck 4 months later honest to pete and she says "How come it smells like smoke in here"?

As far as equipment goes I'd try an enzyme solution called "Natures Miracle". It's made for pet odors on carpets and furniture. I can't guarantee it will work on smoke but it works on a whole variety of different stinks and stains.

[Barry Blackwood]

Frank, before you get home, just take off all your clothes and pee on them. The missus won't notice the cigarette smell at all. Guaranteed.

[Hook Moore]

lol Barry.... Thats changed here too. No smoking allowed in the bars. My gear smells much better !
Hook

[Dave Hopping]

My gear smells much better too.And it'll last a lot longer,because it never gets used.Smoking bans are as fatal to the bar business as DUI enforcement.
Let's face it,guys,bars are where musicians do the work that teaches us our craft.No bars to play in leads eventually but inevitably to the marginalization of live music.
My New Years' prediction is that while live music-especially steel guitar related live music- won't disappear altogether,it will be very much like religious dancing that Native Americans perform for tourists.
All that having been said,and with the greatest of respect for the Original Poster's concerns,I suspect that Mrs OP's issues are only tangentially related to nicotine.
For smoke odor,try a product brand-named "Ozium".Comes in small aerosol bottles,smells sort of like mint,and it works better than anything I've used.

[Stu Schulman]

Anchorage is non smoking yet most of the other towns in Alaska are still smoking.Febreze works great to get that stank out.

[Barry Blackwood]

Couldn't have said it any better myself, Dave. Even about the Ozium, which is good stuff and not nearly as smelly as Febreeze.

[John Billings]

Fabreeze stinks worse than cigar smoke! Try and find ZORBX. Unscented, so no coverup with another obnoxious stench. Totally eliminates all kinds of smells. Amazing product!
https://www.zorbx.com/newsite/about_zorbx.asp

[Bo Borland]

The wife complained about my gear, especially the fabric on my seat so I would spray it with fabreeze but then she complained about the flowery smokey smell too.. I was very happy when they went smoke free inside the clubs.

I still keep a car air freshener in my case. Sometimes I hang it on the guitar.. it's not x rated but it's crude.

[John Billings]

From the ZORBX site;
"Why ZORBX? The Sweet Smell of...Nothing!

ZORBX is a highly effective odor absorber. It is designed to control and eliminate undesirable odors. Most other products have added sweet smells to cover up the odor. Not ZORBX ®. This Perfume-free odor absorber eliminates it.

It has been proven that Smell does influence the attitude and well being of people. Bad and Offensive Odors will create uncomfortable situations and problems in our daily lives. Those types of odors can be found in our Cars, Boats, Bathrooms, Kitchens, Basements, Shoes, Garbage Cans, and Laundry Rooms. Other odors can be caused by: Pets, Cigar & Cigarettes, Cat Litter, Gasoline, Smoke, and Chemicals.

We are sure by now you have tried many other odor eliminating products that did not solve your problem. You have wasted lots of time, money, and effort to get rid of unwanted smells. You have doubts about trying another odor remover product. You are not alone. We understand how you feel. Most of our customers had the same feelings before they tried ZORBX ® . Some even called us to confirm our "100% performance and satisfaction guarantee " return policy."

Works on skunk stink too.

[Robert C. McKee]

Odo-Ban, (walmart/Sam's Club, & elswhere), full strength from a spritzer bottle sprayed around. fwiw

[Bo Borland]

"Stench B Gone"

[Roger Rettig]

I've never smoked in my life but, like everyone else, I've had to put up with working in smoky environments at some point.

Not here in the USA, though, I'm happy to say! I've yet to play a bar gig in eleven years, and now they're increasingly smoke-free anyway; maybe I'll do one now.

As a consequence none of my gear has any of that unpleasant residue anywhere for which I'm grateful. However I recently acquired a used LeGrande 111 that had clearly spent it's life in 'low places'! The guitar has all sorts of brownish deposits on its undercarriage and I need to get something done about that.

The case was a problem - but it's okay now, because I popped two or three dryer sheets inside and shut the lid while it sat in my closet; they seem to have done the trick.

[Ben Jones]

smoking ban hasnt seemed to hurt any of the bars here. I really enjoy going out more since its been in place too.

[Ben Lawson]

b0b my wife made me remove all clothing before I got into the bedroom. When I got into the room she said whatever I was wearing needed to be ironed.

[Ben Lawson]

b0b my wife made me remove all clothing before I got into the bedroom. When I got into the room she said whatever I was wearing needed to be ironed.

[Clyde Mattocks]

Nothing neutralizes smoke odor better than placing the gear or clothes in the outdoors in the sunlight for a day or two.

[chris ivey]

to answer the original question i would say, since you're getting nagged for not doing anything wrong, find a girl at that bar who smokes and go home with her.

[Frank Parish]

[quoteIt has been proven that Smell does influence the attitude and well being of people. Bad and Offensive Odors will create uncomfortable situations and problems in our daily lives. Yep that's pretty much what I was experiencing last night after stinking up the house! Like most things around the house goes, "When mama ain't happy, nobody's happy!" I'll look for that Z stuff and see how that goes but until I find it, I hope she settles for me changing clothes in the bathroom and not outside when it's 23 degrees![/quote]

[John Billings]

Frank, I think that on the left side of the link I posted, there might be a store listing. They're up here in Cleveland, so everybody knows about it here. I like it because it doesn't add any heavy perfume odors.
BTW; It's also 23 up here, with lake effect snow! I can't see across the street!
PS; maybe you can order it online.

[Dave Mudgett]

My routine when I came in from smoky gigs was to immediately drop the clothes in a hamper in the basement room in back of the music room where my equipment is, and then go upstairs and immediately take a shower. It didn't matter whether it was 1, 3, 4, or 5am, I did it every time. When I played full-time from home-base, I never re-wore clothes and did my laundry a couple of times a week to keep the smelly clothes from building up.

As far as fumigating the equipment, I detest the smell of Febreze or other perfumed products like that more than the stale smoke smell. I'll have to try the stuff John B. mentioned, but the only way I ever found to remove the smell from equipment is to let it air outside on the porch or otherwise clean it. Like Frank, my olfactory doesn't work so well anymore, but I can still somehow sense the stench, so I used to periodically lightly wash the covering of my amps with a warm, dilute soap solution.

Most of this has become a non-issue since Pennsylvania went largely non-smoking a year or two ago, and most of the other places I play in the northeast went non-smoking quite a while ago. It's been close to two years since I played a 'smoking' gig.

[John Billings]

Available in the cleaning section at any Lowe's Store nationwide.
Other retail locations.
Ace, Marc's, etc