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In short: What quality checks on a guitar do you make before sending them out the door or pronouncing them done?

When deciding if I've finished an acoustic guitar I'll go over it a look for around 15 things related to musicality, playability and quality. I thought I'd turn that checklist into a guide that others can use to evaluate instruments. I aimed this as a guide to explain to someone looking to buy a guitar what to look for. There's a lot of text, too much for this post. So here is the list below and you can check out more here: acoustic guitar guide

The list that I go through is:

Top quality , back and sides quality, tuning ease, bridge pin ease, fretboard buzz, fretboard dead spots, neck shape preference, action preference, measuring stiffness of the top and back, mass consideration, evenness of finish, craftsmanship details, intonation quality, pickup quality.

A lot of this is aimed at an intermediate guitar player level of knowledge so some of the techniques such as the stiffness testing has more detail I can go into. If you do something else that I'm missing please let me know!

um, everything..

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Guitar Maker and Purveyor of the World's Finest Tonewoods
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That the money's in my account....
I know what the quality of the guitar is, I built it, checks are done at every stage - ?

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Neck angle, saddle height

Pat

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Pat

Yeah I think "everything" is about what sums it up.

The last thing I do on a guitar is a full setup. Once that's complete then the guitar is done. No additional checking required.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I do like Gibson does and just draw a line thru all the check boxes on my QC list. That makes it perfect, right?

Yup, sure like to see the PLEK check list on the last new Gibby I had in the shop for a fret job and set-up.
thanks for the work Gibson

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Oh one thing to be sure and check? That you didn't leave any clamping cauls on the inside of the guitar

Last year I had a guy send a guitar back because he wanted a new neck that was thicker and wider. So of course I said sure why not? I got busy with the guitar and realized that when I delivered it too him a year ago I had left the fingerboard extension caul taped to the inside of the guitar. This is the caul right under the FB tongue so it had no impact on tone but still, kind of funny... Oops!

Good thing you're not a surgeon.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter