Thinking about buying a used flattop? These tips will help you avoid costly mistakes.
Since I began repairing guitars professionally in 1990, thousands of instruments have crossed my bench. Many were used guitars purchased by owners who thought they were getting a great deal, but were later surprised to discover their instrument needed extensive repairs. Music stores, online auctions, and pawnshops can be a great resource for buying a used instrument, but you need to keep your eyes open. What you don’t see can and will cost you.
Here’s a list of things to check before buying a used acoustic guitar. These are issues that are typically overshadowed by sexy features, but they can cost more to repair than the value of the instrument. My hope is that armed with this knowledge, you’ll avoid making a costly mistake when buying a used flattop.
Check the seams and joints.
One of the first things I do is inspect the glue joints—areas where different parts attach. I suggest starting with the neck joint. Does the neck heel fit tightly against the body? Relentless string tension can make the very end of the heel pull away from the body, as in Photo 1. Removing and resetting the neck costs hundreds of dollars, so in most cases, this type of gap is a deal-killer.
Run your finger along the binding to check its integrity, using your fingernail to identify any seams that are opening (Photo 2). Binding that’s separating from the sides, top, or back can be expensive to repair, especially if it’s deteriorating.
Photo 3
Got cracks? Always check for cracks in the wood. Potentially problematic areas include the vulnerable headstock, top, and back (Photo 3). Cracks can be a sign of structural failure or result from the guitar being exposed to low humidity—a common malady. Whatever the cause, cracks may cost hundreds of dollars to repair.
Photo 4
While you’re checking the surface, also look for buckles or waves on the top, which can indicate loose braces or a damaged bridge plate. Sometimes subtle buckles happen during the manufacturing process and are not a big deal. However, if the braces or the bridge plate have failed, it could cost hundreds of dollars to repair. (We’ll revisit the bridge plate in a moment.)
Bridge integrity. Spotting a loose bridge is usually easy—just look for any separation between it and the guitar top. To do this, simply slide a small piece of paper along the edge of the bridge to see if it slips underneath (Photo 4). If the paper slips into a gap, it’s likely the bridge will need to be removed and re-glued. This can cost from $90 up to $150, depending on how much time it takes to remove and reshape the bottom of the bridge.
Photo 5
If the bridge is cracked, especially along the pin holes or saddle slot (Photo 5), it must be replaced. It can be difficult to find an exact, factory replacement bridge that fits perfectly and intonates correctly. Typically, when I encounter this problem, I have to carve a new bridge out of a block of wood. Because it has to look and function exactly like the original, this is a very expensive proposition. A custom-carved bridge usually costs between $300 and $450.
Photo 6
Bridge-plate blues. Located inside the guitar right below the bridge, the bridge plate is tough to inspect for damage, but there are a few telltale signs to look for. If the wrap securing the ball end to the string extends over the saddle, the bridge plate is probably worn out. And if the bridge is cracked across the pin holes, the bridge plate is probably cracked as well. Either way, the bridge plate will have to be repaired or replaced. Why? A damaged bridge plate, like the loose and cracked one in Photo 6, can lead to brace failure, a cracked bridge, and cracks or splits in the top. The cost to replace a bridge plate can run from $350 up to $500.
Neck, frets, and fretboard. After examining the body, it’s time to investigate the neck. Start by sighting down the neck from the string nut to the body, while looking for any warps, twists, or the dreaded “ski jump” at the end of the neck. If a neck has any of these issues, the only way to permanently correct it is to plane and re-fret it. Additionally, if the frets have dents in them (Photo 7), they may need to be replaced. Always play each string up and down the fretboard to check for string rattle or muted notes—signs that the frets may require work. A re-fret job can cost anywhere from $300 to $600, so don’t rush this inspection.
Neck angle. This extremely important element determines an acoustic guitar’s playability, volume, and tone. If the neck angle is low in relation to the bridge, the action will be high, making the guitar difficult to play. Conversely, if the neck angle is high, the action will be too low.
Here’s an easy way to determine if a guitar’s neck angle is off: Look at the action at the 12th fret and then check the height of the bridge saddle between the 3rd and 4th strings. If the action is high at the 12th fret, but the saddle is short—less than 1/8"—the guitar has a low neck angle. If the saddle is tall (over 1/4"), but the action is too low, it has a high neck angle.
Whether high or low, the guitar is losing volume and tone, and it won’t play as well as it could. A perfect neck angle provides comfortable action at the 12th fret with the saddle measuring between 1/8" and 1/4". This will leave enough room to adjust the saddle height as needed to accommodate seasonal changes.
If a flattop has a bolt-on neck—as many modern acoustics do—adjusting neck angle is a relatively inexpensive repair, about the cost of a setup. However, if the guitar has a dovetail neck joint, the repair can run $300 to $600.
Intonation. This describes how well a guitar plays in tune as you fret notes up and down the neck. Before you buy any instrument you should check its intonation, but this is especially true for an acoustic guitar because it doesn’t have individually adjustable saddles.
To check the intonation, you need a quality tuner. First tune the guitar to concert pitch, then pluck the 12th-fret harmonic on the 1st string. Watching the tuner, adjust the string until the harmonic is in tune. This is your reference pitch. Next, press the string down at the 12th fret, pluck that note and compare it to the 12th-fret harmonic.
Always play each string up and down the fretboard to check for string rattle or muted notes—signs that the frets may require work.
If those two tones differ, the guitar will not play in tune along the fretboard. Test each string this way and make a mental note of any discrepancies between the 12th-fret harmonics and corresponding fretted notes.
Correcting a guitar’s intonation can be as simple as re-carving the strings’ breakpoint on the original saddle, but sometimes it requires making a new saddle, replacing the string nut, or even filling and then re-cutting the bridge saddle slot. These repairs can cost from $70 to $300, depending on what’s required.
Repair cost versus value. If an acoustic needs some repairs, this doesn’t automatically mean it’s not worth buying. The real trick is to understand how much you’ll need to invest in relation to the guitar’s market value.
Sometimes investing in repairs can pay off handsomely. For example, I once had a client bring me a 1940 Martin D-18 in terrible condition. My quote for restoration was $4,000. That sounds like a lot to invest, right? As it turns out, he only paid about $800 for this vintage Martin. After researching the value of a 1940 D-18, I discovered that the guitar would be worth nearly three times what my client would spend on restoring it, so we went ahead with the project.
Of course, this isn’t a typical occurrence. Sometimes you may buy a guitar at fair market value, only to discover that it needs several hundred dollars of repairs. Now, as they say in real estate, you’re upside down.
To avoid this, spend the time to research the value of an instrument—and the costs to repair it—before you make a purchase. Also keep in mind that when a guitar has structural cracks, it lowers the value (even with a perfect repair), so it’s important to figure the loss of value into the equation.
If done correctly, repairs like a neck reset, re-fret job, or re-gluing a bridge won’t devalue an instrument. Researching the fair market value of a comparable instrument with similar repairs will help you decide if the one you’re considering is worth buying. If the repairs plus the cost of the instrument exceed its fair market value, I’d pass on the deal.
A final thought: If you’re unsure about the condition of an acoustic you plan to purchase, have a qualified luthier look it over before you buy. It’s like buying a used car: The small cost of a professional evaluation can save you big bucks and spare you potential headaches.
Single-coils and humbuckers aren’t the only game in town anymore. From hybrid to hexaphonic, Joe Naylor, Pete Roe, and Chris Mills are thinking outside the bobbin to bring guitarists new sonic possibilities.
Electric guitar pickups weren’t necessarily supposed to turn out the way they did. We know the dominant models of single-coils and humbuckers—from P-90s to PAFs—as the natural and correct forms of the technology. But the history of the 6-string pickup tells a different story. They were mostly experiments gone right, executed with whatever materials were cheapest and closest at hand. Wartime embargos had as much influence on the development of the electric guitar pickup as did any ideas of function, tone, or sonic quality—maybe more so.
Still, we think we know what pickups should sound and look like. Lucky for us, there have always been plenty of pickup builders who aren’t so convinced. These are the makers who devised the ceramic-magnet pickup, gold-foils, and active, high-gain pickups. In 2025, nearly 100 years after the first pickup bestowed upon a humble lap-steel guitar the power to blast our ears with soundwaves, there’s no shortage of free-thinking, independent wire-winders coming up with new ways to translate vibrating steel strings into thrilling music.
Joe Naylor, Chris Mills, and Pete Roe are three of them. As the creative mind behind Reverend Guitars, Naylor developed the Railhammer pickup, which combines both rail and pole-piece design. Mills, in Pennsylvania, builds his own ZUZU guitars with wildly shaped, custom-designed pickups. And in the U.K., Roe developed his own line of hexaphonic pickups to achieve the ultimate in string separation and note definition. All three of them told us how they created their novel noisemakers.
Joe Naylor - Railhammer Pickups
Joe Naylor, pictured here, started designing Railhammers out of personal necessity: He needed a pickup that could handle both pristine cleans and crushing distortion back to back.
Like virtually all guitar players, Joe Naylor was on a personal tone quest. Based in Troy, Michigan, Naylor helped launch Reverend Guitars in 1996, and in the late ’90s, he was writing and playing music that involved both clean and distorted movements in one song. He liked his neck pickup for the clean parts, but it was too muddy for high-gain playing. He didn’t want to switch pickups, which would change the sound altogether.
He set out to design a neck pickup that could represent both ends of the spectrum with even fidelity. That led him to a unique design concept: a thin, steel rail under the three thicker, low-end strings, and three traditional pole pieces for the higher strings, both working with a bar magnet underneath. At just about a millimeter thick, rails, Naylor explains, only interact with a narrow section of the thicker strings, eliminating excess low-end information. Pole pieces, at about six millimeters in diameter, pick up a much wider and less focused window of the higher strings, which works to keep them fat and full. “If you go back and look at some of the early rail pickups—Bill Lawrence’s and things like that—the low end is very tight,” says Naylor. “It’s almost like your tone is being EQ’d perfectly, but it’s being done by the pickup itself.”
That idea formed the basis for Railhammer Pickups, which began official operations in 2012. Naylor built the first prototype in his basement, and it sounded great from the start, so he expanded the format to a bridge pickup. That worked out, too. “I decided, ‘Maybe I’m onto something here,’” says Naylor. Despite the additional engineering, Railhammers have remained passive pickups, with fairly conventional magnets—including alnico 5s and ceramics—wires, and structures. Naylor says this combines the clarity of active pickups with the “thick, organic tone” of passive pickups.
“It’s almost like your tone is being EQ’d perfectly, but it’s being done by the pickup itself.” —Joe Naylor
The biggest difficulty Naylor faced was in the physical construction of the pickups. He designed and ordered custom molds for the pickup’s bobbins, which cost a good chunk of money. But once those were in hand, the Railhammers didn’t need much fiddling. Despite their size differences, the rail and pole pieces produce level volume outputs for balanced response across all six strings.
Naylor’s formula has built a significant following among heavy-music players. Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan is a Railhammer player with several signature models; ditto Reeves Gabrels, the Cure guitarist and David Bowie collaborator. Bob Balch from Fu Manchu and Kyle Shutt from the Sword have signatures, too, and other players include Code Orange’s Reba Meyers, Gogol Bordello’s Boris Pelekh, and Voivod’s Dan “Chewy” Mongrain.
Chris Mills - ZUZU Pickups
When Chris Mills started building his own electric guitars, he decided to build his own components for them, too. He suspected that in the course of the market’s natural thinning of the product herd, plenty of exciting options had been left unrealized. He started working with non-traditional components and winding in non-traditional ways, which turned him on to the idea that things could be done differently. “I learned early on that there are all kinds of sonic worlds out there to be discovered,” says Mills.
Eventually, he zeroed in on the particular sound of a 5-way-switch Stratocaster in positions two and four: Something glassy and clear, but fatter and more dimensional. In Mills’ practice, “dimensional” refers to the varying and sometimes simultaneous sound qualities attained from, say, a finger pad versus a fingernail. “I didn’t want just one thing,” says Mills. “I wanted multiple things happening at once.”
Mills wanted something that split the difference between a humbucker’s fullness and the Strat’s plucky verve, all in clean contexts. But he didn’t want an active pickup; he wanted a passive, drop-in solution to maximize appeal. To achieve the end tone, Mills wired his bobbins in parallel to create “interposed signal processing,” a key piece of his patented design. “I found that when I [signal processed] both of them, I got too much of one particular quality, and I wanted that dimensionality that comes with two qualities simultaneously, so that was essential,” explains Mills.
Mills loved the sound of alnico 5 blade magnets, so he worked with a 3D modeling engineer to design plastic bobbins that could accommodate both the blades and the number of turns of wire he desired. This got granular—a millimeter taller, a millimeter wider—until they came out exactly right. Then came the struggle of fitting them into a humbucker cover. Some key advice from experts helped Mills save on space to make the squeeze happen.
Mills’ ZUZUbuckers don’t have the traditional pole pieces and screws of most humbuckers, so he uses the screw holes on the cover as “portholes” looking in on a luxe abalone design. And his patented “curved-coil” pickups feature a unique winding method to mix up the tonal profile while maintaining presence across all frequencies.
“I learned early on that there are all kinds of sonic worlds out there to be discovered.” —Chris Mills
Mills has also patented a single-coil pickup with a curved coil, which he developed to get a different tonal quality by changing the relative location of the poles to one another and to the bridge. Within that design is another patented design feature: reducing the number of turns at the bass end of the coil. “Pretty much every pickup maker suggests that you lower the bass end [of the pickup] to compensate for the fact that it's louder than the treble end,” says Mills. “That'll work, but doing so alters the quality and clarity of the bass end. My innovation enables you to keep the bass end up high toward the strings.”
Even Mills’ drop-in pickups tend to look fairly distinct, but his more custom designs, like his curved-coil pickup, are downright baroque. Because his designs don’t rely on typical pickup construction, there aren’t the usual visual cues, like screws popping out of a humbucker cover, or pole pieces on a single-coil pickup. (Mills does preserve a whiff of these ideals with “portholes” on his pickup covers that reveal that pickup below.) Currently, he’s excited by the abalone-shell finish inserts he’s loading on top of his ZUZUbuckers, which peek through the aforementioned portholes.
“It all comes down to the challenge that we face in this industry of having something that’s original and distinctive, and also knowing that with every choice you make, you risk alienating those who prefer a more traditional and familiar look,” says Mills.
Pete Roe - Submarine Pickups
Roe’s stick-on Submarine pickups give individual strings their own miniature pickup, each with discrete, siloed signals that can be manipulated on their own. Ever wanted to have a fuzz only on the treble strings, or an echo applied just to the low-register strings? Submarine can achieve that.
Pete Roe says that at the start, his limited amount of knowledge about guitar pickups was a kind of superpower. If he had known how hard it would be to get to where he is now, he likely wouldn’t have started. He also would’ve worked in a totally different way. But hindsight is 20/20.
Roe was working in singer-songwriter territory and looking to add some bass to his sound. He didn’t want to go down the looping path, so he stuck with octave pedals, but even these weren’t satisfactory for him. He started winding his own basic pickups, using drills, spools of wire, and magnets he’d bought off the internet. Like most other builders, he wanted to make passive pickups—he played lots of acoustic guitar, and his experiences trying to find last-minute replacement batteries for most acoustic pickups left him scarred.
Roe started building a multiphonic pickup: a unit with multiple discrete “pickups” within one housing. In traditional pickups, the vibration from the strings is converted into a voltage in the 6-string-wide coils of wire within the pickup. In multiphonic pickups, there are individual coils beneath each string. That means they’re quite tiny—Roe likens each coil to the size of a Tylenol pill. “Because you’re making stuff small, it actually works better because it’s not picking up signals from adjacent strings,” says Roe. “If you’ve got it set up correctly, there’s very, very little crosstalk.”
With his Submarine Pickups, Roe began by creating the flagship Submarine: a quick-stick pickup designed to isolate and enhance the signals of two strings. The SubPro and SubSix expanded the concept to true hexaphonic capability. Each string has a designated coil, which on the SubPro combine into four separate switchable outputs; the SubSix counts six outputs. The pickups use two mini output jacks, with triple-band male connectors to carry three signals each. Explains Roe: “If you had a two-channel output setup, you could have E, A, and D strings going to one side, and G, B, and E to the other. Or you could have E and A going to one, the middle two strings muted, and the B and E going to a different channel.” Each output has a 3-position switch, which toggles between one of two channels, or mute.
“I’m just saying there’s some unexplored territory at the beginning of the signal chain. If you start looking inside your guitar, then it opens up a world of opportunities.” —Pete Roe
This all might seem a little overly complicated, but Roe sees it as a simplification. He says when most people think about their sound, they see its origin in the guitar as fixed, only manipulatable later in the chain via pedals, amp settings, or speaker decisions. “I’m not saying that’s wrong,” says Roe. “I’m just saying there’s some unexplored territory at the beginning of the signal chain. If you start looking inside your guitar, then it opens up a world of opportunities which may or may not be useful to you. Our customers tend to be the ones who are curious and looking for something new that they can’t achieve in a different way.
“If each string has its own channel, you can start to get some really surprising effects by using those six channels as a group,” continues Roe. “You could pan the strings across the stereo field, which as an effect is really powerful. You suddenly have this really wide, panoramic guitar sound. But then when you start applying familiar effects to the strings in isolation, you can end up with some really surprising textural sounds that you just can’t achieve in any other way. You can get some very different sounds if you’re applying these distortions to strings in isolation. You can get that kind of lead guitar sound that sort of cuts through everything, this really pure, monophonic sound. That sounds very different because what you don’t get is this thing called intermodulation distortion, which is the muddiness, essentially, that you get from playing chords that are more complex than roots and fifths with a load of distortion.” And despite the powerful hardware, the pickups don’t require any soldering or labor. Using a “nanosuction” technology similar to what geckos possess, the pickups simply adhere to the guitar’s body. Submarine’s manuals provide clear instruction on how to rig up the pickups.
“An analogy I like to use is: Say you’re remixing a track,” explains Roe. “If you get the stems, you can actually do a much better job, because you can dig inside and see how the thing is put together. Essentially, Submarine is doing that to guitars. It’s allowing guitarists and producers to look inside the instrument and rebuild it from its constituent parts in new and exciting ways.”
The legendary German hard-rock guitarist deconstructs his expressive playing approach and recounts critical moments from his historic career.
This episode has three main ingredients: Shifty, Schenker, and shredding. What more do you need?
Chris Shiflett sits down with Michael Schenker, the German rock-guitar icon who helped launch his older brother Rudolf Schenker’s now-legendary band, Scorpions. Schenker was just 11 when he played his first gig with the band, and recorded on their debut LP, Lonesome Crow, when he was 16. He’s been playing a Gibson Flying V since those early days, so its only natural that both he and Shifty bust out the Vs for this occasion.
While gigging with Scorpions in Germany, Schenker met and was poached by British rockers UFO, with whom he recorded five studio records and one live release. (Schenker’s new record, released on September 20, celebrates this pivotal era with reworkings of the material from these albums with a cavalcade of high-profile guests like Axl Rose, Slash, Dee Snider, Adrian Vandenberg, and more.) On 1978’s Obsession, his last studio full-length with the band, Schenker cut the solo on “Only You Can Rock Me,” which Shifty thinks carries some of the greatest rock guitar tone of all time. Schenker details his approach to his other solos, but note-for-note recall isn’t always in the cards—he plays from a place of deep expression, which he says makes it difficult to replicate his leads.
Tune in to learn how the Flying V impacted Schenker’s vibrato, the German parallel to Page, Beck, and Clapton, and the twists and turns of his career from Scorpions, UFO, and MSG to brushes with the Rolling Stones.
Credits
Producer: Jason Shadrick
Executive Producers: Brady Sadler and Jake Brennan for Double Elvis
Engineering Support by Matt Tahaney and Matt Beaudion
Video Editor: Addison Sauvan
Graphic Design: Megan Pralle
Special thanks to Chris Peterson, Greg Nacron, and the entire Volume.com crew.
Snark releases its most compact model ever: the Crazy Little Thing rechargeable clip-on headstock tuner.
Offering precise tuning accuracy and a super bright display screen, the Crazy Little Thing is approximately the size of your guitar pick – easy to use, unobtrusive and utterly dependable.
Housed in a sturdy shell, the Crazy Little Thing can be rotated for easy viewing from any angle, and its amazingly bright display makes it perfect for the sunniest outdoor stages or the darkest indoor studios. You can clip it to the front of your headstock or on the back of your headstock for extra-discreet usage – and you can easily adjust the display to accommodate your preference.
As the newest addition to Snark’s innovative line of headstock tuners, the Crazy Little Thing is rechargeable (no batteries!) and comes with a USB-C cable/adapter for easy charging. Its display screen includes a battery gauge, so you can easily tell when it’s time to recharge.
The Crazy Little Thing’s highly responsive tuning sensor works great with a broad range of instruments, including electric and acoustic guitar, bass, ukulele, mandolin and more. It also offers adjustable pitch calibration: its default reference pitch is A440, but also offers pitch calibration at 432Hz and 442 Hz.
Snark’s Crazy Little Thing rechargeable headstock tuner carries a street price of $21.99. For more information visit snarktuners.com.
The in-demand New York-based musician and singer shares how she became one of the music industry’s buzziest bass players.
At 26, Blu DeTiger is the youngest musician ever to have a signature Fender bass guitar. The Fender Limited Player Plus x Blu DeTiger Jazz Bass, announced in September, pays tribute to the bassist and singer’s far-reaching impact and cultural sway. She’s played with Caroline Polachek, Bleachers, FLETCHER, Olivia Rodrigo, and more, and released her own LP in March 2024. In 2023, Forbes feature her on their top 30 Under 30 list of musicians. So how did DeTiger work her way to the top?
DeTiger opens up on this episode of Wong Notes about her career so far, which started at a School of Rock camp at age seven. That’s where she started performing and learning to gig with others—she played at CBGB’s before she turned 10. DeTiger took workshops with Victor Wooten at Berklee followed and studied under Steven Wolf, but years of DJing around New York City, which hammered in the hottest basslines in funk and disco, also imprinted on her style. (Larry Graham is DeTiger’s slap-bass hero.)
DeTiger and Wong dish on the ups and downs of touring and session life, collaborating with pop artists to make “timeless” pop songs, and how to get gigs. DeTiger’s advice? “You gotta be a good hang.”