Guitar set up and maintenance and Quality Control at Cool Hand Guitars

All guitars undergo quality control checks and undergo setup and maintenance before being packaged up and sent to the consumer.

Now when somebody opens up a box and gets the guitar out :

A) in terms of playability i want it to be as close to perfect as physically possible and

B) i want people to be happy with their guitars.

As a rule of thumb before sending it out ill set it up how i thinks best for that type of guitar unless the customer states otherwise.

Im more than happy to set the guitar up how the customer wants it at your request eg. what gauge strings you want and how you like the action, setup exactly how you like it, that suits your style of music, playing style and depending on what type of guitar it is. This way you will be happy with it when you get it out the box and wont have to take your guitar to be set up by a guitar technician or a Luthier, allthough like a lot of things guitars do require maintenence so will need to be set up from time to time to keep its playbility functioning at optimum levels.

When people order guitars online 95 percent of the time they arrive poorly set up which means the buyer has the invovienience of having to take it to a technician and has to pay for their guitar to be set up. This includes new guitars that are mass produced as they are often sat around in warehouses before being sold on and second hand guitars are often bought from online marketplaces in which you dont really know what your getting.

Here at coolhandguitars – Ive solved that problem reduced the fustration of recieving a poorly set up guitar and having to pay more money out by setting it up before sending it out.

Now you can see in my display picture ive took a shot of my tools, not all of them but the tools most needed to carry out most tasks under guitar setup and maintenence.

Ive practiced extensivly over time daily working on low end budget friendly guitars known as “beater guitars” which is the best way of learning about guitars – by working on them.

When it comes to setting up, its generally quite straight forward but being good at it takes a bit more doing. Its all presicion work and all mathematics using metric and imperial measurements.

Tasks include truss rod adjustments, some guitar players like a straight neck but most prefer a little bit of relief in the neck.

Setting the action (string height from the fretboard) by truss rod adjustments and/or making adjustments at the bridge and saddles.

Intonation – using a screwdriver to make adjustments ensuring the guitar sounds in tune all over the fretboard not just in the first position.

Adjustments at the nut which can include sanding it to shape or filing the depth or width  to lower the action or accomodate for thinker gauge strings of the nut slots using hosco nut files from japan thats are made for presicion.

Any fret wear can cause extreme intonation and playability problems so any wear to the frets will be resolved by spot levelling or setting the neck perfectly straight, levelling the frets out with a levelling beam then reshaping/crowning the frets back to the centre using a crowning file made for fretwork.

With electric guitars any noise or crackling coming from the tone and volume pots or jack socket will be resolved with a spray of contact cleaner to clean the dust or if needed a little bit of soldering to strengthen the connections. These problems can happen to any guitar at anytime regardless of how new or how old they are.

Thanks for taking the time to read this through as the purpose of this was to inform the buyers, give you peace of mind that i go the extra mile to make sure my guitars are the best they can be and an insight as to what goes on behind the scenes at coolhandguitars.

Coolhand 🙂