How to Examine The Soundboard of a Used Guitar

Series Summary

The modern guitar dates back to the 15th century, but earlier instruments that eventually became the Roman guitar are found in records of the first century CE and even earlier. Guitars are stringed instruments (usually four, six, or twelve) with a fretboard and a sound-modulating hollow body. They share a common ancestor with the sitar of India, made famous in the West by Ravi Shankar and George Harrison. Electric guitars were first produced in the 20th century and continue to be a striking icon within American popular culture.

This free video series will show you how to inspect and examine an acoustic guitar before buying. Expert Kip Bradford shows you piece-by-piece how to decide whether the guitar you are looking at is worth the price. He instructs you on examining the fretboard, headstock, and soundboard along with the bridge, siding, nuts, bracing, back and neck. You will be ready to talk down that local guitar vendor in no time!

Video Transcript

"KIP BRADFORD: Hi, my name's Kip and I'm here on behalf of Expert Village. Today, we're going to take a look at what you should look for when you're trying to purchase or considering purchased a used acoustic guitar. I get a lot of calls everyday of people looking for a used acoustic guitar or an electric guitar with the mindset that they're looking for something cheaper than new and that won't always happen. And then once we start looking at the mechanics of the instrument so that you can evaluate whether or not it's an instrument that is in playable condition or one that can even be repaired if it has issues, we have to make a decision whether or not it is still worth purchasing. And so, as we go through the different steps of looking at this used guitar, it doesn't have strings on it. It has floppy strings on this end. This is typical of what you would find at the garage sale. So we haven't fixed this guitar up a bit. We just want to take a close look and see and determine is this guitar going to be worth purchasing? The first thing I would do is take a look at the top of the guitar and especially in the sound hole here. What we want to determine is the top, a solid Spruce or whatever type of wood they used, Spruce is common, Cedar you'll run into. But we want to determine is it solid wood or is it a laminate wood? And by looking in the sound hole, I did this section here, you will be able to see if the grain of the wood goes all the way through or if it stops and it will look kinda like plywood which will have different layers here. It is more desirable to get a solid top. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't buy this instrument because most low-end instruments are going to be a laminate anyway. And that does not affect its ability to play. It just affects the way that it sounds. When looking for a solid top, when you're looking at a solid top, there are some signs and of course this is a big debate between Luthier's, which is guys that make guitars, but in theory, the more grain, the tighter the grain, the straighter the grain and the more vertical, so when you look in the hole, does the grain go straight through or does it curve off? But if it goes straight through, so the vert you what you're really looking for at least in my opinion is straight, tight, a lot of the dark lines going straight through. And that will tell you that it's a good quality top. Now, why is the solid top--the sound better? Well, it vibrates differently and as it ages you get it a hold of an old Martin or an old Gibson or something in that nature that's very, very old as a solid top of quality, solid top gets older. Then it begins to open up and begins to sound even better with age. Whereas a laminate-top or a plywood top will sound the same today as it well a hundred years from now, is something that lasts that long. So that's the first thing that I will look at is determine the quality of the wood that I'm dealing with."