How to Buy an Acoustic Guitar

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Tom. This video is for Expert Village.com, and in this section, now that you know how to play your three or four chords, you've been able to figure out how to play your songs on the radio and you've got some strumming and picking patterns to work with, what I want to do is give you a few hints on how to get a guitar, how to buy a guitar. You may have one that you've borrowed; you may have a clunker at home. Here's a good way to get a guitar. Rather than going in and buying a new guitar, which you can do, normally you can get a much better guitar second hand. There's a couple of things you need to look for when you're looking for a second hand guitar to make sure that you're not getting ripped off. The first thing to do is on the guitar you want to make sure that the neck has a reinforcement. They call it a "truss rod." It's actually a piece of metal that goes through this neck. As you can imagine there's a lot of tension on these strings, and without a truss rod that neck will eventually bend, making it very difficult and dangerous to play the guitar. So what you want to look for is sometimes you'll see a little plastic cover up here, or if you stick your finger right in there, you should be able to see almost like a hole or a little allen wrench, like a nut for an allen wrench. That means that there is a metal bar, or a truss rod in the neck. So that's a must, make sure it has that. The second thing to do is to look for the wood on the guitar body. It should be a grain that's close together. If you see something that looks like plywood, just back away from it. You're looking for something that has a good grain, that just gives it a better tone. Most guitar tops are made of spruce, and it's got a very close grain. As well when you're looking at the guitar, have a look at this bridge. The bridge is where the strings all fasten at this end. Make sure that it's fastened tight to the guitar. On some used guitars the glue might have dried out and it's coming up a little bit."