Buying a guitar should be an exciting and thoughtful process.  Before making the final commitment, here’s a crash course in what to look for.  Consider a few important key factors:

Good Action—The action of a guitar is the distance between the strings and the fret board.  The closer the action, the more playable the guitar.  The action of any guitar will be closest at the first fret and will increase correspondingly as you move towards the sound hole.  If you find that the 17^th or 19^th fret has enough space to allow the passage of your finger, fist, or a double-decker bus, the action is too high; you may want to move on to the next guitar.  If you’d like to test the action on a more quantitative level, try asking the sales clerk for three 1-millimeter picks.  Stack all three picks underneath the first, or smallest, string at the 12^th fret.  If you can fit all three picks underneath the string, the action is too high.  If you can only fit one pick beneath the 1^st string at the 12^th fret, the action is low, which is good (in most cases).

Buzzing strings—Strum the guitar’s open strings (i.e., don’t use your fretting hand—just strum) and make sure you don’t hear any buzzing.  Buzzing is a result of the action being too low or a flaw in the neck’s design, which causes the strings to be situated too closely to the fret board so that their vibration is compromised.  Play every fret on every string to ensure that there is no buzzing.  You don’t have to know any chords to check the “unbuzzworthiness” of each fret.

Good Harmonics—This is a test to make sure that the design of the guitar’s neck is without any glaring flaws.  At the 12^th fret of the guitar, lightly touch the first, or smallest string, with your left hand.   Then pluck the string with your right hand and quickly remove the finger (of your left hand) from the string—you should hear guitar’s 12^th fret harmonics.  Once you’ve heard this sound, play the same string at the 12^th fret as you normally would with the appropriate amount of pressure.  You should hear a note of the exact same pitch, only stronger.  Do this with all six strings.  If the two notes sound different, move on.

Happy shopping!

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