This guide is intended to help people purchase acoustic guitars sight unseen.  eBay has became a great market for used instruments; but without being able to see and touch the instrument in person, many potential buyers are hesitant to fork out hundred or even thousands of dollars.  There a many things you can find out before committing to an auction, this guide will provide a general direction on how.

Know the Guitar You Want to Buy

 Guitars come with all makes, shapes, and materials.  Unless you are looking for true one-of-a-kind guitars, you need to have fairly good idea of the brand and model you want to get before start browsing eBay.  If this is your first guitar purchase, why not take the time to go to a local guitar store with large inventory and sample as many as possible to see what you like?  Once you narrow down to few choices, your quest had just become clearer and you can proceed with a focused search.

Pick up eBay’s Search Tricks

Here is a good time to introduce the power of eBay’s search capability for those unfamiliar with it.  The Advanced Search offers a good way to narrow down what you need to go through.  The form is intuitive enough for most purposes.  Put in what you want, what to exclude, and don’t forget some obvious variations.  For example, if you have your heart set on a Martin D-28, don’t forget to search for Martin D28 also.  If you are looking for a Hawaiian koa guitar from several manufacturers, separate manufacturers with commas and add “koa”.

If you are really savvy, further fine-tune your search with Advanced Search Commands.  Once you are satisfied with the results produced, save the search and choose notification so your dream guitar doesn’t get away!

Understand Structural Problems

Structural issues are what you want to avoid the most, because those will render the guitar useless sooner than you’d expect (unless you are buying for a purpose other than playing).  Structural problems can be related to four things:

• Accidental handling.  Although mishandling usually result in cosmetic damages only, but sometimes it affects the structural integrity of the guitar.  For example, broken headstock could be glued back with reinforcements, and a small puncture can be patched up with another piece of wood.  However, unless you are really low on budget or know exactly what you are doing, I would not recommend it because usually if there are accidental damages, I suspect the owner is also ignorant about maintenance.  These are fairly easy to tell because of inconsistencies in the wood grain are obvious.  Just ask the seller about them.

• Ignorant maintenance.  A guitar is made of natural materials that are susceptible to environmental conditions.  In geographical areas where the winter months require heating, without humidification the guitar will quickly dry up and alter the dimensions of carefully fitted parts.  Too much humidity may cause molds to develop if not caught early on.  Also, exposing the guitar to extreme temperatures may result in finish checking, but that’s mostly cosmetic and not structural.  Finally, some people’s perspirations are more corrosive than others.  This could leave marks in the finish or the wood, but again mostly cosmetic.

1. Ask the owner about the condition of the guitar’s storage.  This is not a good way to tell anymore because many people use “smoke-free” and “humidity-controlled” like selling used sports cars with “female-driven” and “never-floored”.  Nonetheless, it is the first place to start.
2. A good place to check for humidity-related issues is the frets on the neck.  Metal expands and contracts at a very different rate than wood.  Ask the owner to run a finger up and down the two sides of the neck and see if any of the frets are protruding.  Also, if the fretboard has bindings, you can probably see tiny cracks around where the frets the binding.  Finally, sometimes the fret will pop out of place slightly, which can also be seen from the side of the neck if the fret is firmly seated.
3. Severe environmental exposures can also cause wood to warp or crack, mostly on the front and back because they are made to flex more.  To test for curvature, run a palm across from one edge to another and feel for unevenness.  To test for any cracks through the wood, a good technique to differentiate is to shine a bright pocket flashlight from the outside into the area.  If you find light coming through and into the darkness inside the soundhole, obviously it’s through the wood.  Check areas where wood pieces join by running a finger across and feel for unevenness.

• Law of physics.  Like any string instrument, the strings are constantly pulling on the guitar from tuners through the neck and end at the bridge, while suspended by the nut (neck) and the saddle (bridge).  If you think of this as a bow, the bow will bend to accommodate the tension of the strings.  The damages could be either bending or warping of the neck, lifting of the bridge, or lifting of the surrounding area of the bridge.

1. Ask the owner to check the straightness of the neck by looking at it from the highest fret to the lowest fret (headstock side).  Look from both the bass and the treble sides.
2. Another method is to press down the bass and treble strings (one at a time) on the first fret and the fret where the neck meets the body.  The strings should show a very slight gap to the fret in the middle of the neck, no more than a business card’s thickness.  If one side is showing more gap than the other, it’s also a sign that the neck is warped, if their resting positions are not faulty to start with.
3. Ask the owner to attempt sliding a piece of letter paper under the bridge and see if they go under.  It should be okay if the paper goes under corners for 1/8” or so, but if it’s directly on the long side away from the neck, it may be a sign that the glue is coming loose.
4. Again ask the owner to run a palm from one side of the soundboard to the other.  If there are any rising of the soundboard, they may not be visually detectable but one can definitely feel the curvature.  Please note that this is a very sensitive test, even guitars with good construction may exhibit slight curves after a short period of time.  It’s just, unfortunately, physics.

• Poor craftsmanship.  I do not wish to get into this area because it has nothing to do with the fact of whether the guitar is new or used, therefore not the focus of this guide.

Accept Cosmetic Flaws and Wear

This topic is highly subjective and is probably where most buyers and sellers get into disputes.  I have seen people calling a small crater a “ding”, or a long crack a “scratch”.  The key here is to be very specific.  I will sum up cosmetic flaws and normal playwear below.  Obviously flaws and wear will decrease the value of the guitar, but if you are on a tighter budget, maybe few minor issues can get you the dream guitar you desire.

• Dings, indentations, bumps, cuffs, etc.  Assuming most of them are round in shape, ask the owner what’s the diameter and depth of the flaw.  Also, ask if the wood is exposed from the damage.
• Scratches, rashes, hairlines, groves, scuffs, etc.  Assuming most of them are line-shaped, ask the owner what’s the width and length of the damage, and how deep is it.  Also ask if the wood is exposed.
• Finish cracks.  I’ve only seen them mostly in glossy finishes.  They could crack for a number of reasons but do not confuse this with a crack in the wood (see structural section above).  Be careful because sometimes a very fine crack through the wood is not easily detectable.
• Wear on the frets.  For steel string guitars, the heaviest wear will most likely be on the lower frets under the 2 treble strings.  It will require replacing if the string buzzes when pressed on the fret (because it’s too low).  Ask the owner to press down each fret with each string and pick it medium-hard to see if there is any buzzing.  This also checks for the setup described in the next section.
• Wear around the sound hole.  Some people strum hard and with hard picks.  These will show up as anything from faint lines to scuffing off the wood around the hole in the direction of primary hand’s strumming.  Ask about them as you would with scratches and dings.
• If the owner is capable, ask for macro photographs of the damaged area close-up with something else next to it for sizing reference.  This requires more skills in photography and the right lighting condition, so not everyone can produce it.

Ask About the Action

This is a fairly minor issue in my opinion because if you found out about all the structural and cosmetic condition, action is personal preference and not anything difficult to change.  However, I do want to mention some things to consider.

Action, for the most part, describes how far the strings are away from the frets at resting position.  You can ask the owner to describe how far the string is to the fretboard on both the bass and the treble strings.  This is probably something you should check out in the store if it is to be your first guitar.  In general, low actions are good for someone who likes to change chords a lot and plays lightly; high actions are good for someone who strums hard so strings don’t buzz.

Many sellers like to describe the action as being low, because older guitars tend to have a higher action due to the bowing effect of the strings’ tension (see Structural section above).  In this situation, it is not about the setup, and should not be considered as such either.  A high action due to either neck bending or bridge lifting is a serious problem and there is no cheap fix.  There needs to be sufficient height in the saddle to lower the action to what you desire.

Do Not Fall Victim to Scams

Unfortunately, as eBay gains more popularity for guitar traders, scammers gravitate towards it as well.  Every guitar I bought or sold on eBay had followed with a series of emails offering the same for a much cheaper price.  Here are some basic precautions one can take to avoid becoming a victim.

• Check seller’s feedback ratings.  This used to be a good gauge of a seller’s integrity, but since identity theft became popular with scammers, unfortunately some honest members became vehicles for fraud.
• Check seller’s feedbacks for patterns.  If the seller has a high feedback, he/she probably conducts business on eBay for living.  As a result, he/she won’t all of a sudden go from selling CDs and DVDs to thousand dollar guitars.
• Ask the seller to take couple more pictures at different angles.  Obviously, the scammer won’t have the actual guitar to take pictures with.  And don’t buy the “I loaned the guitar out or dropped camera in bath tub story”.
• Ask the seller about the experience, from his/her acquisition to his/her playing style.  You probably had done so already if you are reading up to this point.
• Exercise common sense.  If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.
• If you suspect anything, report to eBay via the Help pages.  They have full sections on how to protect you as a consumer.

Good luck and keep on playing!

There is a difference between a “used” guitar and a “vintage” guitar.  Buying vintage guitars is like buying antiques, it’s really more up to each bidder’s taste and appraisal of the value.  No one simple guide can account for all the considerations that affect the value, which is already quite subjective to start with.

Also, although some techniques can be used to gauge low-end guitars, it’s not the intent of this guide and many considerations will not be applicable.  For example, many conditions I describe as problems could simply be poor craftsmanship to start with.

Finally, you may have already noticed, I did not cover any wood varieties in my discussion.  It is another highly subjective area for which I will leave for some other talented writers.