You Just Bought a Used Guitar. Here's Exactly What I'd Do First.

The box lands on your porch and every instinct says the same thing: plug it in and crank it. I get it. But after a few hundred used guitars have crossed my bench, I can tell you the first hour matters more than the first riff. A used guitar arrives with a history you didn't witness — a truss rod that got a "helpful" turn, a control that's been sprayed with the wrong stuff, maybe a pickup that isn't the one that left the factory. Twenty or thirty minutes of methodical checking tells you what you actually bought and gets the thing playing the way it should. Here's the exact routine I run, in order.

1. Let it acclimate before you crack the case

This is the step people skip, and it's the one that can cost you a finish. If the guitar shipped — especially in cold weather — the wood and finish inside that box can be a lot colder than your living room. Open a freezing guitar into a warm, dry house and you can shock a nitrocellulose finish into a web of hairline cracks (finish checking). It looks exactly like the crazing you'd expect on a decades-old guitar, except you did it yourself in five minutes.

So don't rush it. If the box feels cold or warm to the touch, leave the guitar in its case, and leave the case closed, for a few hours until everything reaches room temperature. If it was below freezing outside, give it longer. This is also when the guitar starts settling into your home's humidity, which matters for the next steps — a neck that traveled through a humid warehouse will move once it dries out, so there's no point dialing in a setup on day one. Patience here is free.

2. Give it a real once-over — before you plug in

Now open it up and look at it like you're the one who has to stand behind it. Listing photos are chosen to flatter; your job is to find what they didn't show. Run your eye and your fingertips over the whole instrument: the headstock (especially the back of a Gibson-style angled headstock, where breaks and repairs hide), the neck-to-body joint, the finish under raking light, and the frets. Feel for sharp fret ends poking off the edge of the board — a classic sign the guitar dried out in transit — and look at the crowns for flat spots and divots under the first few frets.

None of this is about panic. It's about knowing. If you find something, you want to find it now, while a return window is still open, not three weeks later. If you're not sure what you're looking at, our deeper guides on checking the neck and truss rod and spotting a refret walk through the specifics.

3. Restring it — yes, even if it "has fresh strings"

I restring nearly every used guitar that comes in, and I'd tell you to do the same. Partly it's hygiene — you don't know whose hands were on those strings or how long they've really been there, whatever the ad said. Partly it's practical: old strings sound dull and give you a false read when you set intonation and judge tone. A known, fresh set means every judgment you make after this is honest.

With the strings off, take the two minutes to clean the fretboard while you can actually reach it. If it's unfinished rosewood or ebony, a barely-damp cloth lifts the grime, and a tiny dab of fretboard oil — worked in and then wiped off after a minute — is plenty. The mistake I see constantly is over-oiling: a soaked board doesn't get healthier, it gets gummy and can leave residue that creeps onto the frets. A maple board is usually sealed under finish, so it doesn't need oil at all — just wipe it down. If you want the full argument on this, we wrote up the lemon oil myth separately.

4. Check the neck relief

Fresh strings on and tuned to pitch, check the neck before you touch anything else. Relief is just the slight forward curve in the neck that keeps the strings from buzzing against the middle frets. Here's the read: put a capo at the 1st fret, hold the string down at the last fret, and look at the gap at roughly the 8th. You want a hair of daylight there — not dead flat, not a visible bow.

Measured with feeler gauges, most electrics are happy somewhere around 0.006" to 0.012" of gap — a thin business card slipped under the string at that point gets you in the neighborhood. If it's way off, the truss rod is the fix: tighten it (clockwise, viewed from the adjusting end) to pull out excess relief, loosen it if the neck is dead straight or back-bowed and the strings are choking out. The only rule that really matters for a beginner is to move in small steps — about an eighth of a turn — then retune and recheck. If the rod feels stuck or maxed out, stop and let a tech look at it; a seized truss rod is a real problem, not a "just crank it" situation.

5. Set the action and intonation — or book the setup

With relief right, the rest of a setup falls into place: string height at the bridge (action), then intonation so the guitar plays in tune up the neck. Here's the honest fork in the road. If you're handy and patient, you can learn to do this yourself, and it's rewarding. If you're new, the best money you can spend on a used guitar is a professional setup — it's the difference between an instrument that fights you and one that disappears in your hands. Either way, don't judge playability until it's been set up. Half the "this used guitar plays terrible" stories I hear are just a guitar that never got dialed in.

6. Sort out the electronics

Roll the volume and tone knobs through their range and flip the pickup switch a few times. Crackle and static when you turn a knob is almost always dirty, oxidized pots — not a dead guitar. The fix is a short burst of a proper electronics contact cleaner (DeoxIT is the standard) into the pot while you work the knob back and forth. A little goes a long way; don't drown it, and skip the household oils and WD-40, which do more harm than good. A jack that crackles or cuts out when you wiggle the cable is usually just a loose nut or a tired solder joint — cheap to fix, good to catch early.

While you're in there, note whether the guitar is all-original. Replaced pots, a swapped pickup, or non-original wiring aren't necessarily bad — plenty are upgrades — but they affect resale value and how the guitar sounds versus the spec sheet. Better to know than to be surprised later.

Then — and only then — plug in and enjoy it

Now you've earned the fun part. The guitar is acclimated, inspected, freshly strung, set up, and electrically sound, and you know exactly what you're holding. That's the whole point of the routine: not paranoia, but turning a stranger's old guitar into your guitar, with no surprises waiting a month down the line. Do it once and it becomes second nature on every guitar you bring home after.

Hunting for the next one? Everything currently on the bench and ready to go is in our in-stock used guitars, and every guitar we sell has already been through a version of this exact once-over.

FAQ

Do I really need to restring a used guitar if it came with new strings?

I'd still do it. You rarely know how old "new" strings really are or who handled them, and starting with a fresh, known set means every setup and tone judgment you make afterward is accurate. Strings are cheap insurance.

How long should I let a shipped guitar acclimate before opening it?

Until the closed case reaches room temperature — a couple of hours for a mildly cool box, longer if it shipped through freezing weather. The risk you're avoiding is thermal shock cracking the finish, so err on the side of waiting.

Is it safe to adjust the truss rod myself?

On most guitars, small adjustments are safe if you go slowly — about an eighth of a turn at a time, retuning and rechecking between moves. If the rod is stiff, won't budge, or seems maxed out, stop and have a tech look at it rather than forcing it.

Should I get a professional setup on a used guitar, or do it myself?

If you're new, a professional setup is the best first dollar you'll spend — it removes all doubt about whether the guitar or your technique is the problem. If you enjoy tinkering and go carefully, learning to do it yourself is well within reach and pays off across every guitar you own.