Editor’s note: This morning I was at a loss for something to write about. After this afternoons trip to Guitar Center that all changed…and not for the better.

So I took the advice and went to Guitar Center this afternoon. I killed 2 birds with one stone here. My son was going in for his kindergarten shots, and G.C. is only a block away from his Doctors office. My wife decided to take the boy to get the shots, so I had about 45 minutes to test drive some amps before another commitment.

Side Note: I posted about a worship leader that came to our church that played a painfully out of tune 12 string guitar…At guitar center, no matter how badly out of tune the guitars are, people will play them as if there is no problem at all, maybe they should take some advice from IG on this one. The ambient noise was hard on the psyche

Back to my story

First let me say that I was a little under whelmed with the amp selection. Maybe there is not a whole lot out there, but they had some Line6, Vox, Fender, Marshall, and Crate…pretty much the standard stuff. What I needed to do was find a suitable axe to test drive…I had my choice of Gibson, Fender, PRS, Ibanez, Dean…the whole shootin match. I picked up and played maybe 10 guitars and noticed one thing about all of them. They were all poorly set up. The actions were all well over 1/8 at the 12th fret, and truss rods were in bad need of adjustment.

So my trip went from amp driving to guitar lookin. I rarely go out and play guitars for the sake of being critical, but today I had my chance. I looked at maybe 50 guitars of all price ranges, and all but one… a $299.00 Ibanez has what I would call good action. The only thing that was separating a $2,500 Les Paul, and a $200 no name guitar was the name alone.

With this disappointment in mind, my thoughts went in 3 directions:

1. Is this a specific thing to this store? Do they set them up like this to make them all the same, or is there some kind of humidity problem?

2. Is this a manufacturing thing? Does Guitar Center have a spec that all of their guitars need to be set up poorly?

3. Is this neglect? On top of the poor playability, the overall dusty condition of the guitars, and strings oxidation shoe that these guitars get played by many hands, and not looked after by the people on the floor.

When I was working Music Retail, one of my jobs was to keep the guitars clean, and in working order…that meant dusting, changing strings if needed, and checking the playability. Now I know that we didn’t carry as many guitars as G.C. Guitar set up and maintenance at that place seems like it would be much like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. (Let me know if you need me to explain this analogy)

Back to G.C. After my experience with the electrics, I went into their Acoustic room. There I found more of the same Martin, Gibson, Breedlove, and MY Alma mater, Taylor were all poorly set up.

Then I heard something from a floor worker that made it all painfully clear to me.

A guy wanted to buy an acoustic for his son. He was asking some basic questions about Steel vs. Classical, body size, and the string height. To my chagrin, the “Acoustic Guy” told him that you adjust the action by tightening the Truss Rod…in my head I was screaming… no…No…NO!!!!

Technically speaking: The Acoustic guy is partially right here. Action on an acoustic guitar had a lot to do with the neck angle, the saddle height, and the Truss rod.

So it looks like 2 of 3 suppositions were correct. It appears that they set them up like that…probably to look good when making the sale. Frankly I think you could sell a well playing instrument easier than you could sell one that needs adjustment, and a wax job. The other thing is that it makes manufacturers look bad. If this is their finished product, it is presented poorly.

There are reasons that I rarely got to Guitar Center…these are a few of them.

BTW…I never even turned on one amp.