You've been saving. You've played about a hundred guitars. You know what you like and what you don't like. You've considered the style of your playing. You've even thought about where you'll be in five years and what you'd like to be able to play. Now that you've narrowed it down to a few instruments, how do you make the final decision? What questions remain before you open your wallet?

Probably the most important thing left to do is to approach this decision in much the same way you would buy a car. A proverbial kick to the tires is in order. Now, WAIT, that's not an invitation to abuse an instrument, especially one of ours. But you should apply the same deliberate thought and thorough review as you would when buying a car. Here are a few thoughts for you:

When a guitar has been under-humidified, a common problem is cracking at the top seam.

1) Check the construction and general condition of the guitar

Examine the seams of the guitar. Take special care to look at how the neck joins the body. Does the seam look clean? Check all around the sides of the guitar where the top and back meet the sides. The seams should all be tight and clean.

Look over the surface of the guitar as well. There should be no warps, ripples, or bulges. You can gently knock on the top and back of the guitar to listen for rattles that might indicate a loose brace.

Determine if the top is solid or laminate. A solid top offers, by far, a superior tone but at a greatly increased price. The woods appropriate for solid tops are rare in commercial timbering; only about 1% of all that is harvested. Of those woods available, they must be quarter sawn in order to be used for instrument making. Now consider that some woods are more highly respected than others due to their resonance. Lastly, many of the woods most highly respected are now endangered species. Those factors alone account for the increased cost of solid tops. Laminates are thin layers of wood that are glued together, usually crossing the grains. By nature, they are much stronger than solid woods, but don't have the resonance of solid tops. While laminate top guitars offer strength and a cost benefit, they cannot stand up in the tone department to solid top guitars.

An easy way to determine whether a guitar's top is solid or laminate is to look at the edge of the guitar's top at the soundhole. Follow the grains of the wood across the face to the soundhole. If the grains appear consistent all the way across the edge, you have a solid top guitar. Keep in mind that most painted, heavily-stained, or other method that would prevent you from seeing the grain at the soundhole usually infers a laminate top.

Notice how the grain runs through the entire top. This is a solid top guitar.	Notice how the "lines" seem to run sideways, not up and down. This indictaes a laminate top.

Laminates can be used for the sides and back of the guitar without as much effect on the instrument's sound or value. Laminate sides and backs are a great way to save a little money in mid-priced instruments. To determine whether you have laminates on the sides or back, look inside the soundhole to find distinctive grain features. Now look on the outside of the instrument for the same feature. If it's not there, you've got a laminate.

The guitar's finish oftentimes can give clues to the value of the instrument as well. High quality finishes are usually clear, uniform in gloss, and display sharply-focused highlights. Low quality finished tend to be thick, produce rounded corners at the joints and seams, and while bright in appearance tend not to show the beauty of the wood with much clarity. The reason high quality finishes are thin is that it requires great skill to apply a finish coat thin and then buff it out without buffing through it. Mass produced guitars simply cannot afford this kind of attention to detail that smaller run or hand built guitars do.