You waited by the front door for the delivery van. You cut the tape. Lifted it out of the foam, tuned it up, played the first tune that you’d been planning all week.
And it felt wrong.
Maybe the strings are buzzing. Maybe the action is fighting you, or rattling against the frets and you just have a general sense that this is not what the guitar is supposed to feel like.
You’re not imagining it. The guitar isn’t broken. You haven’t been ripped off either. What you’ve got is a brand-new guitar with a bog-standard factory setup.
Why new guitars play badly out of the box
Factories build guitars. They don’t set them up, well not properly anyway. That’s the bit nobody tells you when you’re clicking buy on Andertons, Thomann or GAK.
A factory’s job is to get a playable instrument off the line. Neck on, frets in, strings on, hardware tight, in tune enough to ship. Then it sits in a warehouse. Then a lorry. Then another warehouse. Then a courier’s shelf. By the time it gets to you, the wood has been through three different climates and the strings have been at full tension for weeks.
The neck moves. So does everything else attached to it.
Andertons say it themselves on their own blog: no guitar arrives needing zero adjustment. The “pre-shipping setup” the website talks about usually means someone checked it was tuned and the truss rod hadn’t snapped in transit. That isn’t a proper setup. A proper setup takes a couple of hours, and at high street margins it’s not happening to every guitar that ships.
It’s not a scam, it’s economics. They sell the guitar at a price that gets it to your door. Setup is a separate job, and nobody really shouts about that bit.
You’ve already tried the things you can try
I know roughly what you’ve done already, because most people work through the same checklist.
You tuned it. Then tuned it again. Stretched the strings by pulling them up the neck. Wiped the fingerboard. Tried a different lead. Loaded a YouTube clip of someone playing the same model so you could compare. Squinted at the bridge saddles like you’d recognise the problem if you saw it.
None of that was wrong. It just wasn’t going to be enough. The adjustments this guitar actually needs want a feeler gauge, a notched straight edge, a set of nut files, and somebody who’s setup a lot of guitars.
What actually fixes it
A proper setup. Not a YouTube setup. Not an “I’ve watched the Stew Mac video” setup. A full one, on a bench, by someone whose only job that hour is your guitar.
Here’s what’s in mine.
A deep clean of the body, neck and fingerboard. Months of factory dust off the board, board conditioned, frets polished so they stop dragging the strings.
Electrics cleaned and serviced. No more crackle when you turn the volume up. No dropout when you wiggle the jack lead.
Truss rod adjusted for correct neck relief. This is the one that kills buzz on the lower frets.
Action set to how YOU play. Not a forum spec. If you dig in hard it needs to be higher, if you’ve got a light touch it can come down. We have that chat before I touch a screwdriver.
Nut slots checked and adjusted. This is where most new guitars are at their worst. Factories cut nut slots cautiously (deep enough means a returned guitar) so they’re nearly always too high. Open chords feel like work until the slots are right. Then the first three frets stop being a slog.
Intonation set so it plays in tune up the neck. If your open D shape sounds in tune and your barre at the 7th sounds off, that’s intonation. Saddle adjustment per string. Most new guitars need it doing properly.
Pickup heights are balanced across the strings. Suddenly, the bridge pickup isn’t ear-piercing, and the neck pickup isn’t a mud bath.
And a check for loose bits. Machine heads, jack socket, strap buttons, control knobs. Nothing should rattle, nothing should fall off.
The gap between a new guitar and a new guitar that plays is bigger than most people realise. Closing that gap is my job.
So, Why me?
I’m Matt. I run Selfe Guitars from a workshop in Sittingbourne. I’m the Owner-operator, your guitar goes on my bench, and I’m the one handing it back.
Drop-off across Kent and Medway. Sittingbourne is about twenty minutes from Sheppey, Maidstone and Chatham, a bit more from Faversham or Canterbury. You bring it in, I ring you when it’s done, you come and get it. Simples as that meercat would say!
Here’s the maths nobody does. You just paid god knows how many hundreds of quids for a guitar. You paid because you wanted a guitar that plays. Right now it doesn’t. £65 is the bit between what you paid for and what you actually wanted. After something like £600 on the instrument, sixty-five quid to finish the job isn’t really a decision.
Sending it back is the other option. Another week without a guitar. Another box, another courier, and a decent chance the replacement turns up in the same state. Setting it up properly, is the shorter route.
Book it in
Have a look at the services page for the full list of what’s included, plus the new drop-off section covering the rest of Kent. When you’re ready, the contact page has the form and the phone number.
Selfe Guitars, Sittingbourne ME10 1LT. Bring the guitar. I’ll sort it.