UNBOXING in WINTER question ?!?!?

[Carbonius]

Hey guys. I pulled the trigger and bought a Godin Montreal LTD with TV Jones Classic pickups and Bigsby off Ebay (online pic below). I am now in the nerve racking phase of shipping. So far 2 of the 3 acoustic guitars that I have ordered online have arrived with damage, the other was Carbon Fiber (go figure). I have never bought an electric guitar online.

In case it matters, here are the specs. The guitar is semi-hollow. It has Laminated Cherry back and sides with a solid Cherry top (from Quebec). The chambered center block is carved from Adirondack Spruce. The neck is Mahogany while the fretboard is Richlite.

I'm in the Canadian Prairies. This guitar needs to travel 3000 km (1860 miles) to get to me. It will go down to temperatures of -15C to -20C (around 0F) while it travels through the nights.

Do the same acclimatization rules apply??

Exactly what do you guys do when receiving an electric guitar in the cold winter??

Thank you in advance!!

Here is what's on the way to me.

[Johnny K]

I love that one. It showed up on twitter teases in 2016 after I ordered a new Trans Red one with fixed tail. Because for some reason Godin wont build a trans red with a Bigsby. After waiting 6 months, i cancelled the order. It think it was the height of the CITES issues. I see that one looks like an Ebony fingerboard.

I hope it arrives safe. Post pictures and sound clips. I might still want one.

[ChrisN]

The best you can is let it sit untouched overnight in the box, hard as that may be to actually do.

I'm less concerned about any polyurethane finish, more concerned about nitrocellulose (old - it cracks/checks more with temp changes). I'm less concerned about solid bodies than thinlines. Still, you're in Canada - low humidity and low temps. I'd let it sit overnight. That way, any issues aren't your fault.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by Carbonius

Hey guys. I pulled the trigger and bought a Godin Montreal LTD with TV Jones Classic pickups and Bigsby off Ebay (online pic below). I am now in the nerve racking phase of shipping. So far 2 of the 3 acoustic guitars that I have ordered online have arrived with damage, the other was Carbon Fiber (go figure). I have never bought an electric guitar online.

In case it matters, here are the specs. The guitar is semi-hollow. It has Laminated Cherry back and sides with a solid Cherry top (from Quebec). The chambered center block is carved from Adirondack Spruce. The neck is Mahogany while the fretboard is Richlite.

I'm in the Canadian Prairies. This guitar needs to travel 3000 km (1860 miles) to get to me. It will go down to temperatures of -15C to -20C (around 0F) while it travels through the nights.

Do the same acclimatization rules apply??

Exactly what do you guys do when receiving an electric guitar in the cold winter??

Thank you in advance!!

Here is what's on the way to me.

Yes acclimation applies, it is after all an acoustic guitar with pick ups in it.
Even if it were a solid body , if it were me I would let it sit in the box in the room in which it will live, for a minimum or 72 hours . Remember you are not only acclimatizing for temp but for humidity also.

BTW congrats looks great

[muscmp]

assuming that the guitar will be inside the truck, what is the temperature inside of it? is the inside of the truck freezing or below? check with the driver when you accept it.

play music!

[maxtheaxe]

Originally Posted by Johnny K

I love that one. It showed up on twitter teases in 2016 after I ordered a new Trans Red one with fixed tail. Because for some reason Godin wont build a trans red with a Bigsby. After waiting 6 months, i cancelled the order. It think it was the height of the CITES issues. I see that one looks like an Ebony fingerboard.

I hope it arrives safe. Post pictures and sound clips. I might still want one.

Not highjack the thread, but these are pretty easy to add a Bigsby to. You would order the Bigsby B7 and the V7 Platemate...right around $150.00. The V7 Platemate allows mounting without drilling any extra holes; the plate mounts to the tailpiece bushings and then the B7 screws onto that.

To the OP, I would agree that you should probably wait at least 24 hours for the guitar to slowly acclimate to room temp. This would hold true even in Summer, since there's a good likelihood that the guitar would have ridden in the cargo hold of a plane at 30K feet and been exposed to sub freezing temps. A poly finish would probably be OK, but no sense taking the chance if you don't have to.

Nice ax, BTW...Go Cat Go!

[Darwin]

That is one sweet looking guitar! -- Darwin

[Carbonius]

Originally Posted by muscmp

assuming that the guitar will be inside the truck, what is the temperature inside of it? is the inside of the truck freezing or below? check with the driver when you accept it.

play music!

I know from my years in the delivery industry here in Canada that the truck will not be heated. There are options for that but it is quite expensive. Things like blood, heart valves and exotic fish travel that way. We're talking rush air delivery at that point.

Thankfully we've had a moderate winter here so far in the prairies. In fact, we're having a little bit of a warm spell now, getting above freezing during the week. Pretty rare for December. Our January could still be nasty, -30 to - 40 is normal for at least parts of January here. I certainly don't want to have a guitar on the road then!!

Because of my experience in the delivery industry I know the game. You must fully inspect the unopened box and mark every single possible thing with the driver before you ever sign for it. That is your best option should there be any issues inside the box.

I've had to deliver items that had a forklift go right through them, ridiculous!! Those people were encouraged to refuse the delivery. I better stop thinking about that right now. Go to my happy place, go to my happy place. LOL.

[Carbonius]

Thanks guys. I will keep you guys informed and share my experience once I get it.

To say that I'm excited is an understatement. If you've seen some of my other threads in the past couple of years, you know that I've developed some severe hearing issues. It's made it so I can't play steel string guitars at all anymore because of the high pitch (prescence realm) frequencies. I switched over to classical guitar and that was great, but I really miss using a pic and all of the songs I wrote.

One day it hit me... "go electric where you can control the frequencies". I preferred the sound of acoustic for a couple of decades, so it's not an easy switch. I went and tried out some arch tops and found them quite enjoyable. NO PAIN!! However I didn't want such a big body anymore and I also wanted a little less acoustic tone. However I still wanted some of that woody input and some acoustic tone. Semi-hollow seem like the right fit.

I was very concerned about pick up choices. Sure, you can always swap them out, but then you can end up having to modify the body. Single coils, P90s, Filter'Trons, humbuckers... all different sizes.

I had a Les Paul size semi-hollow with humbuckers a few years back and it just didn't work for me. Most of the time I played it with the neck coil split, LOL. I love some aspects of the fender single coil tone, specifically the neck pickup when playing leads. Just awesome to me! however I need something that is more suited to rhythm playing, complex chords and so forth tone wise.

I found I really took well to the Filter'Tron type of tone. Clearer sounding than humbuckers, not as piercing as single coils but then some really interesting tones when you dig in. I started researching TV Jones and really liked what I heard. The highs have a natural compression and are a little rounder than single coils. the difficult part is finding videos or someone's using them for jazz rather than nasally rockabilly (not that there's anything wrong with that). I found one video where a guy was a being to our stops I was considering. I like the Filter'Trons more for almost everything he played.

I also want to get a 3 x 3 toggle switch. It enables you to get 4 settings out of the dual pick up mode rather than just one. TV Jones filtertron are a little weak to run as single coils. However you can run series and parallel with various coils and get some extra tones without installing any additional switches. The 3 x 3 is just what it sounds like. 2 rows of settings rather than one linear row.

Next, the realm of amplifiers. YIKES!! That's a rabbit hole onto itself. However I think I know my direction already. The recent popularity of 15 watt tube amps with switchable power is probably right up my alley. All the tube tone without the 50 or 100 watt tube volume.

[M Sarad]

Winter shipping is my enemy.

Years ago, I sent my Santa Cruz to Get a neck reset. At that time, Dan Roberts was in Montana. My guitar came back to me with the top completely crazed.

I was not pleased.

[Steve DeRosa]

Originally Posted by Carbonius

Exactly what do you guys do when receiving an electric guitar in the cold winter??

Wait till Spring (seriously) - I've done my share of mail order over the years, and unless it's an exceptional situation (like your own) and/or rush delivery is a financially viable option I try to confine my instrument purchases (acoustic or electric) to April-June and September-November...

When I did order during hot/cold weather I followed Kev's and Chris' advice - leave it in the box for 24-72 hours in a temperature-stable part of my home away from outside walls, radiators/heating ducts, etc.; however, be advised that's not necessarily a guarantee as you have no knowledge or control of shipping/storage conditions prior to receipt and, much like your own previous experiences, I've heard tell of some rude and unpleasant surprises upon opening in spite of all necessary precautions being taken on your end...

FWIW if you're thinking of going to a series/parallel wiring scheme I'd sooner go with individual taps for each pickup like the old Ibanez AR300/500 solids (in your case this can be done with push/pull pots on the volume/tone controls); FYI there's a broad variety of tone colors that can be achieved by mixing/matching series and parallel wiring that you won't achieve with a straight-across-the-board, either/or switching scheme - TMK this was one of the options available (in different form) on the Project-o-Sonic stereo White Falcons (think Neil Young) of the '50s-60s, and would be a valuable addition to any Filter'tron-equipped guitar IMO...

Use it well, often, and LOUD...

[Carbonius]

Originally Posted by Steve DeRosa

Wait till Spring (seriously) - I've done my share of mail order over the years, and unless it's an exceptional situation (like your own) and/or rush delivery is a financially viable option I try to confine my instrument purchases (acoustic or electric) to April-June and September-November...

When I did order during hot/cold weather I followed Kev's and Chris' advice - leave it in the box for 24-72 hours in a temperature-stable part of my home away from outside walls, radiators/heating ducts, etc.; however, be advised that's not necessarily a guarantee as you have no knowledge or control of shipping/storage conditions prior to receipt and, much like your own previous experiences, I've heard tell of some rude and unpleasant surprises upon opening in spite of all necessary precautions being taken on your end...

FWIW if you're thinking of going to a series/parallel wiring scheme I'd sooner go with individual taps for each pickup like the old Ibanez AR300/500 solids (in your case this can be done with push/pull pots on the volume/tone controls); FYI there's a broad variety of tone colors that can be achieved by mixing/matching series and parallel wiring that you won't achieve with a straight-across-the-board, either/or switching scheme - TMK this was one of the options available (in different form) on the Project-o-Sonic stereo White Falcons (think Neil Young) of the '50s-60s, and would be a valuable addition to any Filter'tron-equipped guitar IMO...

Use it well, often, and LOUD...

Hello Steve, thank for the info!

When I get too worried, I remind myself that music stores here get guitars in year round (but probably not really delicate finishes though). I think the difference is the shipping. When you have a whole pallet of gear going from one city to another, warehouse staff just loads and unloads the pallet at each city. But when it's just a box or 2, the pallet can get repacked several times. Thus the box gets tossed around or has 1000+ pounds packed on it (staff can't read FRAGILE ).

The Godin TRIC case may be a God send in this situation. I actually never read up on the case, just did now. TRIC stands for "Thermally Regulated Instrument Case". It's made of the same stuff that automobile bumper cores are made of and form fitted to the guitar.

My attraction to the 3 x 3 switch is ease of use and small fingerprint. To do everything that the 3 x 3 switch does, you'd need at 2 more switches. I believe one would have to be an "on/off/on" to choose witch coils split. The near impossible part would be to hit all 3 switches ACCURATELY when you want a quick tone change. More difficult when the main selector switch is over a foot away from the other 2! This way you can do it with just one movement. You can set up this switch SO many ways, many wiring schematics on the Freeway website. Single coil tones are poor with Filter'Trons, so I would use the following where EVERY position is hum cancelling. You probably saw in my other thread. However, some may not have seen that.

Anyone know how to control the size of an uploaded picture??? I can do it on other forums, but not here.

I found a different pic that has more details. You could also wire the switch to have single coil options all I want switch.

[muscmp]

you can set up the size of your pic via your picture site such as imgur. then you can upload to the agf the size you want.

great looking guitar. have fun with it after the safe arrival!

play music!

[guitararmy]

That is one sharp guitar!!

My attitude towards cold weather and guitars is that some patience up front trumps lifelong regrets.
I usually leave the guitar in the box for 24 hours with the top flap opened, then take the case out of the box and leave it closed for another 12-24 hours. I realize that this is probably overkill, but I don't care for finish checking...

[Carbonius]

Hey guys, just wanted to say thanks for all the input about taking it easy after I receive the guitar. I have a 14 day trial, so giving up two days for climatization isn't bad.

I was just thinking about another industry in this same regard. If you buy wood flooring for your house, they recommend you have the boxes in your home for three days before installing. So anything made of wood needs a few days to adjust to the changes.

It's scheduled to arrive Christmas Eve. I never intended this as a Christmas present for myself but... that sure would be nice!!

But wait... I'd have to spend all of Christmas Day NOT opening it. NUTS!! Well I guess my boxing day will then be an "unboxing day". That's all assuming that it actually gets here on that day.