Long Distance Guitar Travel

[dosland]

Hi, I just got through selecting a case for bashing around the house, but along comes another issue. Has anyone ever had to ship a guitar long-haul? I may be in a situation where I'm looking at a cargo shipment and I'm utterly terrified of shipping my guitars in a container (by sea!) - the yamaha and the taylor wouldn't likely suffer at all, they're basically made out of steel at this time in their lives, but the Alhambra is pretty much irreplaceable for me at this point in my career. Unfortunately, I don't know if I can afford to air-freight them using one of those services, at this stage. The alternative would be to stash them all into a super sturdy box and pay for them as an additional piece of luggage on the flight, I suppose. Any thoughts?

[HNLim]

I live in Singapore. So far I had purchased 3 classical guitars from the USA and an empty classical guitar case from the UK all 4 were shipped to me at different times via air freight. All arrived safely, I am expecting another 10 string classical guitar case to be shipped to me from Australia.

[dosland]

Thanks, that's great to hear. What are the general shipping rates to singapore from the us, and have you had good luck with specific companies?

[HNLim]

Originally Posted by dosland

Thanks, that's great to hear. What are the general shipping rates to singapore from the us, and have you had good luck with specific companies?

If you are fortunate enough for the US Postal to take your guitar, it cost roughly $130/- to $150/-. If it is by DHL or UPS etc, it will cost roughly $300/- to $350/-.

[dosland]

Thanks! I'm still curious to know if anyone has ever had experience with shipping a guitar via cargo container. Surely someone out there has moved a long distance and had to load up life and home into a single steel box at some point, right? Anyone?

My issue is that I can't really afford to pay hundreds of dollars to mail a guitar to myself, and I won't even be "there" to receive the instrument, given the way the timing is going to work (there is no there there, as they say...). So I'm looking at putting my guitar into the cargo container and praying that it will somehow survive the extreme temperature and climate fluctuations (it's going to cross that equator in July, I expect). I'd love to have reassurances that it's all going to be ok - for example, do major companies have hundreds of their instruments stored in containers to ship them from wherever they're manufactured to the point of sale, or is this all done in aeroplanes?

[revive]

I wonder about the same thing, too.

I know that guitar companies do use marine shipments / containers. But I don't know if they are regular containers or if the containers are somehow climate-controlled.

In you case, I think they can probably survive if the guitars are packed really, really well to mitigate sudden temperature/humidity changes. Example:

• Place the guitar inside a good hardcase. Use padding as appropriate
• Seal the case with plastic wraps
• Place the case inside a shipping box, use a lot of padding
• Seal the box with more plastic wraps

Please note this is just my thinking / speculation... I have not actually done anything like this.

[dosland]

Thanks, revive, that's a good idea! I think one advantage my (in my mind) fragile guitar has is that it's not really that expensive an instrument, so I'm pretty sure the finish is polyurethane or some such robust substance. This should, I hope, make it less susceptible than a finer finish like lacquer. With that in mind, does any of our luthier friends know at what temperature even polyurethane, cedar, and sapele will begin to suffer significant harm? Or is my main concern just sudden changes in temperature or humidity (aside from the obvious physical violence that gravity and carelessness might cause)?

[revive]

Just found an old thread on this subject:
http://www.acousticguitarforum.com/f...d.php?t=180063

[dosland]

Yeah, I saw that one. No one seems to have any experience with this, aside from using the post or similar options. I'm inclined, at this stage, to take the guitar as my carry on, despite the additional hassle it would mean! I'm moving from the central US to New Zealand in June, so the equator and US climate are my main concerns, as temps inside semis get into the 140s F traveling cross-country in the summer. That temp will fluctuate dramatically day-night, as well, I suppose.

[RWG]

I had Elderly Instruments ship a steel string acoustic guitar to my son when he was stationed at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. He said they had it packed real well and it arrived just fine. He saved all the packing and when he was sent to Alaska he used the same packing to ship it. He was in the desert for the summer and Alaska for the winter! I think the guitar went by air. Anyway, you might want to contact a big online retailer like Elderly or a fine guitar shop in your area and see if they can give you advice or even ship it for you for a fee. They do this sort of thing all the time. I don't think it's the temperature so much as how fast the temperature changes. Insulation can insure the temperature doesn't change too fast. I would also loosen the strings some.

[dosland]

I'll check into international shipping costs, but I'm afraid my "low-grade" instrument may not deserve several hundred $$ shipping, especially if insurance costs are appended. I also have a vague recollection that there's a (fairly low) limit to the insurance coverage on offer from USPS, which will be the least expensive shipper by far. Of course, if I were paranoid I'd just search the forum for "shipping horror story" and see which company has the fewest entries...

[dosland]

My guitars all survived the trip. The Alhambra flew on the plane with me, and I was forced by an unpleasant individual at one airport to paneside check the guitar, which I didn't mind terribly. But the handlers at the destination airport (this is all on United, btw) scraped the ish out of the case - corners, ends, top. Looks like they tried to use it as a skateboard down a flight of stairs. The guitar was fine, though. The Yamaha apx6 that rode in the container has almost completely clouded over under the finish. There was a single small spot of this before the trip, but I suspect that the heat and humidity allowed more humidity up between the wood and the finish, so that's not so great. I'm mostly certain the finish is poly, so not worth trying to re-finish. I've read about others blowing a hair dryer into the sound hole for a while, to dry the thing out, but I'm not interested in subjecting the guitar to something like that, since it still plays and sounds fine. The electric and the Taylor are mostly made out of stone, so they didn't care a lick about the trip! Haven't fired up the Mesa yet, I'm too busy with work to go through that right now. But I assume I can probably track down a tube over here if I need to...