My second hand guitar looked nice after an expensive full setup, aside from loads of greasy fingerprints. At home I discovered that they had introduced annoying string buzz on some strings, even with moderately light strumming. I kicked myself for not testing it in the shop while I was there. Had to wait a week for the guitar technician to return so I could drop it off during weekday business hours which conflicts with my own work time.
After another drive to their inconvenient location, they offered to fix it while I waited. Browsing the store, I saw a guitar setup book. It was overpriced, but I considered purchasing it so I could do my own setups in future. After carefully tearing the glued cover apart from the neighouring book, I began to read but was interrupted. "All done!" He explained that they added more bow to the truss rod, but that didn't fix it, so they raised the action as well. He handed me my guitar which was now not even in tune, let alone intonated (which I paid $115 for them to do...) It still had some buzzing so he simply blamed the quality of the guitar, and explained that a lower action is better. "String buzz is fine as long as it doesn't keep ringing out." It was slightly improved, and I was running late for work, so I thought perhaps I am being too fussy and should put up with it.
Before long, the rattling sound bothered me so much that I wasted the better part of a day calling other music shops looking for the guitar setup book, and driving to those who didn't answer their phone. None had the book in stock, or had "just sold the last one" but could order it in. As a last resort I called Five Star Music to check if they still had it in stock before I drive there. The dopey sounding guy who answered the phone had never seen or heard of the book. I asked if he could have a look, because I saw it there a few weeks ago. Before I could explain that other shops said they recently sold out, he cut me off, and rudely pointed out that if I saw it there of course they have it! After he slammed the phone in my ear, I decided to purchase an e-Book instead, for 10 times cheaper.
Now doing business elsewhere, and with the help of several YouTube videos, fixed the string buzz issue that they created.
They should be called One Star Music. read more