If you’re a guitar fanatic, there will be times when you want to purchase a new set of guitars and sell the old ones. To sell the old guitar, you need to pack the guitar properly so that it can be easily shipped without damaging any external parts or other accessories of the guitar due to any sort of contact.
Knowing how to pack a guitar if you need to ship it someplace else can prove to be helpful if you’re selling your guitar, relocating to some other place, or changing countries.
How to Pack a Guitar for Shipping
It’s very important to take some points into consideration when you’re packing your guitar to ship it from one place to another.
Step 1: Pack Your Guitar Properly and Tightly
Make sure to ship your guitar carefully. There are multiple precautions that you should take before putting your guitar in the shipping box along with its case. And the most important thing of all, you should loosen all your guitar strings before packing.
Close your guitar’s strings about one or two full steps down to detract the amount of tension applied to the guitar’s neck. The headstock is a delicate part of the guitar. To protect the headstock properly, use a bubble wrap packaging paper sheet to cover it and protect the guitar’s tuners.
Step 2: Detach All the Loose Parts of the Guitar
It is very essential to assure that there are no movable parts loaded with the guitar and its accessories. These may include tremolo arms, Allen keys, clamps or capos, etc. Make sure all of this guitar equipment is stored in a separate pocket of your guitar’s case before packing your guitar. Use proper padding materials between the fingerboard and the guitar strings as a safety measure.
You don’t need to be fancy during its packaging; you can also use some piece of cloth material or some layers of newspapers for its inner packaging. This is done only to keep the guitar’s strings from brushing against the fingerboard when the road gets bumpy during its transit.
Step 3: Use the Right and Appropriate Guitar Case
After proper consideration for the protection of the internal guitar’s components due to security concerns, you should use the proper guitar case to defend it from the likely external hazards that may occur during its transportation. Some of the experts generally recommend that gig bags don’t provide more protection than a hard case, and therefore, you shouldn’t use a gig bag especially while shipping a guitar.
While they’re very lightweight and can be easily packed, and sometimes also protect your guitar from various scratches, still soft guitar cases don’t provide enough amount of protection to the guitar. Therefore try to use a hard guitar case that provides more protection than other guitar cases comparatively.
Step 4: Pack Your Guitar in the Shipping Box
The next procedure is to pack your guitar in the shipping box and fasten your dispatch note (or sometimes also referred to as Shipping Label). There are various customized shipping boxes formulated for the shipping of guitars that you can buy, which makes it easy to track down your shipping package.
It should be a strong cardboard box, with the correct fit to accept the guitar with a hardshell guitar’s case that has padding all around in all of its dimensions. Although you’re using a hardshell guitar’s case, you should get a shipping box just to be on the safe side.
Once you’ve placed your guitar in the shipping box, ensure that you refill all the void space of the box to remove the movement of the guitar. For this, you can either use an airbag packaging sheet or any other type of wrapping paper.
A more convenient option is to find a discarded shipping box from a big appliance device and cut the cardboard into the perfect-sized shipping carton yourself. Just ensure that the box is large enough to fit your guitar along with its case so that the guitar remains protected from external damages.
Few Tips on How to Ship your Guitar Carefully and Safely
1. Double-check the rules and regulations of your selected Courier Service
Rules and regulations can make a major difference in shipping, either in your favor or on the courier’s side. For that reason, you should properly read the Courier’s terms and conditions thoroughly, particularly on the most important aspects of the process.
Make sure that you comprehend their policy on goods damaged during the transportation of the package, especially, for the fragile packages, which is the type of category your guitar is likely to belong to.
2. Check the Insurance Cover of the desired Courier
Some guitars are expensive presents from their loved ones. Maybe your guitar is autographed by one of your favorite musicians. This is why you must check the type of insurance coverage used by your selected courier service.
If you already have a cover for your precious and valuable items (like autographed special guitar), call your provider to see whether your musical instrument is covered or not as per their terms and regulations.
3. It needs a signature upon delivery
When you’re shipping your guitar through a courier service, there will generally be an alternative to need a signature from the recipient upon delivery. There may be a nominal fee, but it’s worth all the money spent. Since guitars are generally costly and fragile items, it will provide you the peace of mind to have them delivered securely.
Shipping Your Guitar With Proper Packaging
The most essential thing to remember when you’re transporting your guitar is to figure out which part of the musical instrument requires to be protected the most to assure that the shipping experience is completely safe for your guitar.
Delivering a guitar can certainly be a nuisance situation, but if you follow all the essential procedures while packing your guitar, everything should run smoothly. Hopefully, this article will help you to maintain the proper security standards to assure that your guitar reaches its final destination in perfect condition.
