You can setup your instrument yourself, but it is somewhat of an art – how much to adjust, getting the action low without buzzing, and allowing the wood to acclimate. Unless you’re buying your instrument from a physical shop, I would definitely include the cost of a setup in your budget. I don’t know how cavaquinhos ship in Brazil, but it seems guitars in the US come with a high action, and it’s up to the player to adjust it down. His advice was that a cheaper instrument could’ve had much worse problems – uneven frets, bowed neck, that would be more difficult to repair. I talked to the guitar technician about how I was a little annoyed that an expensive instrument still needed work done, as I might as well get a cheaper one. Now, they require much less effort to press, and the intonation problems are gone. They also changed the strings – I had purchased a set online, so that was no added cost.īefore, I had to press relatively hard to cleanly fret notes, and found myself gritting my teeth at times. I brought my cavaquinho to my local guitar shop for setup – they charged me $60, which included fret polishing, fretboard oiling, and sanding the underside of the bridge to bring the strings down to the proper height. “Action” refers to how the instrument physically plays, and in particular the height of the strings above the fretboard. This is often caused by action that is too high. In my case, an open string would be in tune, but the octave up (12th fret) was very noticeably sharp. For those unfamiliar with fretted string instruments, intonation refers to the accuracy of the pitch, particularly when the higher frets are played. My instrument had some very bad intonation problems. Although mine was a “factory demo,” I believe this issue may be pretty universal. I originally thought that a pricey instrument would come ready to play out of the box – I was apparently mistaken. I remember seeing Adam Savage, of Mythbusters, talking at a live show about his realization that the ability to become mediocre at many skills is, in itself, a valuable skill.įor those of you just stumbling on my site, thank you for visiting! I hope the few posts I’ve made over the years are helpful, and wish you the best of luck in your Cavaquinho endeavors. I don’t believe it’s negative trait to try new things, even if it doesn’t lead to a lifelong commitment. I’ve picked up and dropped many hobbies, activities, instruments, and projects in life – such is my nature, and that of many other “jack of all trades” types. I feel pretty good about it, given that most of the things we tend to buy in life depreciate horribly. It probably could’ve sold for more, but I felt it was a fair price.

I sold it for $350, which is only $60 less than I purchased it for 4 years ago. I initially made a posting on Craigslist, but was contacted by someone out of state to purchase, so I threw it up on Ebay to facilitate the transaction.

It’s been a long time coming, but I just hadn’t been practicing or playing enough to justify keeping my instrument around.

Cavaco chord dictionary