STEVE MCCREARY: I met -- [SOUNDS LIKE] started talking to an artist last night. There's this old festival in here in town this weekend, and I was talking to this gentleman and he said that artists are so much worried, more worried about problems with their instruments than builders are because for builders, fixing the stuff is just part of the game for us, and artists, if they put a scratch or ding, they're really worried about it and we're just like bring it in, just another one to deal with. But you know it's basically wood and glue and paint and most things can be fixed and most things can be fixed and if you have to ruin a piece of wood and replace it, it's not the end of the world. It's certainly something that you don't want to have to do too much. It takes time and money to do such a thing but, you know, artists are an interesting lot, and we support artists and they have to have their tools to keep them working so.

Interestingly enough, we just started putting out our little warranty and registration card in the history of the company. I started 14 or 15 years ago and I just finished it. We started January of this year, and it's a limited lifetime warranty that covers workmanship, materials. There're some things, and it's always a tricky thing, you know, especially with acoustic guitars; they're real susceptible to changes, climatic changes and atmospheric conditions, and it can be something as a dry state like living in Denver or Santa Fe or it can be living in Chicago or New York in an apartment building, you know, a sealed apartment building with forced-air heat. It's really dry when the heat's on in the winter. That something that we're trying to educate people better on that we don't want to have to cover warranty things like if someone abuses their guitar and it dries out and cracks and the frettings pop out because the ebony is dry and stuff, that stuff we're trying to educate because we don't have to quite take care of people's guitars for them, but we do =-- If something -- If a bridge comes loose a little or if something -- a tuner breaks, we usually replace stuff for people and it's we're trying to take care of folks.

There's soundhole humidifiers, these rubber disks you can put inside the soundhole. It's got little sponge that you can use a syringe and put moisture in. There's the old damp with a little green tube you can put inside the guitar. We even suggest people sometimes that they don't having something that's suggesting -- they're suspecting a problem because their action is sinking and their frettings are getting sharp, you can take a baggie and get a little kitchen sponge, get the sponge wet, put it in the baggie, stick it down in the soundhole, put it in the case and keep the case closed. You of course don't want the sponge wet enough that it's going to drip out inside the guitar. You just want it damp. You want the baggie not zipped so that the moisture can get inside the guitar, keep it in the case, keep the case laying flat and not up on its edge in case there is too much water it won't run out in. That will at least get moisture into the guitar. As far as recommending a commercial brand. I don't -- [OVERLAPPING]

PATRICK OGLE: [OVERLAPPING]

STEVE MCCREARY: Just something that goes inside the guitar, and something, not just -- I mean a room humidifier is nice too, if you have something in your -- if you have a studio, a room to keep your guitars, a floor unit that you can add water but then if you leave town for a weekend and it's dry during, like I said, one of the northern climates and it's winter-time and you leave town and you don't put water in it, you're kind of screwed there, so something in the guitar, in the case, in the guitar is probably the best thing you should do if you're in an area that it's dry. And even LA can be dry. Between West Texas and Los Angeles, it's all desert, so at West Texas, Southern New Mexico, Southern Arizona, so you can live 30 minutes from the ocean in Los Angeles and have single-digit humidity days, so it's something that you just kind of have to pay attention. If you're going to spend the money for a nice guitar, we have little information on the web site and we have some information on these new warranty cards that go out so it's just something that people ought to do, a little research and education, and we rely on our dealers, of course, to help educate people also with that.

PATRICK OGLE: If they don't, if they screw up, is that a difficult problem to fix when you have a guitar dry out or?

STEVE MCCREARY: It depends. It can be fixed. I mean some cracks, for example, you can have a top crack you can't -- it's just a real fine little line, the guitar was just -- it wasn't overly dry, we can knife it and glue it and respray it and you may see a little tiny line, maybe not. Some come in, the cracks are so wide that we had to put a little thin strip of wood inside there, you know, remove the bridge, put a little strip of wood in, resand it, you know, refinish it. It's sometimes you can get cracks on the sides. If the tops and backs are sunken in so much it stretches the sides, the sides are getting a little popped that they can crack. I got guitars that I can show today that the lacquer on the end of every fret on the fretboard is popped where the wood has shrunk and the frets have not, and the frets are protruding that you feel it. When you're trying to play, you can see little...

PATRICK OGLE: They're like sticking out?

STEVE MCCREARY: ...circles around every fret in, and you wonder how people let things get like that, and then they notice that something was starting to happen, and like you know, we just haven't done a good enough job in education if that happens because for our customers it's like -- so we try to encourage and send them out little letters and stuff and I'll send photographs and say, "I put a straight edge in your guitar," and say it should have these big dips in the top. It should be going this way, you know, but that's human nature. It's just that people want to get forgetful or lazy sometimes and not take care of stuff, and what happen is -- And most or everything can be fixed. I mean again, it's just wood, and we've got guys and different woods and we can fix most of everything.