I keep hearing guitar repairmen talk about “cold-checking.” Assuming they e not discussing hockey, what exactly is that?
Cold-checking is that web-like pattern of fine cracks in a guitar’s finish frequently caused by expansion and contraction due to extreme cold (hence the name) or heat. Age also can be the culprit, as the finish gets old and brittle and more susceptible to the effects of dryness, wetness, temperature, and the like. Throughout the years, cold-checking has been relatively common to all finishes and makes, including Taylors – until we developed the UV-curable finish we’ve been using since 1995. We have an environmental chamber at the factory, in which we test the effects of various climatic and humidity conditions on our guitars. To our amazement, no matter what we subject our UV finish to, we have not been able to make it “check”. This has been something of a revelation. While we can’t guarantee that our finish won’t cold-check, our tests show it to be the most impervious finish to date.
