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Post by oustudent on Jun 1, 2018 8:40:16 GMT
Any of you do anything special regarding humidity control, just watched a YouTube video which suggests guitars like to be a 45% humidity.
I have a monitor in my guitar room and its showing 40% Lowest reading 64% Highest reading.
John
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Post by Deleted on Jun 1, 2018 9:04:27 GMT
Don’t bother John, it’s really not necessary. If you lived in Texas then yeh, you might need to follow all the advice given on making sure your guitars are humidified, or dehumidified. I swallowed all the hyped when I once owned a Taylor, but have never bothered for the last 7 years or so, and nothing untoward has ever happened to my instruments. Not necessary in this country.
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Wild Violet
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My main instrument is: Symonds OM-14
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Post by Wild Violet on Jun 1, 2018 9:32:27 GMT
We live in a damp house (usually 80% and above) and I've had problems with guitars getting too wet. We now keep a dehumidifier running during the day and my guitars are fine. I think you only need to worry about a guitar getting too dry in the winter months when the central heating is on constantly or if you have a fire burning all the time.
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Post by oustudent on Jun 1, 2018 9:36:45 GMT
Don’t bother John, it’s really not necessary. If you lived in Texas then yeh, you might need to follow all the advice given on making sure your guitars are humidified, or dehumidified. I swallowed all the hyped when I once owned a Taylor, but have never bothered for the last 7 years or so, and nothing untoward has ever happened to my instruments. Not necessary in this country. That was my thinking also, I have never really experienced any noticeable problems and my guitars tend to be out of the case 99.9% of the time.
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Post by oustudent on Jun 1, 2018 9:41:23 GMT
We live in a damp house (usually 80% and above) and I've had problems with guitars getting too wet. We now keep a dehumidifier running during the day and my guitars are fine. I think you only need to worry about a guitar getting too dry in the winter months when the central heating is on constantly or if you have a fire burning all the time. I agree I think dryness is more of an issue than wetness, if 45% is ideal then I am thinking anything significantly less than 45% would be an issue. I don't think we would see that naturally in the UK www.currentresults.com/Weather/United-Kingdom/humidity-annual.php My 40% must be attributed to the central heating.
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Post by malcolm on Jun 1, 2018 20:15:51 GMT
Like the rest of you, I always felt humidity was not an issue in this part of the world, until the bridge of my Irish luthier built guitar flew off quite explosively during the cold dry winter of 2010 - 2011. The luthier said quite categorically it was due to dryness. Now, I live in the north west of Ireland, generally considered to be a damp place, so you never know what can happen, take care of your instruments!
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Post by RodB on Jun 2, 2018 7:24:08 GMT
My guitars are stored in their cases and therefore this is no big deal in ensuring they remain within a reasonable environment. I am not risk adverse but given how easy it is to avoid extremes I think it is worth it. I use Silica Gel - cheap and very effective and acts as a buffer to low as well as high relative humidity. Conditioning is easy and there is plenty of space in a guitar case for a useable quantity.
Here in the SW of France there are one or two periods of low humidity when cold external temperatures mean that indoor RH can be extremely low (<30%) for a week or two, and in early summer with doors and windows often open indoor RH stays about 70% for weeks.
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Post by Cams on Jun 2, 2018 7:44:41 GMT
I had a cedar topped Brook belly at the bridge, I assume because of humidity, although to be honest I wasn't monitoring it. I do monitor it now and some of the fluctuations we've had in the house this year have been crazy, but never for prolonged periods. If you have damp in your house, it makes the RH indoors higher. I think that's what happened with my Brook. Our house was very damp inside until we got a new roof, and even now we still have problems with mould on walls. We do have a portable dehumidifier.
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Post by andyhowell on Jun 2, 2018 10:30:39 GMT
Lynne is right I think, it is the winter months when the central heating is on that is the biggest challenge (wood burning stoves can be a challenge as well(=). During the summer my guitars often hang on the walls but never in winter, they are aways in their cases.
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Post by jackorion on Jun 2, 2018 12:23:57 GMT
It does matter and in the UK we CAN have humidity problems! Trust me - after some pretty intensive humidity-based training from Taylor Guitars we started paying much more attention to our stock and customers guitars at Mansons and it turned out that a lot of guitars that we were previously having to do some pretty drastic (and expensive) repair work to (neck resets, bridge replacements, extremely low bridges) in order to get playable actions on were in fact just really OVER-humidified.
We modified some hiscox cases so they were as close to airtight as possible, and bought a load of accurate digital hygrometers and some bags of large silica gel - we would seal the guitars in with the strings slackened off and the silica gel inside and monitor the humidity over a week or so - normally it would be as high as 80% in the case (bearing in mind it would be abut 50% in the shop) and slowly it would drop as the silica gel would soak up the water coming out of the guitars. Once it got down to 50% we would remove the silica gel and leave the guitar and see if it started to rise - if it did we'd put the gel back in and repeat until the guitar was stable at 50%.
It was amazing how this affected the guitars - necks that were bowed beyond the trussrod working would flatten out, actions would drop from over 6mm (!!) sometimes to back to 2.5mm, the top, back and sides of the guitar would go back to being flatter and not bulging - basically many guitars went back to being perfect playing instruments just with the removal of moisture and some new strings, no other work was needed.
We would then educate the customers on keeping an eye on their guitars and maintaining them - those customers that paid attention never had to bring their guitars back, and those that went straight back to hanging their guitars on the walls and not paying attention to humidity would inevitably return in 6 months with the action creeping up again...
I don't baby my guitars by any stretch of the imagination, but I am careful with them - they cost me a lot of money!
They're all gigged often (and in not ideal conditions, festivals, stored in cars, outdoor gigs in the rain etc etc!) and they all get time out on stands and on the wall, but when I'm not playing them they live in their cases. I keep a hygrometer (2 actually) in the room where they are kept and, if the humidity gets above 60% (which is is for most of the summer, and more like 75% at the moment!) I have small bags of silica gel which I recharge by microwaving them until there's no steam coming off them, which I keep in the cases and I recharge them every three weeks or so - you would be amazed at the amount fo steam that comes out of them!
I've seen so many guitars that were unplayable because of high humidity, or had super low saddles and bellied tops, or the fretboard extension had a kick up towards the soundhole, and I wouldn't want my guitars, or anybodies to be like those instruments.
I really, really recommend keeping an eye on humidity and being aware of the symptoms of an overhumidified guitar - it basically takes minimal effort to keep my guitars in check and they play and sound better because of it.
At the very least getting a hygrometer will allow you to see if you need to concern yourself - if your guitar room is between 40 and 60% most of the time I think you're fine as long as it's not always at those extremes, but if you don't have a way of measuring it you don't know.
There's a reason why every major manufacturer mentions humidity in their care and warranty advice!
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Post by Banadog on Jun 2, 2018 20:36:15 GMT
Always storing my four guitars in cases(in the same room) when not in use, I never gave any thought to humidity until I noticed the action on one of my guitars getting higher and higher,I changed to extra light strings and lowered the saddle as much as possible to make it playable before realising the damage had been caused by humidity. Whether it's because it is lightly made, or maybe because it has a supposedly aged spruce top, this particular guitar is obviously susceptible to changes in humidity. Now I use silica beads and a hygrometer in all my cases
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Andy P
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Post by Andy P on Jun 3, 2018 21:55:00 GMT
Having experienced humidity issues causing problems with both of my Lowdens, I couldn't agree more with jackorion. As a general rule, it seems that the better quality the guitar, the more likely it is that adverse humidity will bring about unwelcome changes.
For a scientifically based explanation, you can't do better than watch this:
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Post by Deleted on Jun 6, 2018 16:54:40 GMT
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Post by littlemart on Jun 6, 2018 17:54:44 GMT
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Post by oustudent on Jun 6, 2018 20:04:52 GMT
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