Humidity Schumidity
Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2013 3:24 am
This thread has spun out from a discussion about stands that Jean started. I keep my guitars on stands for ease of access, because I don't play them if they're in cases and away and because I love looking at them. One of the reasons to NOT leave them on a stand is to maintain the humidity and avoid issues of under or over humidification.
I live in Sydney. The climate is pretty kind to guitars for most of the year, except for a few weeks in summer when it can be 90% humidity and over 40 oC. At the moment though, I have quite a few water penetration problems with my building. It's been raining a lot and I'm having to constantly mop up water that's seeping into the room where I keep most of my instruments.
Well the advice from members in response to Jean's thread had me a bit worried last night, so today I went to the hardware store and bought three different types of hygrometer; two dial ones and a digital one.
The results - The humidity in my music room is somewhere between 65% (and rising) (on the digital hygrometer) and 80% (on the dial ones) (YIKES!!!) and in my lounge room 57%-62% (settled at 61%) According to info from Larrivee (see website below) if the humidity is below 60% you're OK and if it gets above that for short periods the guitar be fine once the humidity drops. If it's below 45% for extended periods it's much worse and it doesn't recover well.
I've now moved my acoustic guitars into the lounge room where the humidity seems to be 61%. I've checked for the signs that Jean Larrivee and Bob Taylor (in the video Dennis posted) talk about and they are both fine. Tomorrow I'll get another couple of digital hygrometers to ensure the change I'm measuring between rooms is due to the humidity itself and not the meter.
Interestingly, if your guitar is experiencing high humidity, Jean Larrivee recommends letting it breathe on a stand.
If I end up with very low humidity at any point, I'll consider putting one or two of the acoustics back in their hard cases.
I have some questions which some of you may be able to answer:
1. Is humidity mostly an issue with acoustic guitars (i.e. hollow body with a sound board) or does it affect solid bodied electrics too?
2. Can you regulate the humidity of guitars in a soft bag too, or only hard cases? - I only have gig bags for my electric guitar and electric bass (and ukuleles).
There's a heap of great info here http://musiciansworkshop.com/humidity.html that I found really useful. Courtesy of Larrivee Guitars
Michele
I live in Sydney. The climate is pretty kind to guitars for most of the year, except for a few weeks in summer when it can be 90% humidity and over 40 oC. At the moment though, I have quite a few water penetration problems with my building. It's been raining a lot and I'm having to constantly mop up water that's seeping into the room where I keep most of my instruments.
Well the advice from members in response to Jean's thread had me a bit worried last night, so today I went to the hardware store and bought three different types of hygrometer; two dial ones and a digital one.
The results - The humidity in my music room is somewhere between 65% (and rising) (on the digital hygrometer) and 80% (on the dial ones) (YIKES!!!) and in my lounge room 57%-62% (settled at 61%) According to info from Larrivee (see website below) if the humidity is below 60% you're OK and if it gets above that for short periods the guitar be fine once the humidity drops. If it's below 45% for extended periods it's much worse and it doesn't recover well.
I've now moved my acoustic guitars into the lounge room where the humidity seems to be 61%. I've checked for the signs that Jean Larrivee and Bob Taylor (in the video Dennis posted) talk about and they are both fine. Tomorrow I'll get another couple of digital hygrometers to ensure the change I'm measuring between rooms is due to the humidity itself and not the meter.
Interestingly, if your guitar is experiencing high humidity, Jean Larrivee recommends letting it breathe on a stand.
If I end up with very low humidity at any point, I'll consider putting one or two of the acoustics back in their hard cases.
I have some questions which some of you may be able to answer:
1. Is humidity mostly an issue with acoustic guitars (i.e. hollow body with a sound board) or does it affect solid bodied electrics too?
2. Can you regulate the humidity of guitars in a soft bag too, or only hard cases? - I only have gig bags for my electric guitar and electric bass (and ukuleles).
There's a heap of great info here http://musiciansworkshop.com/humidity.html that I found really useful. Courtesy of Larrivee Guitars
Michele