I’ve said this many times before, but I will say it again. You want your guitar (more so an acoustic guitar) to stay in an environment where the humidity is 45 – 55% all the year around.
If not, you can be assured of some not very good things happening to your guitar.
- The centre seam on your guitar top can separate
- The braces can come loose
- The neck-to-body joint can separate
- The bridge can crack in line with the bridgepin holes.
- The fretboard can develop a crack just about anywhere
- The fretwire ends can protrude out of the fretboard, making playing very painful, if not completely impossible: a condition referred to as fretwire sprout
- Dryness in your guitar will also hasten a belly forming behind the bridge
The main photograph of this post is a screenshot taken on Saturday morning and gives you an indication of the humidity level in our city – Lucknow. The situation is more or less the same in all cities of the state and much of North-Central India, and will remain the same come mid-June and the horrible humidity.
But humidity is your guitar’s friend – believe me!
There are many contraptions available in the market to get the humidity at the level where you desire it to be. However, the easiest and the most economical one is to loosen your guitar strings, lay your guitar flat on its back and place a bowl of water inside, through the soundhole.
Now, this exercise should be carried out once you know that you won’t be playing your guitar for at least a week.
Take a marker and put markings at regular intervals on the bowl. Fill it up with water and note till where you have filled it up. Place the bowl inside the guitar and then cover the soundhole with a plastic cover or something that will ensure that whatever water escapes from the bowl, stays inside the soundbox.
Once the water level drops in the bowl you will know that your guitar is drinking water.
However, before you do any of this, you must check for one thing. Shake your guitar and check if there is something shaking inside. Ball ends, plectrums, dust, etc are fine. However, if you find something like this
please throw it away at the first instance.
This is a desiccant (moisture-absorbing agent) usually found in shoe boxes and boxes holding electronic gadgets to keep them dry. Left inside your guitar, it will suck up even the last bits of moisture there.
Take care of these things, and maybe, you’ll require to see less of me! As the wise adage goes, ‘Better safe than sorry’!!!
