Winter is coming!!
Cold winter air is already dry, and your forced air furnace dries it even more. It is not uncommon in Kansas for homes to reach humidity levels in the teens in winter. Acoustic instruments should be kept at a “relative humidity” of about 45%, at 68-72 degrees. That’s hard to do, folks. Especially if you live in an older home. Drafty windows, old insulation…all this adds up to create low humidity levels.
Look your instrument over. Does it feel different today than it did last week? Obvious signs of over-dryness include sharp fret ends, difficulty keeping in tune, and changes in playability and/or sudden buzzing and fretting out. These are all reversible if you catch them early. When you don’t, glue joints can fail, bridges pull off, braces break loose, and wood cracks. These are all repairable too, but be prepared to pay a price, both in dollars and in the appearance of your guitar.
A whole room humidifier is a good tool for maintaining humidity levels in your home. In my house & shop, I use two 5-gallon wick room humidifiers equipped with digital hygrometers. You can program these to maintain a minimum humidity level, but you must pay attention to refilling the tanks and keeping new filters. I use Aircare MA0800, but there are good ones by Holmes, Vornado, Honeywell, and others.
And make sure you fill them! And make sure you change the filters!!! I check water levels every morning and every night before bedtime.
Guitar humidifiers by Oasis, D’Addario, Dampit, and others are all useful. Planet Waves makes a great humidi-pack that is maintenance free (no water)! Others will need to be “recharged” every day or two. Don’t forget to do this! A dry humidifier is useless. However, if you have more than a couple guitars, they get expensive. Nothing beats a room humidifier!
Whole house furnace humidifiers, it should be noted, are designed to max out at 35%…this is too dry for fine acoustic instruments.
The best way to measure humidity is by using a digital hygrometer, which shows room temperature too. These are available online, or preferably at your favorite local music store. Planet Waves/D’Addario makes several. I use Springfield hygrometers because they are accurate, cheap, and sold at most home improvement or hardware stores. I should mention: Please do not rely on those dial hygrometers that come in guitar case, as I have found them grossly inaccurate.
Another good indication of low humidity is if you have extremely dry itchy skin. While this won’t tell you what percentage your humidity is, it definitely indicates that you have dry air in your home.
I hope this was informative. For further research, Taylor, Larrivee, and Martin have excellent articles about humidity and guitars on their sites.
-BK