How to Care for Your Guitars in Adverse Weather Conditions

Hello RFGE Family!

This winter has been a cold one with consistant sub-freezing temps and we've also had an accompanying snowstorm with the possibility of more snow to come!  These frigid conditions have caused most people to fire up those wood burning stoves and space heaters or simply crank the thermostat for our HVAC systems.  When this happens, it is easy to forget that our guitars need a little extra TLC and preventitive maintenance.  First and foremost, keep them away from those heat sources, which will certainly dry out your guitars quickly!  The exposure to this excessive heat and dryness can reek havoc your babies in a number of ways and there's been a major uptick in the amount of repairs that have booked into the RFGE repair shop over the past week.  There have been cracked tops, belly bulged/sunken tops, "fret sprout", and more in recent days, so here is a repost of the blog from last year that explains how to care for your guitars and prevent any issues from occurring due to changes in the air temperture and humidity.  

Please read (or reread) the blog below and be sure to know that RFGE has a full-service repair shop and an amazing luthier if you need any help taking care of your guitars that mave been adversely affected by the recent weather!

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Depending on the climate where you live, your guitars should usually be set up at least once a year. This is as simple as taking your guitar to a professional luthier to make sure that the action is adjusted properly and it plays in tune. Here in the mid-Atlantic, we have two extreme climates to deal with each year. The frozen and dry winter, which can get down to the single digits, and the balmy summer, which can get up to around 100 degrees with gobs of humidity.

Guitars are like people. They generally are comfortable and stable in temperatures from 50-75 degrees and they like a constant humidity around 45-55%. For those who live in a place that has drastic temperature and humidity changes throughout the year, that means that you should be taking a few simple precautions to ensure that your expensive axe is always ready to play and stored properly when you know you might not pick it up for a while. Every guitar is a little different and some are much more susceptible to climate related issues than others. It is not a matter of how much it costs or a whether it was made by a good builder or a bad one. It really has to do more with a simple understanding of what can happen when your guitar dries out and what steps to take to prevent needing a major repair.

Electric guitars are generally pretty stable - especially the good ones. Companies like PRS and Anderson go through a very lengthy process to make sure that their wood is dried to somewhere around 5% relative humidity or less before it is then made into a guitar. Depending on the species of wood, this can take weeks or sometimes months in their "hot rooms". These higher-end companies also use a technique called "quarter sawing" to craft their necks. This process produces more material waste but it also makes for a stronger neck that is less prone to twisting and warping. 

The main issues to watch out for on an electric guitar are twists in the neck and sharp fret ends or "fret sprout". Both of these are caused when the wood on the neck dries out. When wood dries, it shrinks; however, the metal frets do not, which is why they may protrude out from the edges of the fretboard.  Often times sharp fret ends on a dried out guitar can be easliy felt and can even cause mild abrasions on the hands. If the guitar has an unfinished fretboard like rosewood or ebony, it is recomended to get in the habit of cleaning it and oiling it a few times each year with lemon oil. Some luthiers will go into detail about why one brand of oil will do it better than the others but overall, as long as you use a product that is made for guitars, most of them will do.

A twisted neck, however, is a much bigger deal. Most acoustic guitars have a truss rod, which is used to compensate for the string tension and for k eeping the neck straight by either tightening or loosening it. Minor adjustments to a truss rod to make the guitar play properly are normal from time to time, but sometimes a neck can dry out and asctually twist on an axis to the point where it can no longer be adjusted. To make sure this doesn't happen to you, always store electric guitars in their cases in a temperature controlled environment. Here in Maryland, that is all it really takes but if you live somewhere like Las Vegas where it gets very dry and hot, it is recommended to keep a humidifier in the case as well. These can be purchased in any music store for around $20 and will ensure that your guitar always stays at the proper humidity level year round. It's really that simple.

Acoustic guitars are not quite as easy to maintain and can sometimes develop major issues in a very short period of time if they are not stored properly. Inexpensive, laminate acoustic guitars generally take abuse pretty well. They are made from plywood which has a lot of glue in it and you usually wont have issues with cracks on these. You should still humidify them with an in-case humidifier to make sure you won't get any of the neck issues described above, but otherwise they are pretty easy to maintain. High end acoustics that are made from all solid wood like Martins, Gibsons and Taylors are the ones you really have to keep a close eye on. When these guitars dry out, not only can you get neck issues but you can also get cracks in the wood, bracing issues, and tops that sink making it impossible to properly adjust the action. All of these issues would require a major repair that can be very expensive and time consuming. With an acoustic, it is always recommended to keep one humidifier in the sound hole and one near the headstock.  Additionally, using a case hydrometer so you can keep an eye on the humidity levels is suggested. Remember that the humidity should always be in the neighborhood of 45-55%. Perhaps most importantly, the proper place to store a guitar is always in its case - not on a stand and most certainly not hanging on a wall. Sure, it's ok to leave your guitar out once in a while but if it's not going to get picked up for more than a week then keep it in the case. Your case is the first line of defense from the changing environment and when it goes from hot to cold or cold to hot, your case ensures that these changes will be gradual and not immediate. Also remember that a hot house with blasting air conditioning is just as bad as a cold house with a blasting heater. Any time you have the HVAC system running in your house, it is pumping dry air.

It can be tough to imagine spending thousands on a nice guitar and then needing to have a major repair done, but take our word for it - it happens all the time. Ren Ferguson, the master luthier who ran Gibson's Acoustic Custom Shop explains it like this:

"First, there is no such thing as a straight tree. That means that the material that you start with to make a guitar must be cared for, dried, and cut in order to train it to keep the shape that you want it to keep. After you take that wood and turn it into a guitar, it will spend the rest of its days learning how to be a guitar. It must be stored properly, humidified properly, and maintained properly in order to make sure that it continues its life as a guitar and it doesn't go back to being a crooked tree again."

Thanks for reading, RFGE family! As always, feel free to email us any time if you have any questions or need advice on how to properly store your guitars. We are always eager to help!