Guitar Maintenance Tips - Temperature And Humidity Control

Taking care of your guitar is not hard, but you can ruin your beautiful precious instrument in a matter of weeks if you don't follow few simple rules when caring for it.

The best way you can prolong your guitar's life is temperature and humidity control. High humidity causes the wood to swell and distort, add some heat, and you've got loosen glue joints, not good. Low humidity causes your guitar to shrink resulting in cracking and seam separation. Heat expands wood and cold contracts it. Temperature changes can also cause something called crazing or temperature checking, that's when guitar's finish develops tiny cracks resembling the cracks of an old painting. This happens often when you bring in guitar from cold into heated places. Usually this dust makes your guitar look bad, but in extreme cases it can leave the wood vulnerable. When you bring in your guitar from cold into heated room, try leaving it in a case for a while to let it warm up gradually.

Winter and summer are the harshest on the guitar. In winter the arid climate of a heated house is especially harsh. It's good to invest into a humidifier, and keep your guitar in the same room, since most humidifiers don't work outside the room they're in. Or get a whole-house humidifier. During summer many guitars get damaged being left in the back of the super hot truck. The heat causes the glue to loosen up, so avoid leaving your guitar in direct sun or anywhere with extreme heat.

Unless you want your guitar to resemble the sand dunes, avoid extreme temperature and humidity changes. Always keep your guitar from radiators, hot air ducts, freezing drafts, attics, garages, and so on. My friends guitars got ruined because his parents decided to store them in the attic while he was away, he had five. All of them got warped and now they are all useless. I felt very sad for him, because I know he at least paid a grand for each one of those guitars and he is not what you would call a rich person.

One of the best ways to survive the climate change is to buy a good guitar. Guitars made with aged, properly finished, air-dried, quartersawed wood are the best. Guitars made of cheap plywood are the worst. Usually American made guitars are of the best quality, they are made in the climate-control factories, unlike some cheapies made in Taiwan.

So as you can see taking care of your guitar is not hard, but you do have to be careful.