Official Luthiers Forum!

Okay,

I know there's a lot of Q&A in the archives out there, but I want to ask a question about humidity that's simple, but direct.

Which is more important--the RH of the shop where the guitar is built or the RH of the environment where the finished guitar will live??

Thanks in advance!
Michael

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Michael Anthony

"Life's short. Play guitar!"

The shop.

The shop. You have to assume the guitar will travel to different environments, especially if it's going to be gigged.

It is certainly most important to protect a guitar from temperature and humidity extremes, but I believe consensus will be that building a guitar (especially assembly operations) in an environment with the RH at about 42% gives the completed instrument a chance adjust to humidity changes without developing cracks.

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

Both! It starts with building under controlled humidity so that the resulting instrument can withstand some of the ravages of RH swings. No building RH range will guarantee that if the instrument is allowed to dry out that it will survive without damage.

But.... it's just as important to maintain the instrument in an acceptable RH range, I use 40 - 50% or you will end up paying someone such as us big bucks to repair cracks, lifted bridges, dimensional instability issues, etc. Either a case humidifier and using it.... or humidify appropriately where the instrument lives or both.

Today we did over $1,000 in repair business with instruments picked-up that were in for cracks - every single one of them resulting from low RH and the abuse of not doing what it takes to keep the thing healthy.

Many guitar players don't realize until it's too late that these things require some care in terms of RH management.