Effects of cooking your guitar

stu

I know I shouldnt do this but I have left my guitar in the car overnight.
You know how it is, Get home after a gig at 2am and go straight to bed. Wake up at 10am to get your guitar out the car and its baked after being in the sun for a few hours. Now you must understand that it was raining hard last night when I got home and I was finished after a long day so hauling my guitar out the car was not a priority at that point in time. It will never happen again, I promise, but the guitar was quite hot when I took it out of its case. What sort of damage may it cause. I can imagine cooling it down too quickly could cause the wood to crack or something? Its an acoustic guitar by the way.

Logic tells me it will be fine because it got hot slowly and cooled down slowly. What do you guys thing?

Bob-Dubery

Guitars are not all made the same way. Some guitars are glued together with epoxies, some with old-fashioned hide glue. Some are solid wood all through, some are laminates, some have solid tops and laminate back and sides. Different finishes get used. So it's hard to generalise.

My Morgan is glued together with hide glue. One potential problem with too much heat is that the glue will soften and things will start moving or coming off - most likely the bridge. Cracks in the finish are another potential consequence of temperature changes.

An all laminate, epoxied together instrument with a satin finish could probably take more abuse, but I wouldn't recommend trying to find out exactly how much more. It's just prudent to not leave guitars in a situation where they have to deal with adverse conditions. It's all part of looking after your tools and your investment.

Bob-Dubery

stu wrote: Logic tells me it will be fine because it got hot slowly and cooled down slowly. What do you guys thing?

Heat changes things. If you cook a pork chop slowly and let it cool slowly it will still undergo change.

zohn

Logic tells me that it all depends how hot it got inside.

An instant tell-tale to how severe the heat was (or not) is how in tune the guitar was when you took it out. Heat affects the tuning in a significant way

If there are no visible cracks or popped frets and/or sharp ends of the frets protruding along the side of the fretboard, it should be just fine. Fortunately it sounds as if it was in the case which always helps - and as you said it cooled down in the case as well.

For what it is worth, it has been proven that hide glued joints withstand heat the best of all.

Bob-Dubery

zohn wrote: For what it is worth, it has been proven that hide glued joints withstand heat the best of all.

I dunno. I've read several alarming stories of bridges becoming detached. I know that I once saw Andy McGibbon cursing about some guitar that had the neck set in place with some kind of epoxy and was resistant to the usual applications of heat and steam to free up the neck joint.

That said, I'd be relieved to find that I'm mistaken. Or is it just the stuff used on the cheapest guitars is even less heat resistant?

zohn

I need time to find the exact article, but it was written by Frank ford.

Here's a quote from Rick Turner that refers to Frank's studies on the matter.

Rick Turner
Jul-13-2006, 11:55am
Heat alone should not have caused the mandolin to come apart; hot hide glue, fresh and properly mixed and clamped is remarkably heat resistant. Check www.frets.com for more info on that.

Titebond is not the best "easy" instrument glue; it is not particularly heat resistant and there is a tendency for joints to "cold creep" over time. The LMI instrument maker's white glue...a PVA formula...is much better.

Also, I would hope that your luthier got all traces of the old glue off of the glue surfaces. Aliphatic resin or white glue does not stick to old hide glue very well at all. But here's the funny thing...new hide glue does reconstitute old hide glue, and so you can fairly easily repair glue joints without being obsessive about cleaning off all the old glue.

BTW, I hope you meant hot hide glue, and not the cold bottled stuff that is simply wrong for musical instruments.

I'm off for now for the cricket...
?

zohn

Got it

http://www.frets.com/FRETSPages/Luthier/Data/Materials/GlueTest/gluetest.html

http://www.frets.com/FRETSPages/Luthier/Data/Materials/hideglue.html

(sorry for side tracking your thread Stu)

Keira-WitherKay

Dude you living in jhb ? How can you consider leaving anything in your car unless in a lock up garage ? Cars in town house complex's get broken into regularly . I think heat damage should be the least of your worries ? anyway how much effort is involved in grabbing the guitar out of the car when you get home . I too have gigs back to back on sat night then sunday lunch and it would be convenient to leave car packed overnight and i park in a secure town house complex but hey in jhb not worth the risk , my neighbour despite security had her car broken into recently . So think you should change your mindset re gear in a car over night ? before you regret it .

Gearhead

X-rated Bob wrote: I once saw Andy McGibbon cursing about some guitar that had the neck set in place with some kind of epoxy and was resistant to the usual applications of heat and steam to free up the neck joint.

That was my Nippon Gakki 12-string, I suppose :-[
He wound up sawing it up and putting in a dovetail joint for next time it needs a reset.

zohn

Another point of interest is some builders use a weaker mix of hide glue to glue bridges. That is to allow the joint to pop rather than to get damage to the soundboard by way of materials failure.

Especially on 12 string guitars with the added string pressure on the bridge.

@ Bob - how do you know Morgans are constructed with hide glue? I've share e-mails with David Iannone in the past (I'm a Morgan fan myself) and asked him various questions about construction aspects like bracing, finish, glue etc - he wouldn't give me definite answers.

None of those details are mentioned on his web-site either.

Bob-Dubery

zohn wrote: Another point of interest is some builders use a weaker mix of hide glue to glue bridges. That is to allow the joint to pop rather than to get damage to the soundboard by way of materials failure.

Very interesting. Somebody once told me that the difference between a good guitar and a cheap guitar is that the good guitar is easier to take apart.

@ Bob - how do you know Morgans are constructed with hide glue? I've share e-mails with David Iannone in the past (I'm a Morgan fan myself) and asked him various questions about construction aspects like bracing, finish, glue etc - he wouldn't give me definite answers.

I was told this by Hugh Cummings who was the Morgan agent for SA. .

zohn

So Stu
Any news on your acoustic?

stu

Thanks for the replies.

She is totally fine, no difference at all. I was just a bit worried about what the heat might have done.

As for leaving her in the car. I know its stupid and I shouldnt have done it but it wasnt intentional. I kinda forgot....
I didnt come home right after the gig so I had put my guitar in the car a few hour before I got home. Look its not an expensive guitar and can easily be replaced but I am fond of it.
As for the effort of getting her out the car, its not that easy. I drive an MGB GT and the case doesnt fit in the boot that well so it involves a bit of manoeuvring to get it out.

But I can assure you guys it wont happen again. I dont want to be the next dude to start a thread "stolen guitar" ?

Highway-Chile

If it is playing fine and the neck seems okay......check it for buzzing etc or an action that is too high....... then it is likely totally fine. Don't do that again though....no matter how tired you are. Not only is the guitar expensive to replace monetarily, impossible to replace from an emotional connection standpoint.........BUT there is also the damage to the car. Broken windows cost a bundle and if there was anything else of value in the car, that has to be factored in also.

About temperature damage to acoustic guitars.........

When my old bud Syd Kitchen came to the USA he spent some time here in LA and did some gigs etc. He brought his Marc Maingard guitar over with him. Beautiful guitar.

Well in the middle of his West Coast travels, he hopped over to the Las Vegas area...Nevada...... and while there he pulled out his his beautiful guitar only to find out it had "cracked" right down the seam on the front face surface.......the wood separated on the bookmark seam by a very noticeable amount. Around a millimeter or two. He about pooped his pants. He called me and told me about it and had also called Maingard who said to leave it as is until he got back to SA. Well on his return to california the guitar closed back up again by itself and was seemingly perfect. I am unsure what course of action he followed after that...... whether he took it to Marc to repair or look at it or just left it alone and unfortunately, I will never be able to ask him. I sure hope that guitar ended up in good hands.

Years ago I did 2 gigs in Mammoth during ski season. One night was a special party for the nurses at a local hospital and the next was a private party for the ski instructors. When my band left LA it was a normal hot and dry day. It was very warm when we left. As we approached Mammoth of course the snow started and eventually it was full bore snow travel, extremely freezing cold outside. We ran into all sorts of complications with traffic and stoppages and we got to our destination late....with not much time to get ready for the show. The members who got there earlier had set up my amps and all and made sure everything was working okay.....all I had to do was go up to my room, tune up and shower and get dressed for the gig.....quickly.

So I shot up to my nice toasty warm room and pulled my goldtop Les Paul out to tune up.

Well the room was probably around 80º or so.......and the guitar had been in a trunk of the car traveling in snow conditions and it was COLD. The instant I opened the case I heard the sound of random cracking and I was like WTF???? I couldn't figure what it was and started looking closely at the face of the guitar and then I noticed all these spider web like cracks just spreading out on the face of the guitar.......it was the nitrocellulose lacquer cracking from the temperature difference.

Man I was pissed!!!!! I bought that guitar from Syd Kitchen in 1980 or so and really cherished it. I looked after it so well and it had very few blems on it. I just never knew about going from one extreme to another in temperature. It never occurred to me to let the guitar acclimatize in the closed case while sitting in the toasty room...... while I grabbed a shower and got ready.

Anyway....one thing I would look into is a humidifier to keep that guitar "hydrated" ? in the Joeys dryness. Overly dry wood is the killer of guitars.

zohn

Ja we are fortunate in that regard. Some of the Canadian folks on the Larrivee forum regularly report cracking due to sudden temperature changes and the drying effect of snow (cold weather) is very significant.

That is the reason why a "professionally repaired" crack on used instruments over there is generally accepted as a non issue. (which it is I suppose)

It is also known that vintage instruments from SA are in high demand in the States just like used cars from Gauteng in KZN (crazy hey?)

Keira-WitherKay

well i have performed in europe in winter and the practise was always to be careful of sudden temp changes......... with leaving guitar cases closed till they warmed up to room temp on outside ..........after coming in from the cold ... and then even opening them a mere crack and slowly allow warm air into the once icy case ..... sometimes if there was not much time..a hairdryer on a cool setting can be used to slowly warm up the outside of the case ... to warm up the guitar before opening it but this is only neccessary in deep winter..... but i'd always be careful if it's freezing temp outside

i also have performed in the "Emirates" where extreme heat is an issue ........... and here i learnt to wrap my guitar case in that reflective material they use to reflect sun from windscreens of cars to keep em cool if i was travelling in day with my guitar and learnt to keep the guitar in the airconditioned car..on my lap .........albeit cramped ....... rather than load it into the un airconditioned car boot for a trip to the gig in 40 - 50 degree heat

so yes radical /quick changes in temperature is NOT great for any guitar .......

and thankfully in SA we very lucky that we have quite moderate temperatures extremes seldom cold or hot enough to damage a guitar unless there's long term exposure (like leaving your guitar in car boot all day in summer sun) .....

here we are more at risk of theft ..... rather than heat/cold damage