Keira WitherKay wrote:
thats fabulous. i must look at getting one ............... but i hang my guitars on wall brackets at home( like they do in music stores) not keeping em in their cases....... will it still work in a room ?? or is it meant for the close confines of a case only
also i notice when you walk into a music store ........ i have seen the whole stock of say 10/15 ramirez guitars and other top end acoustics without humidifiers just on stands on the floor........ is the shop then humidity controlled ??? just a question . i can understand no effort been made on the corts and ibanez entry level guitars but on the top end 15 - 20 K region models i expect to see something but seldom or never do .........
I take it you're not talking about Johannesburg ? I can't think of a store in these parts where you'd see 10 to 15 Ramirez on stands on the floor.
It depends on where you are. I noticed that most stores around Denmark Street just keep their guitars hanging on the wall and have no humidity control in the shop (most of them don't even sell humidifiers). Presumably they don't have a wide range of humidity to deall with (though if they have central heating I'd expect the shop to start drying out in the winter - I've only been to Denmark Street in the summer). But I went once to Forsysths in Manchester where they have an excellent selection of high-end acoustics (Lowden, Flyde, Breedlove, Atkins....) and they keep certain floors humidified - the floors where they keep their good acoustics and the better orchestral instruments. Bath they don't seem to humidify their shop or their instruments, but I went to a shop in Norwich where they were careful about humidity - again a shop that specialises in high-end acoustics.
Music stores, alas, aren't necessary exemplars of how to look after a guitar. Guitar stores have to sell guitars - and that means keeping them on display. I know Hugh's Fine Guitars keep their good acoustics humidified in the case (Hugh only hangs them out when he's got a customer calling).
Thinking about it, it's got to be better to keep them in the case in dry situations. That would slow down humidity loss and it's a smaller area to control.
But it depends on you and your guitar I guess. The Morgan certainly doesn't like a Highveld winter. My first winter with that guitar was what convinced me that there is something to humidifying. But it also taught me that you can reverse the early problems with a good dose of humidity. The Morgan started buzzing. I slackened off the truss rod a little and it got better, but I didn't want to keep on doing this. A couple of days later I mentioned this to Hugh Cumming. Hugh told me to get a small bathsponge, soak it, put it in a zip-loc bag and leave that bag open a little and in the case (positioned so that water would not run out of the bag onto the guitar). He told me to not bother the guitar for 3 days other than to check that the sponge was still damp. 3 days later the guitar was in fine form again and I went back to using just a regular in-soundhole humidifier (which are fine for preventing problems).
Guitars with laminate tops are much less troubled by low or high humidity.
