The REAL Reasons Why You Should Humidify Your Guitar — Guitar Care 101

We recently asked our good friend and luthier extraordinaire Garrett Lee to share his no-nonsense tips for guitar maintenance. This resulted in Gary writing a series of no less than SEVEN individual posts on practical ways guitarists can ensure the longevity of their precious instruments. To kick things off, here are Gary’s tips for keeping your guitar happily humidified!

Let’s get straight to the point

I’ll defer the typical technical explanations about humidity until the end. The real reason why you should care about humidifying is that failure to do so can cost you practice time, money, psychological torture, and possibly a successful performance. Why? Because your guitar may end up cracked and sitting in a workshop like mine, undergoing repair.

Every winter when the air is especially dry, I receive a barrage of phone calls and emails. Panic-stricken players who failed to humidify properly contact me to fix their cracked soundboards or backs. The good news is that once repaired, the cracks will likely not change the sound of their guitars. What will change are the players’ bank accounts, time spent with their guitars while they’re being repaired, and the instruments’ value. It’s a stressful experience.

Adopt a practical approach

As a devoted guitarist, it’s a given that you need to have your guitar out of its case for often hours at a time. But when you’re done with your practice session or ready for a break of 30 minutes or more, close your guitar in its case with a humidifier that is working.

No cheating here. Your job is to ensure that the humidifier is always filled with fluid and your case’s seal is adequate (we’ll talk more about cases in the next blog installment). The inside of a case also absorbs moisture from the humidifier and acts as a large moisture reservoir for your guitar when it’s inside. When your guitar is out of the case, close the lid with the humidifier inside to preserve this buffer.

Which humidification device to use

There are several good commercial humidifiers with different designs available from online string dealers. I favor those with sealed, large-capacity reservoirs over those having low capacity (such as sponges) because they circumvent our laziness toward constantly having to add water when they run dry. Two devices that I like are the Oasis OH-1 and the D’Addario Two-Way Humidification System.

The D’Addario product has two advantages: 1) you never have to add water because you simply replace the fluid packs when they get dry, and 2) the fluid packs not only release moisture when the air is too dry, but also remove moisture when it’s too wet. If you live in a very dry climate and you practice for many hours at a time, consider buying a room humidifier.

Lastly, the technical details

What’s too dry or too wet? From your guitar’s perspective, any change in humidity compared to what it was when your guitar was glued together will make the parts move to some extent.

The reason is that wood behaves like a sponge — it loses water and shrinks when the air is relatively dry, and absorbs water and expands when the air is relatively wet. Once the wooden parts are glued together, their movements — shrinkage or expansion in different directions — can cause trouble, such as a change in your guitar’s action.

A hallmark of dryness is the protrusion of fret ends as the fingerboard shrinks (no, your frets are not growing!). In the extreme case, dry conditions can lead to severe wood shrinkage, as shown in the first photo above. Here, a split formed along a grain line because something had to give.

Hygrometers

Buy an in-case digital hygrometer to tell you the actual humidity level. The same string dealers sell them. The scale will read in percent relative humidity (RH) — that is, relative to full saturation of water vapor in the air (100% RH means it’s raining).

Luthiers typically control the RH in their workshops between 40–50% in order to match the average conditions their instruments will experience in the real world. If the RH in your case reads higher than 50%, you can safely remove the humidifier until drier weather arrives. In general, small humidity decreases away from 40–50% are far more dangerous than even large increases because of the high cracking potential under dry conditions. At high humidity such as beyond 75% RH, wood expansion tends to break glue joints, rather than the wood itself. One sign that the humidity might be getting too high is the appearance of rust on your frets.

We hope you enjoyed this post and learned a few things about how to properly humidify your instrument. Make sure you tune in for our next installment of Guitar Care 101 with Gary Lee where he discusses cases and exactly what you should look for when picking one out! In the meantime, check out https://tonebase.co for more classical guitar educational content.

About Garret Lee — https://www.garrettleeguitars.com/

Garrett Lee has enjoyed playing guitar since the age of nine. In 1999, his fascination and curiosity with guitar design, coupled with his love for woodcraft, drew him to begin building classical guitars. Trained as a research scientist with a Ph.D. in biochemistry, he enjoyed a successful career in academic research and later, in biotechnology. He was compelled by the challenge and intrigue of lutherie to transition to full-time building in 2006.

Gary’s research background inspires creativity, thoughtful design, and exacting execution. His handcrafted classical guitars incorporate traditional and contemporary design. Midway through his development, Gary received mentorship from celebrated American luthier John Gilbert.

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