Maintaining your Guitar

Maintaining your Guitar.

If you are planning on keeping our guitar for a long time, it is important to maintain it. You can keep your guitar looking and playing great as long as you take care of it.

One of the easiest and most important ways you can maintain your guitar is just by playing it. Guitars are meant to be played. It isn’t good for your guitar to sit in the case for years at a time with tension on the neck. Get it out of the case and play it once and a while!

Playing your guitar in a temperature-controlled living room is ideal, but how many of us do that. We take our guitars on the road, in the car, on stage, and everywhere. Don’t let your favorite Les Paul be the next guitar repair on your luthier’s bench. When you travel with your guitar, be aware of the weather conditions. Any form of severe weather can be traumatic to your guitar whether it is hot, cold, humid, or dry. Environmental changes cannot only ruin the cosmetic appearance of your guitar like cracks in the finish, it can also harm the structural integrity of your guitar. Here are some basic tips for making sure your guitar is safe from the weather.

What temperate should you keep your guitar?

Temperature can be horrible on guitars. Extreme heat can warp guitar necks and melt glue joints where as the extreme cold can crack guitar finish. It is important not to leave your guitar in areas where there are extreme temperatures of any kind. Do not leave your guitar in the car, in the window, or in direct sunlight on a hot sunny. Also don't leave your guitar next to space heaters or any other type of heater. Guitars need to stay at room temperature—not be super heated. The extreme heat can cause neck or fretboard glue to loosen or your neck to warp. Either of these problems can result in major repairs. Extreme cold can also cause great damage to your guitar. Do not leave your guitar out in your car during the winter. The finish can freeze on the guitar and when you bring it inside it will crack. If you have to leave your guitar in a cold car before a gig, I would suggest you bring it inside well before you have to play it and leave it in the case. This will allow the guitar to "thaw" slowly. Your finish should be fine. Ovation acoustic guitars are notorious for doing this. The whole top of the guitar can crack right up to the bridge because of the sudden shift in temperature.
The perfect temperature for a guitar is room temperature without any extreme shifts. Obviously, sometimes this is impossible to achieve when you are playing gigs, but it is a simply guideline.

Is humidity a problem with guitars too?

Humidity is just as dangerous to guitars as extreme temperature shifts and swings. Humidity can cause the guitar wood to swell or shrink and crack the finish. High humidity will allow your guitar to absorb more moisture out of the air. The guitar wood will fill up with water and expand while the hardened finish on the guitar will stay a constant size. The expanding of the wood can crack the finish. Low humidity has the opposite effect on electric guitar wood. The guitar wood dries out and shrinks while the hardened finish maintains the same shape. If a guitar is dry enough, it will almost always crack the finish. Most luthiers agree that an ideal humidity is around 50%. It can be a little more or a little less, but this is a good rule of thumb. During dry winter months, you may need to place a humidifier in your guitar case in order to maintain the humidity around 50%. Here are some good humidifiers that I recommend.

How do you know if your guitar is too dry?

Most guitars actually tell us when they are too dry. They do that by cutting your hands while you play. I’m only joking, but it is kind of true. Most guitar fretboards shrink when the weather is extremely dry. The frets, however, do not shrink. Thus, the frets tend to pop out of the edges of the fretboard. You can feel it when you play. It’s not pleasant. This is most often referred to as sharp fret ends. It’s an easy guitar repair, but you can probably fix the problem just by placing your guitar in a more humid room.

These are some simple tips for making your guitar play great and last a long time. I hope you got a lot out of this article.