humidity

[french]

i recently purchased a 1917 gibson a in the western united states (colorado). from what i heard, the mandolin also belonged to someone in south dakota.

now i (and the mandolin) live in germany, a very humid climate.

do i have to worry about the climate change? does anyone have any special maintenance tips?

cheers!

- tom

[JGWoods]

If it was mine I would take a close measure of the action now, before it has been away from its old climate for very long. Second, if I had a gram scale that could weigh it accurately I would do that too.

Taylor Guitars weighs every instrument when they are built and keeps a record. If a guitar comes back with problems they re-weigh it, and every guitar that comes back needing work seems to be markedly different in weight from the original.

I hear tell that the first thing they do is get it back close to original weight- add water content back in, or dry it out to get it normalized, whereupon most problems are gone.

That's the guitar world, but wood is wood and I imagine that if your mando plays and sounds good now you could use that as your baseline, and it if starts to deteriorate for some reason you could weigh and measure it, and try using dessicants in the case to dry it out, or a dampit in the case to wet it up some and see if it got better before spending money on luthier services.

my 2 cents,
best
gw