I need advice on protecting strings in a humid environment. I moved onto a sailboat about four months ago and sailed to Mexico. My mandolin is fine with the humidity, but not the strings. About six weeks ago, I changed the strings and found significant areas of corrosion on the coated strings when I opened the package. I did what I could to clean them up and put them on. They were OK, but the intonation went south fairly quickly. I keep spare strings in a plastic box with a tight lid. I started looking for a new set, and found most of them had significant corrosion on the unwound strings. I wound up with a set of DHS strings, which were sealed in plastic. There was some corrosion on the loop end of the wound strings. I get nervous with the corrosion, as I am afraid of weakened areas and sudden breakage. It seems more than a surface issue.
Looking for suggestions from those of you in humid environments on how you deal with string storage and with protecting the strings on the instrument. I'm thinking sealed baggies or vacuum packaging. I also saw that Adam Steffey uses WD40 on his strings and wonder how that might affect the fingerboard. Any suggestions appreciated. Thanks.
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