Dealing with high humidity...

[DamonIRB]

I know that low humidity is a concern with most any wooden insturment, but what about high humidity? How big of a concern is it?

I live in the St Pete, FL area where high humidity is just the way it is. This morning, it was 58 degrees with a 94% huimdity. While that's a bit out of the norm for this time of year, a humidity of 85% or more is not uncommon between May - September. During the summer, the AC is obviously running (as it's also 95 degrees) and will help keep the indoor humidity a bit more in the 'normal' range, but today the AC may not even come on, as the outside temp won't get above 73ish.

Should I be taking any steps to keep my mando/guitar in a lower humidity environment? I typically leave them sitting out on their stands in my office. They keep the place looking nice and give me easy access if/when I take a 15 minute break from work and want to practice a bit.

I'm open to suggestions/ideas.

Thanks in advance,
D

[Rob Ray]

You need a small de-humidifier in the office.....40 to 50 % seems to be ideal....according to many....

Rob Ray

[samwell]

Hey I got kind of an answer for you!

I lived in the Philippines for 7 years where the humidity is close to 100% all the time. The effects I noticed on the guitar I had at the time were: Frets popping out of their slots, soundboard deformation (namely bellying), Tone bars coming off, warping in the fret board and neck itself, finish checking and cracking (from swelling), and at least for me I had to continually make sure and combat mold.

So I don't know which to expect for you but I would be incredibly careful because over humidification can be just as bad as allowing your instruments to become too dry.

[lenf12]

Hi DamonIRB,

Greetings from up the street in Clearwater. I leave a couple of mandolins and a guitar out on stands year round. Additionally, my wife likes to keep windows open this time of year due to cooler temps (hence lower electric bills). I have not had a single structural problem due to high humidity in my 10 years living here in the Tampa Bay area. If anything, I need to re-tune more frequently between low and high humidity cycles but that's not so bad. As long as you don't throw your mandolin off the causeway at John's Pass, there's very little that can go wrong with our little humidity spikes in winter here in FL. The same can not be said of the extremely dry conditions up north with heaters cranked or the desert southwest with low, single digit humidity.

Len B.
Clearwater, FL

[CES]

I think the room dehumidifier is a good idea, and also will give you some H2O for any office plants you have

Less drastic options include keeping them in the case on the more humid days with a dry Kyser Lifeguard type sponge, which will absorb at least some of the excess moisture. This was recommended to me by a Martin Certified repairman, though he made it clear that whole room or house humidity control would be much more beneficial...FWIW, when I lived in Charleston, SC, I had no issues with my guitars or banjo, and all I did was keep them in the cases...

[allenhopkins]

Symptoms of a Wet Guitar from the Taylor Guitars' Tech Sheets (useful for mandolins too). Not as much of a problem as excessively low humidity, but still can be an issue. Case storage, a room dehumidifier, and frequent inspection should keep you from damage.

[multidon]

Planet Waves Humidpaks are supposedly two way, absorbing excess moisture as well as humidifying when its dry. It seems counter intuitive but that is the manufacturer claim. Another thing you can do is place some desiccant packets in your case (the things that ship with new instruments that say "do not eat" on them". In either case you need to keep your instrument IN your case. Not as convenient for impromptu practicing perhaps but much easier to control the instrument's environment. The outside or even inside humidity is not as important as what's in the case. You can monitor it with one of those little electronic hygrometers inside the case. They aren't expensive.

[BlackChris]

Humidity here in far north queensland is high - we win the high humidity awards every year. As others have said my instruments are out in the open. If you are going to try to do something about the humidity (which you don't need to) do you realise the costs and difficulty?
You will have to seal one room and constantly dehimidify it
You will not be able to take your instruments from this room as they will instantly start to take on water (then they will dry out again when you put them back in the room, then get 'wet' again when you take them out, and on and on - does this sound healthy for the instrument?)
Remember this is a site for sometimes overly keen people who make a bit too much of things
Your instruments will be fine in a humid environment

[DamonIRB]

Your instruments will be fine in a humid environment

That's kinda what I was thinking, but today's weather had me wondering. I remember the old rule of thumb... if you're uncomfortable, your insturment is too. I'm not uncomfortable in the high humidity, but I do my best to avoid over-exersion when it's super high. Probably a good idea to keep that in mind for my babies as well.

Thanks for the responses.

D

[Steven Clarkson]

I bought a cheap humidity device off of amazon - it always lets me know whether or not the humidity is align with the room - just put it in the room with the mandolin - if the relative temperature in align with the humidity, there's no problem - a notable seller suggested this - in terms of a constant solution, I would have to agree with my cohorts. But having the gauge has helped a lot.

[Ivan Kelsall]

Keep a few small sachets of 'Silical Gel' in your case.That stuff soaks up 'free' moisture like blotting paper,
Ivan

[P.D. Kirby]

I don't for a minute discount any of the practices for either Humidifying or Dehumidifying a wooden instrument but every time this subject comes up (which is quite often) I have to wonder what musicians did before we had all of these newfangled gadgets for both measuring and remedying these conditions? There are Violins still in use that were made 300+ years ago and countless other instruments that are older than the USA that are worth small fortunes. I realize we all want to do as much as we can to ensure our little friends stay in top playing and sounding condition for as long as we are responsible for their wellbeing but what if all of this raising and lowering of the humidity and temperature are a key part of the equation for making a vintage instrument sound ....well like a vintage instrument? I just can't help wonder if our predecessors obsessed over such things and are we doing the right thing by trying to create a Museum Quality storage facility out of our music rooms and instrument cases?

[greg_tsam]

Kinda like how did man survive without vaccines? We did but with more casualties.

[allenhopkins]

Another factor is that central heating is pretty much a 20th century phenomenon. Before the development of furnaces, houses were heated with stoves and fireplaces, and filling the entire structure with heated air, with resultant reduced humidity, wasn't the norm. Lots of old instruments sustained damage from being kept in "unfriendly" environments; I have a century-old Washburn bowl-back mandola that was rescued from prolonged attic storage, with a resultant "dished" top and several cracks, luckily able to be stabilized.

The 300-year-old instruments that survive and are played, are surely a tiny fraction of the instruments made at that time, which is one reason that they're "worth small fortunes." Most of the 18th-century violins, guitars, mandolins etc. long ago met their demise, from whatever cause. The fact that we now have so many century-old instruments still around and playable, may well be attributable to the fact that we know how to take better care of them.

[multidon]

I have to wonder what musicians did before we had all of these newfangled gadgets for both measuring and remedying these conditions? There are Violins still in use that were made 300+ years ago and countless other instruments that are older than the USA that are worth small fortunes.

Kinda like how did man survive without vaccines? We did but with more casualties.

Absolutely agree with that. With all due respect to Mr. Kirby, this is nothing new. Yes there was a time before everybody had hygrometers and humidifiers and silica gel. But I have heard about old-timers (I mean players old enough to be my grandfather or great grandfather, they would have started playing in the 20's or even teens) who owned expensive guitars (usually Martins) who used to say to put a slice of apple in the case in the winter. So they didn't know about hygrometers or relative humidity but they knew when it was dry and their instruments needed moisture. I don't know if that knowledge goes further back than that, but those 300 year old violins you refer to? Just because they are still "in use" and worth "small fortunes" doesn't mean they are crack free. Try finding one that hasn't had multiple repaired cracked tops. I suspect that , based on what I've seen in old violins, crack repair was much more common. There are your casualties. Then again, I am the owner of a 100 year old violin that previously was not looked after for many years, and it has nary a crack. You just never know with instruments. If you don't do the humidity thing it's a crap shoot. Maybe they will be just fine, or maybe not. Do you feel lucky? I think that, based on what we know now, we should try to control humidity as best we can if the instrument is something we care about. I have 18 instruments to keep humidified in the winter. The best humidifier I have found is a piece of common household sponge, damp and squeezed out, in a snack size ziplock bag with a few holes in the bag made with a paper punch. Works like a charm! I never had to worry about dehumidifying, but if I did I would use silica gel packs.

[mandroid]

Peter Mix'sCarbon Fiber mandolins will be better,, but there is still a wooden fingerboard,
My A5 is going to need a fingerboard leveling to remove a hump .

[Mike Bunting]

Sometimes we learn things through the passage of time, even about the affect of moisture or the lack thereof on our instruments.

[Tim2723]

High humidity may or may not hurt the instrument, but it can play havoc with the lining of your case. I've met a lot of stanky, mildewed cases in my time.

[EdHanrahan]

I think a point that's being missed (or maybe I missed it in here somewhere?) is that while both high and low humidity can throw off your instrument's playability, it's low humidity that's far more likely to do permanent damage than high humidity of the same, uhmm, deviation.

That is, a period of constantly dry 20% is likely to do damage, while a similar period of damp-ish (& complimentary / mirror-high) 80% may be noticeable (swelling, action, etc) but will probably leave no damage. Comparing ranges of 30%-vs-70%, or 10%-vs-90% will have the same unequal probability of actual damage, with dry being the bigger culprit.

Just my personal prejudices:
- At 40% or above, I don't worry about dryness. Here in the NYC metro area, that generally means April thru October.
- At 80% or above (& I'm sweating like a geyser -sort of a July & August hobby!), a moderate amount of air-conditioning rarely takes it below 60% and never below 50%, so there's still little no reason to worry.

YMMV!

(Oh yeah: And when my wife had 200+ house plants that got constant watering, I never had to worry. Since she got tired of all that maintenance, I'm the one watering ... instruments!)

[nickster60]

Hi Damon
I live down the road in Palmetto one thing about Florida is it is consistently humid. More problems seem arise when folks travel form dry to moist or visa versa. Especially with violins, the seams will pop and some will develop cracks.I leave my good stuff in there cases and the only real difference I notice is the tuning will vary a bit when the seasons start to change. In my 20 years in Florida I havent had humidity related damage to my instruments. But the foam in case can breakdown pretty easy down here. They get a lovely stinky cheese smell.