Official Luthiers Forum!

My instructor suggested I humidify my guitars with a plastic soap dish, antibacterial sponge squeezed dry, and the dish top drilled with a half-dozen one-inch holes. Been working fine for two years, no sharp fret ends, and a whole lot more moisture available that with a Kyser Lifeguard soundhole sponge humidifier. What's not to like? In another thread I noticed an observation that a mandolin was destructively overhumidified with a soapdish humidifier with a dripping wet sponge. Is the dripping-wet part where the mandolin owner went wrong, or is there some reason that my version of humidification is inappropriate?

Thanks, folks.

_________________
Peter Havriluk

Yup, dripping wet would definitely not be good.

_________________
The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Yikes, I just related this a couple of days ago...this guy was from your neck of the woods. The mandolin was over 12K.

"I had a customer that dried out a mandolin so bad the back split and bowed up badly at the tailpiece. I spent quite a few hours repairing it and refinishing the area (let's say over a thousand easy).

He sent it back a year later with "high" action. He had put a sponge in a soapdish drilled full of holes. When I opened the case, the felt was wet, the wire strings RUSTED, and I bet I squeezed a cup of water out of the sponge. Hold your breath and puff out your cheeks as far as you can. That's what the mandolin looked like.
No matter what you tell some of these people ( I enclosed a detailed care sheet with every instrument), they are dumb as a box. Like running your car oil dry and wondering why the engine blew."

I WOULD TELL YOUR INSTRUCTOR THAT HE IS QUITE POSSIBLY HELPING TO DESTROY INSTRUMENTS WITH THAT KIND OF RECOMMENDATION. Do NOT put your humidifier in the peghead box of the case either. You will be humidifying the peghead. I have used Dampits forever and they work just fine as long as you figure the cycle of dryout and refill. If you insist on using a soapdish, 1" holes are way to big, and the area of the sponge you are using is MUCH larger than a guitar Dampit sponge. If you are figuring you will just have to fill it less because it is bigger, what you will have is 100% humidity when you close the case and when you open it to refill the sponge it will be dry. You will be cycling the box...not good. You need to humidify the inside of the box in the winter, not the peghead.
I'm sure Hesh or someone else can give you an education as to the best humidifiers out there these days and how they work. Hesh can probably write you a treatise and explain how humidifiers are sized to the instrument. It is up to you to learn all this and follow the advice by the letter. Only alternative is a humidified room.

IT'S TIME, FOLKS. GET OUT THE HUMIDIFIERS. A properly sized humidifier put IN the box is the best way to avoid the inevitable cracks that would happen without humidification. Remember, you have a closed box of very thin wood, finished on one side. Wood has inherent stress and by not properly humidifying the box, you are stressing the box. Repeated cycling will eventually find the weakest spot in the wood and we all know the sound of that result. Diligent humidification will keep you in fine shape.

Different woods react differently to cycling. Some brittle wood cracks easily and some is quite resilient.

If I were you, I would wait for a few more responses and print out the whole thread for your instructor.

Double Post...

Where do you put the soap dish? Inside the guitar??
Anyway....any sponge or cloth that will hold water and not drip should be fine. You just need a way to keep the damp material from contacting the wood. The soap dish sounds like a good idea

What Hans said!

We hear from clients frequently who's soap dishes with sponges that some music teacher turned them onto leaked and either stained or damaged their guitars....

If you are going to place moisture inside a guitar you need to use something that is bullet proof in terms of not ever, ever leaking.

We like the Oasis humidifiers and sell many of them this time of year. We also sell them when the client picks up their ax after we closed and cleated a crack.... Folks never learn....

Seems like an effective way to screw up a guitar --- I agree with the idea of spending a couple of bucks on a device with a good track record.

_________________
Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

I found out the hard way the my Kohno 30 signature is in water soluble ink. A Dampit dripped on it and blurred the signature a little. It gets worse. Just from the humidity in the case over the years, the signature has gradually become invisible except in certain light. The label also looks moldy in spots. I have seen other Kohno labels like this. I no longer put the humidifier in the sound hole, but it is too late.

Interestingly, I have had a lot more problems with my owners over humidifying their instruments. A typical scenario is a guy with a furnace humidifier that's still puts both a soap dish in the case and a high output Oasis in the soundhole. I have had several of those. Really bloated.

Those guitars never seem to shrink back to where they were and some have had to have the neck set tweaked.

Another issue is that those digital hygrometers all seem to read at least 10% or more low. I got two of those StewMac dial hygrometers that were both 20% low compared to a sling psychrometer.
You could have one in your case reading 40% when it is actually 60%.

_________________
It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Terry, I had a mandolin player that had 2 violin dampits in his mandolin BECAUSE they were smaller than a guitar dampit. People in this country always think more is better...
Many people don't realize that dampits are supposed to be squeezed so that they are not sopping wet inside and then the outside dried. I'm sure there are better humidifiers built these days, but I use dampits because I have 11 of them.

Yeah, a bad hygrometer is probably worse than no hygrometer.

_________________
Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Here's a question. I live in the dessert, where the humidity can get extremely low. I have 6 guitars in my house, each in a case with an oasis plus in the soundhole. Then we have a couple days like yesterday and today where the humidity is very high and it is raining. Do I open all 6 cases and remove the humidifiers? Or just let it be for a few days, since I know it will get dry again? My shop is controlled but my house isn't. No room in my shop to store guitars.

Most folks that live in the desert have A/C. That would also bring down the relative humidity, but as it is here in Mn, winters are no different. House humidifiers are important. Without whole house humidity, we can get to 5-10%. Whole house humidifiers will bring it up to 30-40% if you are lucky, At my house, it gets to 30% with whole house in winter, and rooms I keep instruments in, I use extra humidifiers to boost it up to 45%. Of course, in the summer, the A/C gets is down to about 35% with the whole house humidity shut off on the most humid days and I still run a humidifier some. A/C does take out humidity.

The shop gets a de-humidifier, because the basement runs 80-90% and sometimes the concrete floor "sweats".

Now, as to your question, the guitar inside the case doesn't know the relative humidity out there in the world. It knows the humidity provided by the humidifier between the strings. Taken out for a few hours, it will begin to acclimate to the conditions around it, and when it is back in the case, it will normalize again. As long as the instrument is not left to cycle from extremely low to very high for long periods of time, you are pretty well protected,

As far as those digital humidifier guages, I probably have 7-8 of them throughout the house. At one time they were all grouped together and the differences marked.The one in the shop is the most expensive and the rest are calibrated with it. So each one is marked -4, +7, etc. Seems to do it for me.
Hope that helps...

Don't you want to use a two way humidifier of the type Planet Waves makes. They are recommended by Taylor. Too humid it sucks out moisture. Too arid it adds moisture to the case. Homemade humidifiers void the warranty on my instruments. The Planet Waves humidifier/dehumidifier is less than $20.

_________________
Michael F Smith
Goat Rock Ukulele
http://goatrockukulele.com