Tech Tips & FAQ's

Here's a bunch of useful and important information about keeping you and your instrument happy.  If anybody has any other questions, please email me and I'll add it to the list of questions to hopefully help other people too.   Check back often for more useful stuff.  

​Does humidity "Really" make that much of a difference?  

How dry is too dry? 



Well the short answer is...YES!!  It makes all the difference in the world.  The sides of your guitar were bent...with humidity.  If you go to the lumber yard, how much wood is perfectly straight?  Not much.  Wood "wants" to bend and twist.  Wood is like a sponge, it soaks up humidity and swells, and shrinks when it dries out.  

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Here in New Brunswick, we are so far north that it's impossible to keep your guitar happy in the winter without some help.  The easiest way to remember is this... If it's cold enough outside that you need to turn on your heaters, the ambient air is physically incapable of holding enough moisture to keep a guitar in playable condition.  

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During the heating season, your guitar should live in a hardshell case, 24-7, with a humidifier.  NOT a gig bag... they don't hold the moisture inside.  Just putting it in the case is NOT enough.  If you don't use a humidifier  the air inside the case is just as dry as the rest of the house.



And finally,  ANY damage done to a guitar because of dryness, is NEVER covered under any manufacturers warranty.  Yes, it's true that you didn't "Mean" to do it, but it's not a manufacturing defect.  These damages are very expensive to repair, and are totally preventable.   A little bit of water, can save you a whole lot of money.



And the bizarre thing is that the MORE expensive the guitar....the MORE you need to baby it.  Cheap guitars are made of plywood....with so many layers of glue and wood that they are really tough and humidity/dryness barely affects them at all.  With an expensive guitar, the things that make the guitar sound so good, are the exact same things that make it fragile.  I've seen a brand new $1500 guitar require almost $1000 worth of repairs (Bridge Replacement/9 Splits in the top/3 loose internal bracings/9 loose frets/ and back lifting off)  in ONLY 2 1/2 months because of an extremely dry house.  And NONE of it was covered under warranty.  And a little bit of water could have saved the guitar. 



Here is a little write up I got from Taylor Guitars that explains quite well what can happen.  

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TRACKING THE PROGRESSIVE EFFECTS OF 

LOW RELATIVE HUMIDITY ON YOUR GUITAR
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45% -55% Relative Humidity (RH)

Your guitar is in the same good condition as when it left the manufacturer.

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40% RH
Sharp frets might appear, as the fretboard slightly shrinks from the loss of
moisture.

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35%  RH
Your guitar now has sharp, uncomfortable frets. Some fret filing is necessary.
Your solid acoustic top begins to shrink. No cracking is apparent, but the neck needs some adjustment and the action begins to lower.

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30% RH
You might or might not see the first crack appear on your solid top, depending on a lot of factors. But chances are good that the guitar has lost an ounce of water, and the top has shrunk almost 1/8-inch in width. This is what wood does. Because it is glued to the sides and braces, the tension on the top increases as it loses moisture
and it somehow has to relieve that tension. Some tops might crack, others might not. In any case, guitars that have been exposed long enough will be in embarrassingly bad playing condition. They definitely are not in the condition intended by the manufacturer and should be restored.

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25% RH
By now, the problems with your guitar are getting pretty obvious. For one thing, it might require some kind of fret dressing. You might be spending time on the phone asking the guitar manufacturer or your dealer how to remedy the situation. You might mistakenly believe that the problem is with that one guitar, or even that one
brand of guitar — that, in other words, it is an isolated problem. It is not. If
the “problem” guitar has cracked, your other solid-wood guitars have sunken
tops that are on the verge of cracking.  Meanwhile, you probably are upset with the manufacturer and the dealer.

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20% RH
You guitar is cracking, that’s all there is to it. You’re becoming frustrated, and
you wonder why manufacturers can’t “get it together.” You don’t remember this happening in past winters that seemed just as cold. It’s possible that
the humidity during previous winters hovered around 29% — just enough to
get by. If you’re not accurately measuring your humidity with good gauges, you can’t say.

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15% RH
Forget it. There’s no hope of maintaining your guitar in playable condition
unless you use a soundhole humidifier or have a humidified “music room.” If you have such a room, you could maintain a 50 % RH level in the area where your guitar is stored, no matter how dry it is elsewhere in the house or outdoors. And you could get on with the business of playing your guitar instead
of being aggravated by it.

Do I really "Need" to get a set-up if I change my gauge of strings?



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​Yes.  Every gauge of strings have a different tension, which pulls on the neck either more or less.  That can cause some major shifts in the way your guitar plays and feels.  Here is a small chart that hopefully explains a few things.

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EJ15 135.1lbs (Acoustic 10's, Extra Light Gauge)
EJ16 163.2lbs (Acoustic 12's, Light Gauge)
EJ17 188.8lbs (Acoustic 13's, Medium Gauge)

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EXL 120   85.2lbs (Electric 9's)
​EXL 110  103.6lbs (Electric 10's)

EXL 115  118.6lbs (Electric 11's)
EXL 145  148.5lbs (Electric 12's)

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EJ45         83.6lbs  (Classical, Normal Tension)



The difference between a Light and Medium acoustic is about 25lbs.   If you switch to Mediums from Lights, you will notice that the guitar is quite a bit harder to play.

That's because the strings are now quite a bit higher because the neck has flexed under the added tension and needs to be adjusted to compensate.   In addition to any intonation adjustments, or nut adjustments that may need to be done.

Can you adjust the intonation without changing the strings?



Not unless you just changed them and jumped in the car to come see me.  Even strings that are a couple of days old will "drift" and not intonate perfectly.  If I try to intonate everything with old strings, as soon as you change your strings, everything will be totally off, and you'll have to come see me again.  Watch my Youtube video below and see what I mean...and how badly out it can actually be.  

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