Guitar humidification

cavemusic

I am also in cold, dry Canada. We've had a long cold winter this year so I've done some experiments. I have an Oasis humidifier and a Caliber IV hygrometer in each guitar case. It's difficult for any single case humidifier to keep the humidity up to the recommended 40-50%. With the guitar case humidifiers alone the hygrometers show about 26%. I now store my acoustic instruments in a closed room with a room humidifier and the hygrometers show it can get up to about 36% in the winter. The Caliber IV is supposed to be fairly accurate but probably only 5-10%.

Joshl-m

I live about 2 hours north of Toronto and about a little while ago the humidity in my house went down to about 28%. I dug around for every old case humidifier I had. I have a humipack and an oasis and they work great but, for the oval hole, the dampit was still the best. The action came back up a full millimetre the day I put it in. Only downside is they dry out super fast and need to be dampened just about everyday when it is that dry

Brad Herman

Our place is usually around 64-70º year round as well, so temperature swings aren't an issue either.

Petrov

Thanks again for the feedback.

Liffet

I've bought combo Oasis humidifier+hygrometer https://www.oasishumidifiers.com/product/oasis-hh-combo-oh-30-humidifier-hygrometer/. It is a good choice, if you don't have a hygrometer yet (like me). And it is better than maintain the humidity using a room humidifier lol.

AndrewUlle

When you have several hollow wood instruments in the same household, makes more sense to have a room humidifier. We have 5 hollow body guitars and 2 violins, so maintaining individual humidifiers would be a full-time job.

pdg

I like both the humidipak and dampit. The humidipak, though, is made to humidify and dehumiidify, so it can lose too much moisture and cease being able to humidify, if there is no swing to humid (it can't keep giving out moisture indefinitely). But you can put it in a moist environment for awhile, to recharge it for humidifying, if you think the environment will turn dry (and vice versa).

Dampit is good, but the spongy material absorbs water fast and loses it fast (unlike the clay humidifier). You can even leave the dampit inside the guitar while you're playing!

mac63000

I'm another advocate for the humidipak. I keep two of them in my case during the fall and winter when the heat is on and the air dries out. They do harden when the air is really dry so I keep a few spares in a Ziploc bag just in case. By the spring time, they are usually soft and liquid again. I've seen some people recharge them with elaborate homemade humidity chambers, but I've never needed anything that drastic. I do live in western Washington though so that's probably part of it.

Matteo

I bought a humidifier this autumn that I haven't tried earlier, the Soundhole humitar, and it seems to do the job well. I have used the Oasis plus for a couple of years and went out to by a new one for this winter season. I want to support physical shops so I always look there before I order anything online. So I visited three different shops, close to where I live or work, but none of them carried it anymore. The third one had this Soundhole humitar so I thought if it's what's available I could at least give it a try. And yes, I think it may even be better than the ones I've used before. Simple but effective. However, my effort to support local businesses didn't work out so well. A couple of months later this very shop, and the whole chain it belonged to, went under. They had a closed down sale so I went back, thanked them for the time they had been around and bought two more humidifiers of the same sort for half the price. So now I think I'm safe for a while. Sad about the music shop though. Now there's only one left where I live (the third one I mentioned is in another city, where I work).

whitneyguitars

Hi Petrov,

I'm in BC, Canada and use the 'Oasis' in my case as well - great system. I also picked up a digital thermometer / hygrometer from 'The Source' (used to be Radio Shack), which comes with a transmitter / receiver, so one half goes in the case, the other on the shelf so I can monitor.

If I keep my guitar out, we've also installed a 'Desert Springs' humidifier on our furnace duct-work. Winters can see RH levels drop to 25% or lower, here in the Okanagan. To my knowledge, guitars are happy around the 45-55% range and the humidifier achieves that and keeps the guitars (and us!) happy. It's crazy to see what that low humidity can do; cupboards warp, spaces between the hardwood floors widen... imagine what that can do to our instruments!

For smaller rooms and something portable (requires filling a tank every few days), I picked up a unit from Amazon which adequately humidifies a space of 500 sq' very well. I think it ran me about 100 bones.

-Mike