Humidifying a dry guitar

As wood dries, it shrinks.

Fret wire does not shrink lengthwise.

So fret ends will stick out, leaving a razor sharp burr that can make your hands bleed without even feeling it.

Learned that the hard way.

Problem is, if you file down all the fret ends, then if the wood ever gets humidified, the wood may expand beyond the newly finished fret end, leaving a dent at every fret end.

The last few times i did this humidity job, i used kitchen garbage can liners.

This time i am using a gig bag that is breathable, so will see how it turns out.

Its critical to check instrument every day, to develop a feel for that instruments fret ends, and you can “feel” the progress as the wood expands, by referencing it to how much fret end you could feel the day before.

One problem with shrunken wood is, even after you swell the wood back up, the frets have pushed up thru the binding or finish.

So you just humidity and get the guitar wood back to a baseline size by humidity and temperature, and feel.

And then you re-assess the guitar, and go on from there.

Humidifying your guitar might be one of the reasons it takes your guitar so long to come back from the guitar shop!

Its not that they are working on it for 7 straight days, but they are nursing the guitar, checking vitals, and just waiting for things to humidify.

One thing to think about with fretboard oil. You know you oil fretboards because oil repels water, and oil floats on water.

So what you have to do is humidify your guitar wood until it is done swelling, and then apply fretboard oil to seal the moisture inside the wood.

For some reason, for the longest time, i thought fretboard oil was to keep moisture OUT of the wood,

Like if you sweat on fretboard, or spill a drink on fretboard.

Living in an area with 4 distinct seasons, guitars are constantly in need of service.

You may even need to tune your guitar between songs!

Constant temperature and humidity flux causes endless need for adjustments.

And because these adjustments are not made, the local music scene suffers.

What needs to happen, is that every guitar player needs to split his time evenly between playing/practicing and tuning/maintaining.

Every guitar player should commit to tuning their guitar every day, whether they want to play the guitar or not that day.

Just make a commitment to the daily maintenance for one full year.

In one full year, you will have tuned your guitar in many different temperature and humidity scenarios.

Never take a warm guitar with floyd rose from warm house out into cold garage and try to tune up. Tremolo springs and strings sensitive to temperature