Storing your Acoustic Guitar
Do you like to lay down in a freezing garage? Stand in the hot sun for hours without water? Neither does your guitar. A guitar’s neck and body are fairly resilient but can easily warp and crack if not stored in the correct environment. The basic rule of storing your acoustic guitar is to keep it in environments where you feel comfortable. Never expose your instrument to extreme temperatures for a long time. For instance, leaving your guitar in a car in the bitter cold all day, or leaving it outside for the whole night are sure ways to completely destroy your instrument. Also keep the guitar out of direct sunlight as much as possible, because it makes the wood more brittle and it can destroy the color of the instrument.
Elise Michaels, a friend and fellow producer/musician suggests to “be sure to put a humidifier in it. Planet Waves makes a good one.” The air humidity should be neither too low nor too high, thus somewhere in the 40-50% range, and the temperature of the area should be about 77 °F. These two factors are the biggest threat to an instrument, because changes in moisture and temperature can cause permanent warping of the neck and other critical parts. For guitars made out of solid wood, it is advised to use a humidifier to prevent cracks and damage from weather change.
John Alarcon, a Bend Singer/Songwriter pointed me to a good web resource of information on storing your guitar. Some great advice there is, a guitar gets most of its scrapes because one leans it against a wall, or against a table edge, and then it is knocked over from the slightest contact or draft of air. If one would have put it down, this would not have happened. Get it on a wall hook, on a stand or better yet in a case.
If you are not expecting to play your guitar for a while it is very important to loosen the strings. I’ve been told that the neck will eventually warp inward at the neck from the tension of the strings. When you are actively playing the instrument you’re constantly flexing the neck from tuning and playing. But if the strings and neck are stationary for a long time the neck will bend. Not a good thing, you’ll be out of tune and have more firewood.
