Dubbaround said:
I need one too. I'm freaking out with worry that the super dry air in my house will murder it.
I take it in the bathroom with me when I shower for the humidity....tell me I am not mental. :mrgreen:
I know this is a departure from the subject, but I have a serious low-humidity problem too; I live in Phoenix, where in the summer (until late July anyway) the relative humidity is routinely in single digits, and we don't usually see 40% unless it's raining. Outside of the Sahara, there probably aren't many worse climates in the world for guitars, but I have a couple of ways of dealing with it that work well for me, and you might be interested in giving them a try.
I keep my guitars in my bedroom (at least until my son moves out of my den), and I use a room humidifier with a humidistat to keep the room humidity fairly constant. I use this one, which I bought from Home Depot, and it works great:
http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1vZ1 ... ogId=10053.
[Edit] Ignore the claim on the Home Depot web site that this is a whole-house humidifier; it'll do the job for a relatively large room quite well, but it won't humidify a whole house unless it's a very small one. [end Edit]
The great thing about this humidifier, at least where I live, is that it works exactly like an evaporative cooler, so it helps cool the room too. I keep the humidistat set at 50%, and it automatically turns itself on and off as necessary to maintain that. There's one crucial point that many people miss - humidity measurement won't be stable without air circulation. I keep a ceiling fan running all the time, and in the winter I set it to draw air upward and set it on low. This setup does the job for me very well, allowing me to keep a couple of guitars out on stands for easy accessibility without drying them out (I rotate through my collection).
For my most expensive acoustic I also use Humidipak in the case, as extra insurance. The science behind it is sound (and familiar to me from lab work I used to do), and since the packs were redesigned they're safe. I also use a different version of Humidipak to take care of cigars, which require much higher humidity, and that works great too.
The point is, although low humidity can be a serious problem, there's no need to stress over it. Neither of my methods is very expensive; I spent $90 on the room humidifier and it doesn't require anything else but water and an occasional cleaning. The Humidipak set costs about $30 and refill packs run about $15 every 3 months. Best of all, I don't have to worry about my precious guitars drying out!
