Humidity and solid body guitars

I’m living in the Iowa at the moment and I am wondering about wintertime humidity.

We have had the heating on for about a month now and I’ve had all my guitars in cases with case humidifiers since the beginning of October. The humidity inside ranges between 25-40% though I’m expecting it to drop further than that as the temperature drops (Yummmmmm !!).

My question is: How badly will humidity affect my solid body guitars?

I saw the thread about humidity and a martin acoustic and I have had a quick google over the Internet. I found lots of info regarding acoustic guitars and humidity but nothing on electrics.

Is it better to let them dry out slowly or keep ‘em in the case and bring ‘em out for a couple of hours at a time whilst you are playing them.?

I am having no problems with tuning at the moment and this makes me thing Im doing OK however you cant help but worry !!!!

Cheers
S

The big danger is in sudden changes.

I have 5 solid-body guitars, and two electric acoustics. Where I live, (Calgary, Alberta), the air is fairly dry to begin with, and it gets even dryer during the winter. Then one of our famous Chinooks sets in, the temperature rises dramatically, and the humidity climbs by 10-20% over a four-hour period! The solid-body axes cope quite well with this flux. Being inside, in their cases, helps to cushion the impact. The electric-acoustics flex a bit. the action can rise or lower noticeably. I've been here for three years, and I haven't found any damage on any of my guitars. I recently sold a 1982 Daijon acoustic 12-string that I brought with me from Ontario: it made the transition very well, without any need for setting up.

Conclusion? Protecting your instruments from sudden changes is likely to be sufficient. I avoid using in-case humudifiers because the instrument has an environment in the case that may be very different from conditions outside the case. For home use, this may not be a problem, since they only come out for an hour or two at a time. Taking a guitar out of a humidified case at a gig and leaving it under the hot lights on a stand for four or five hours sounds like bad karma.

Humidity is not really much of a factor for a solidbody, the majority of the wood is sealed by the finish, rosewood and ebony fretboards can usally stand to have a good treatment of whatever one believes is a good oil, but thats about it, humidity just makes for rust and corrosion, Accoustic guitars are a different story, only the outside of the body is sealed by the finish, the inside absorbs moisture or dries out depending on the conditions and their is the problem, unequal expansion and contraction, a fast rise or fast drop in humidity and you have the potential for a cracked top or back, but even worse than humidity is temperature drop , leave an accoustic, or solidbody in a cold car overnight and if the top doesn't crack, the finish probably will, the finish on solidbodies will usally crack or check, I put a pretty good crack in the finish of an accoustic by forgetting it on a cold night, once!........