TAYLOR GUITARS TECH SHEET/PAGE 1 O f 2
Symptoms of a Wet Guitar
Extended exposure to high humidity can lead to guitar damage. Here’s what to look for and how to prevent it.
While much of our energy is
devoted to preventing guitars
from drying out, it also is pos-
sible for guitars to become too wet. Usually,a
guitar becomes over-humidified when it has
been exposed to the elements for a period of
several weeks in an area where the humidity
is very high (80 to 90 percent), or for several
months where the humidity is medium-high
(60 to 70 percent). In some cases, guitar
bodies are over-humidified by well-mean-
ing owners who, in an effort to prevent their
guitars from drying, have gotten carried
away with soundhole humidifiers.
While high humidity usually will not crack
the wood the way low humidity can, the
adverse effects can be just as damaging and
sometimes can be more costly to repair. The
wood in a guitar can swell tremendously,
causing glue joints to fail, finish to lift,
and neck angles to go bad. Distortions
in the wood can remain even after other
damage has been repaired, leaving the gui-
tar cosmetically disfigured. Read the Tech
Sheet,“Symptoms of a Dry Guitar,”to gain an
understanding of our wood-drying process,
the climate control of our factory, and how
relative humidity affects wood.
We do not expect guitar owners to become
meteorologists, or to walk on eggshells
concerning the safety of their guitars. But by
becoming familiar both with the principles
of humidity and with how a normal guitar
looks and feels,an owner can prevent almost
all damage to a guitar. Basic precautions
include: keeping the guitar in its case
when not in use; keeping it out of direct
sunlight and extremes in heat, cold, and
high or low humidity; and regularly
checking for any significant changes.
Examine these photographs of an ex-
tremely “wet” guitar that came to us from a
dealer in Asia. During a very wet and rainy
season, this guitar remained on the store
wall, where it absorbed moisture from the
air. When the dealer returned it to us for
repair, it weighed in at 2,431 grams. After
Photo 1. An extremely swollen guitar back. Notice the
dip in the center, where the back is glued to the tailblock.
It cannot rise at this section, so a ripple, or low spot, is cre-
ated.
Photo 2. An extremely swollen guitar top, with a dip similar
to that shown in Photo 1. In this case, the dip occurs where
the top is glued to the tailblock.
Photo 6. The neck angle when wet. The top is so swollen
that the bridge has risen above the fingerboard (see broken
lines). If you were to “sight” down the neck, you'd find that
it points “low” on the bridge. It would be a mistake to reset
the neck while the body is this wet.
Photo 3. Here, the fingerboard is swollen enough to grow
wider than the neck, leaving a “step” where the fretboard
meets the neck.
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Photo 5. The back after the guitar has been dried. Notice
that the swelling on the back is less pronounced. This guitar
lost 38 grams of weight in the drying process, which trans-
lates into 1-1/3 ounces of water!
Photo 7. Here, the neck angle is correctly set. Notice that if
you sight down the neck to the top of the bridge, the top of
the frets and the bridge are on the same plane.
Photo 4. A back with an exaggerated radius due to excess
moisture.
drying it and then letting it normalize naturally to the 47
percent relative humidity in our factory (which restored
the guitar to its original moisture content), the guitar
weighed 2,383 grams. This was a loss of 48 grams of
water, or 1.34 ounces — enough to saturate four large,
highly absorbent paper towels!
