Humidity and classical guitar

When building acoustic guitars, humidity control of the working area is very important.
Guitar might be later moved to environment where humidity can vary from low 10 % to high 80 %.
Most severe situation is if guitar is built in high humidity and later moved to very low humidity.
As a result of this there are many effects to the instrument.

1. Back and top will crack and back usually is loosing the curvature it originally had.
In case back shrinks a lot, cross braces will push out from the sides and possibly broke the sides.

2. Shrinking fingerboards will have fret ends pushing out and also the binding list will be pushed outwards.

3. Neck usually bends too much forward causing too high action of strings.

In case guitar is moved to higher humidity than work areas humidity problems are les dramatic.

Action of the strings may change and back curvature will be increased.

Liikanen guitars are built in humidity RH 40-45 %. There have been very few problems related to humidity.
We believe that building guitars in humidity a bit lover than humidity it will face later, will ensure there won’t be big problems. Some shrinking of wood is inevitable during many years of guitars lifetime even it’s stored in correct humidity.