I live in Arizona and am a newbie to Banjo Ben and lovin’ the lessons so far. I’ve been “playing at” the guitar for about 70 years or so doing that by ear, but I’m loving Banjo Ben’s stuff introduced by a friend now that I’ve decided to become musically literate. Never too late to learn. New instruments for me are the mandolin and fiddle. Just finished the lesson about humidity and cases and stuff. It gets pretty dry around here so I’m wondering if I’ve done a disservice to my good 'ol guitars and certainly want to keep my newer fiddle and mandolin healthy. The humidifiers you mentioned look interesting but if I keep my instruments in their cases, they might go a while without being played. We don’t use a humidifier around our house though it rained around here for about a week this fall. What to do??? Thanks for your help.
Mandolins, guitars and 9lack of) humidity inArizona
Howdy Fred,
Cold air is dry and heaters make it drier. I hate putting the guitars away, but when the legit cold fronts settle in here (Texas), I start running a humidifier in the house, and go to putting them in cases with case humidification when that fails to keep up. Personally, I am not too worried about keeping it right at 45% (many folks are very particular about it) in the house, but if I can’t keep it north of 30%, I start going to work on getting moisture into the instruments. This winter I haven’t done a thing yet except get the house humidifier down. A hygrometer (moisture meter) is a handy thing. If you don’t have one, I’d recommend humidifying once legit winter cold fronts make it to your area.
Of course here in Arizona in the 120 degree summers I think the humidity is -25% 
. That said, that’s my favorite time of year.