Changes in humidity

[Ukena]

I live in a NYC apartment. I had noticed a few months back that the tuning on my Triggs New Yorker, which I tend to leave outside of its case on a stand, would go sharp overnight. I had never had this occur with any other guitar I had owned – my Martin dreads, which I played for decades, could stay in tune for literally weeks, and my Eastmans (I bought my first arch top in 2017), if anything, would go slightly flat on some strings overnight.

But I had never had a guitar go sharp! And then, seemingly overnight not quite a month ago, the Triggs would reliably go slightly flat overnight. So it must be humidity – right about the time the heat in the apartment kicked in, the guitar started to go flat. So I figured: high humidity, the top swells, the guitar goes sharp; relative dryness in the apartment, the top dries out, and the guitar goes sharp. That top on the Triggs must be pretty thin for this to happen so quickly, right?

So now I keep it humidified in the case when I'm not playing it (all the other guitars are in cases, since I play the Triggs – which is a marvelous guitar – almost all the time). After having some humidity issues with my first archtop (Eastman Charlie Christian) which resulted in sprouting frets and a trip to the repair shop (that dry December was apparently a boon for repair shops in NYC) for remoisturizing, I'm pretty anal about humidifying.

[Gitterbug]

Paul, just out of curiosity, what kind of a neck does your Triggs have? Finland where I live is a roller-coaster in terms of humidity differences between summer (humid but not overly so) and winter (squeaky dry). There's more than a half-note seasonal difference on most guitars. Single-wood necks typically need more frequent adjustment than 3 or 5 ply necks. Mahogany and cherry (i.e. Godin 5th Avenue) more so than maple (e.g. my Epiphones).

[ThatRhythmMan]

The other way this can work is that as the neck/fretboard absorb moisture the neck will straighten, causing it to go sharp, and sometimes necessitate a truss rod adjustment. Conversely, as it dries, the neck relaxes causing the opposite effect.

Ebony is generally considered more susceptible to changing, although I have some guitar with ebony fretboards that are rock solid and almost never go out of tune and never need truss rod adjustments. Granted, the ones I’m thinking of also have multi-piece maple necks which is likely a major contributing factor to stability.


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[Ukena]

Paul, just out of curiosity, what kind of a neck does your Triggs have? Finland where I live is a roller-coaster in terms of humidity differences between summer (humid but not overly so) and winter (squeaky dry). There's more than a half-note seasonal difference on most guitars. Single-wood necks typically need more frequent adjustment than 3 or 5 ply necks. Mahogany and cherry (i.e. Godin 5th Avenue) more so than maple (e.g. my Epiphones).

I haven't needed to adjust anything – the difference isn't that great that I notice much in the way of string clearance. But it's a one-piece neck...

[deacon Mark]

It is all to do with the weather and temperature and humidity. My real D'angelico NY will go sharp with a change in environment. In fact, all my archtops really. Some tend to be more stable than others. At other times when the conditions are the same, they stay reasonably in tune for days even weeks. They still need to be tweaked to get in tune but not much.