I'm An Idiot. I Broke My $5,000 Guitar

God I wish this guy had a YouTube channel. I could watch him talk guitar for days 😂

Ben's one of the nicest , most professional dude's you'll ever meet ...he's respectful and appreciative whether you purchase a $5000.00 guitar , or a pack of strings .

When I first started playing guitar at 15 years old, I thought you just bought the instrument, and you were good to go. Living in Michigan with dry winters and wet springs and no knowledge of how to control humidity, the damage to my guitars soon became extensive. I also thought I was losing my chops since it was becoming so difficult to play them. I know better now after a humiliating education after taking them into the guitar shop I bought them at. There was no internet or guys like Rhett passing on helpful information in those way back times. You are doing a real service to those starting the journey, Rhett. Good job.

“Because you didnt humidify your guitar properly” Brb, watering my Taylor

Blows my mind how easily he files and dresses those frets. Dude doesn't even tape off the fretboard, just goes in all casual and works magic. Must have masterful hands.

Over humidified guitars can also get issues. I had the glue on a face brace lose its adhesion because it had too much humidity.

if you want a serious 'large space' humidifier, I am pretty happy with the Aircare whole house humidifer. It's about $170 but it is really doing a good job keeping my whole house at 45% ish. Tired of the crappy ultrasonic ones that leave a white dust everywhere

I've been playing guitar for 35 years and haven't come across this. Thanks for the heads up - I bought a couple of new guitars last year and suddenly the consequences of getting this wrong have risen exponentially. Thanks for the heads up!

I have 2 humidifiers running all day in my studio and can't get higher than 35% on cold days.

I’ll bet everyone after watching this video went and checked all of their guitars for these issues. I know because I literally just did it.

And what's always funny is that the crappy instruments never have this happen to them. only the boutique and 5000 dollar ones.

Here in Alberta, 28% humidity in the house in the winter, 70% or higher humidity in the summer at times. Yup. We go from -45c in the winter to plus 38c in the summer at times. Room humidifier, sound hole humidifiers, and a large room DE-humidifier in the summer. Finished basement music room. And a humidity gauge in each guitar case to track things. Bit of work, but worth it, makes the house more comfortable for us humans too.

It's weird... been playing for 56 years and I don't remember ever really having an issue with this, until this year. This winter I had 6 guitars (electrics) do this. I do all my own work so it didn't cost me anything but time and agravation but sheeze, this winter was really bad for some reason

Sorry to hear that man. Hope it gets fixed effectively, especially with how valuable of a guitar that is.

I keep the house humidified because my philosophy is a guitar and a case is a guitar that doesn’t get played.

"Don't leave your guitars in rooms with wild temperature swings" *looks over at acoustic guitar that I store in a room with a broken window that's covered with plywood in Phoenix Arizona* 👀

In Siberia, I have a temperature difference from +30 in summer to -30 in winter. To keep things going well with the guitars, I have a hygrometer and a humidifier in my home studio. Maintain humidity ~45%. This Riley is important!

Just a word of caution on the ultrasonic humidifiers: if you have untreated hard water, make sure you get one that has mineral filtration so it will help remove the deposits. The filter media needs to be cleaned/treated every week or two. If you let it go too long, the mineral deposits stay in the water and get blasted into the room in suspension. You'll end up with an ultra-fine white dust all over everything. It will suck into your central air unit and clog up the filter. You'll breathe it in and you can end up with breathing problems and even heart palpitations. Use an evaporative humidifier if you can.

You can get into mold and condensation problems adding a humidifier to your room in very cold climates. I have a whole house humidifier which helps but my instruments will dry out during the depths of winter. Each of my guitars, basses, banjos , bouzoukis, and fiddles have humidifiers in them and I add more water weekly to the acoustic and semi-acoustic ones and bi-weekly to the solid body ones. They also stay in their case when I'm not playing them

I made that mistake last Winter. Same thing - new home, didn't realize how dry it would get. The top of my Martin HD-28 cracked, in line with the grain, all the way from the bridge to the endpin. I was devastated. Now I keep all of my acoustic instruments in their cases with individual humidifier packs, along with a small humidifier I keep running 24/7. On a cold day I'm still struggling at around 20% humidity but along with the individual humidifiers in each case, things have been fine and I've noticed the instruments in general sound better too.