What to do and What not to do

KNOCKS: Handle your guitar with care and remember how large it is. Any small knock may damage the surface and this can be seen easily. Other damage may have occurred which cannot be seen immediately and which may become visible later as a crack or opened joint.

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HUMIDITY: Do take care to avoid very dry or very damp conditions. Very dry conditions will cause contraction of the wood and may lead to cracks. Very damp conditions will lead to swelling and may be visible as surface checking of the wood grain. Damp, like excessively dry conditions, can also affect the natural glue and cause joints to open. Do not use special ‘humidifiers’ in the instrument. The oldest method, that of leaving a bowl of water in a dry room to raise the humidity of a dry atmosphere, is still the best and safest. Andres Segovia used to open the windows of centrally heated and air conditioned hotel rooms to avoid a very dry atmosphere and expose his guitar to the natural range of outside humidity.  However, this may not work in parts of the world that are very dry, as in the case of the centre of large land masses, or very humid, as in the tropics.

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TEMPERATURE: Avoid direct heat onto your instrument or case. If your instrument is inside it’s case in the sun, you may be inadvertently cooking it, especially if the case is black and so highly absorbent of radiated heat. High temperatures or low temperatures are not, in themselves, very harmful, but they are more harmful if they lead to very low or very high humidity. 

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STRINGS: Stephen Cadney makes light guitars which are responsive to normal tension and light strings. Do not use high tension or heavy strings that mean that the total force on the bridge exceeds 85 lbs. (38.5 Kg). Do use normal tension strings.

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STRINGING UP: Try to avoid tightening the strings above their normal pitch, even when re-stringing. Many players tighten new strings to a tone or semi-tone above normal pitch for the first day to allow for stretch. This can cause damage and accelerate ‘creep’ (the gradual movement of wood under constant pressure). Although it may take longer for your new strings to stabilise in pitch, just keep tightening new strings up to pitch and your instrument will be spared the greatly increased forces.