Anyone ever had damage to uke due to low humidity?

I just bought my first solid wood ukulele and started learning about the need to control for humidity. It makes sense, but I hadn't thought of it before. I live in a very dry part of the United States where relative humidity in my home gets quite low during the winter so I imagine it will be extra important. The ukulele is coming with an Oasis humidifier and I just bought a hygrometer to monitor it.

It made me wonder though how common low-humidity damage is. Has anyone here ever experienced it? Do you find something like the Oasis humidifier does a great job year round to prevent it?

My parents recently inherited a Martin guitar that my grandpa had purchased and I was told it had some minor damage to it...makes me wonder if humidity could be a factor because I don't think humidity has ever been controlled for it.

I live in the humid tropics so guitar and ukulele bloat is closer to reality. But when I lived in Washington state some of my guitars suffered cracks in the finish due to wood contraction during the super dry Winter months. There were so many cracks it looked like a dad burn spider web.

Too much humidity is a good point, too. Hard for me to fathom while living in a desert.

Grandpa had an instrument that he kept in the garage since grandma would not let him play in the house. It has a crack going out from the sound hole to the rib that goes all the way through the top! In fairness this was from multiple decades of being functionally kept outside...

If the humidity is regularly really low, then a stand alone humidifier is an easier option compared to tiny case humidifiers. I know from living in an area with low humidity in winter that the case humidifiers cannot always keep up. Figure it is probably better for the instruments to humidify the room they are kept in instead to avoid large changes in humidity from being outside the case when playing as well. A good rule of thumb is that instruments are best kept at 40-50% humidity to avoid problems. For me that means running a humidifier about half the year.

Md99 congrats on the new uke! I live in the Reno area and right now the humidity level in my house is 25%. I have a solid top mahogany Córdoba that has never been humidified for 4 years, no cracks or issues. I have several solid body uke’s, Kamaka, Kinnard and a Kala, all tenors. I use the Oasis humidifiers in the case (sound hole) anytime I’m not playing. It’s been several years and I’ve had no issues. Maybe I’ve been lucky, but I doubt it. I know of one Kamaka tenor player in Reno, he’s never humidified his over a ten year period and it has a crack in the sound board, he’s never bothered to fix it, he plays professionally! But when they do develop cracks a luthier can stabilize the damage. I’ve thought about a room humidifier but it seems like to much trouble, my house has a whole house humidification system but it was so much maintenance I gave up 15 years ago. So, use the Oasis humidifiers, keep them serviced and change the beads instead every six months. I don’t know where your getting your uke, but keep it in that case with a humidifier religiously that first six months so it can acclimate to your location. It’s so much fun getting a new uke, enjoy it!!

Just keep that oasis filled and you'll be fine...

I received my first uke about 6 weeks ago and I've been using the Oasis humidifier as well - good to hear that it's recommended. I hear they can start leaking after about a year, so I figure I'll just pop a new one in every 8 mos or so.

I’ve been refilling my Oasis humidifiers with Humigel Crystals as recommended by Oasis and haven’t had any leak. I use three (in different ukes of course) with no mishaps. Two of them are four years old and still look new.

I've been OK. I've had a humidifier going in my study on a few occasions, but I don't need it most of the time. I've attached a photo of the hygrometer on the desk in my study.

In the first year I played uke seven years ago, I went through 16 ukes, one was a Lanikai solid monkeypod with very a defined grain pattern. A few months after I bought it, I was in the process of converting one shelf of a bookshelf into a humidified cabinet with plexiglass doors and insulation tape all around the inside. Before I added the doors and tape (this is an edit), I hung the uke in it to see how it fit and left it there overnight.

The humidity went down to about 10% and the next day when I went to continue work on the shelf, I noticed that there was a long crack from the tail to the bridge along the grain. What a bummer, first damage to one of my collection. I ended up giving it to a friend for his son to learn on.

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This is Michael Kohan in Los Angeles, Beverly Grove near the Beverly Center
9 tenor cutaway ukes, 4 acoustic bass ukes, 12 solid body bass ukes, 14 mini electric bass guitars (Total: 39)

• Donate to The Ukulele Kids Club, they provide ukuleles to children in hospital music therapy programs. www.theukc.org
• Member The CC Strummers: YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/CCStrummers/video, Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheCCStrummers

I've been using Oasis humidifiers for years. Last Winter I found faint water stains on the labels of some of my ukuleles. Needless to say I'll be switching humidifiers next Winter. Maybe I'll give the Music Nomad Humilele Ukulele Soundhole Humidifier a try.

Md99 said:

I just bought my first solid wood ukulele and started learning about the need to control for humidity. It makes sense, but I hadn't thought of it before. I live in a very dry part of the United States where relative humidity in my home gets quite low during the winter so I imagine it will be extra important. The ukulele is coming with an Oasis humidifier and I just bought a hygrometer to monitor it.

It made me wonder though how common low-humidity damage is. Has anyone here ever experienced it? Do you find something like the Oasis humidifier does a great job year round to prevent it?

My parents recently inherited a Martin guitar that my grandpa had purchased and I was told it had some minor damage to it...makes me wonder if humidity could be a factor because I don't think humidity has ever been controlled for it.

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I have no damage to report, but I can recommend the D'Addario Humidipak. It's a set and forget it type of thing. If the humidity is too low, it releases moisture. If it's too high, it absorbs moisture. When they dry out, you can put them in a sealed plastic bag with a damp sponge. Using these, I don't have to refill the humidifiers every week.

https://smile.amazon.com/s?k=D'Addario+Humidistat&ref=nb_sb_noss

A hard shell case and any decent humidifier will do the job.

Our house is drafty. The RH drops to about 25% in the winter and I case up my all-wood instruments. I’ll affirm that a damp sponge in a plastic bag (with a few holes punched in it) will work fine. Be sure to check every week or so to be sure the sponge is damp.

In the summer, even with a/c, the RH is 40%+, so I don’t mind leaving the solid instruments out occasionally. The vintage ones stay in their cases all the time, though.

kohanmike said:

In the first year I played uke seven years ago, I went through 16 ukes, one was a Lanikai solid monkeypod with very a defined grain pattern. A few months after I bought it, I was in the process of converting one shelf of a bookshelf into a humidified cabinet with plexiglass doors and insulation tape all around the inside. Before I finished it, I hung the uke in it to see how it fit and left it there overnight.

The humidity went down to about 10% and the next day when I went to continue work on the shelf, I noticed that there was a long crack from the tail to the bridge along the grain. What a bummer, first damage to one of my collection. I ended up giving it to a friend for his son to learn on.

---

This is Michael Kohan in Los Angeles, Beverly Grove near the Beverly Center
9 tenor cutaway ukes, 4 acoustic bass ukes, 12 solid body bass ukes, 14 mini electric bass guitars (Total: 39)

• Donate to The Ukulele Kids Club, they provide ukuleles to children in hospital music therapy programs. www.theukc.org
• Member The CC Strummers: YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/CCStrummers/video, Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheCCStrummers

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So your humidity cabinet dried out and cracked your uke. How ironic.

dcw uke said:

I received my first uke about 6 weeks ago and I've been using the Oasis humidifier as well - good to hear that it's recommended. I hear they can start leaking after about a year, so I figure I'll just pop a new one in every 8 mos or so.

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I've had one for about 6-7 years and another for 4-5 years, never had any problems with them.

The question being, have you ever had. I have a guitar, it actually belongs to my wife, it stayed on a shelf in the basement and then out in a storage shed for forty years. I pulled it out at the first of the year and it was fine. It was minus ten F with ten percent humidity out there. The strings were all still almost in tune and I just had to tweak them. I also have a fiddle that my grand father brought back from WWI. My mom played in in high school. It dried out and the neck fell off when I tried to play it a few years ago. A hundred years it has suffered with no attention so to speak. I glued the neck back on myself and it is playable. The neighbor kid played it last winter. No cracks though.

So those are my anecdotal stories. The fact that those two instruments have survived temperature and humidity hell relatively unscathed, I do pay attention to my instruments. I mean, just because nothing might happen, why tempt it? It is pretty easy to keep them humidified, unless you have a boat load of them, in which case building temperature and humidity controlled cabinets maintaining them is probably part of the fun anyway.

I loaned a Pono tenor to a friend of mine to play and see if he wanted to buy it. It was a 2013 ETSH-PCC Cedar/Ebony I had for about a year. Built like a tank. Sounded great.

My friend kept it in his spare bedroom and through the winter he kept the room at 50°F with a room humidifier that kept it at about 45% RH. The humidifier broke and he didn't replace it. So the uke spent an entire Wisconsin Winter at about 15% RH and even lower when the outside temp was subzero for a week at a time.

In the Spring he decided he didn't want the uke and gave it back to me. I played it a bit when I got it home and it was fine. I put a humidpak in the uke and left it for a few weeks. When I took it out to play it had a 2" crack in the back from the bottom edge upwards. I took it to a guitar repair place and the did a great job gluing it and made it virtually invisible. When I came home, I put an Oasis guitar humidifier inside the uke and left it for a month. The entire back had split along the seam, except where it had been repaired, as well as the two halves of the sides at the bottom!

I felt sick when I saw that.

It still played fine. I assume the halves were being held together by the internal bracing and the heel block. I can only assume that I put too much humidity into the case too fast, and the wood swelled and the body split.

I gave the uke away to someone who lost his job and had to sell his instruments. To tide him over.

Jerryc41 said:

So your humidity cabinet dried out and cracked your uke. How ironic.

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Stupid me, I neglected to say that the cabinet was not ready, no doors or tape, it was wide open, that's why it got the cracks. Once I finished the cabinet, it stays between 45 and 55% humidity with water trays on the bottom shelf. I'm going to correct my earlier post.

Ukecaster said:

If I don't have enough hard cases in winter, I can throw 3 ukes in this sealable shallow plastic storage tub, in the closet, with a cut-down recycled yogurt tub filled with wet sponges, or multiple wet sponges in baggies. Does a great job.

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Very cool. Is the plastic tub ventilated at all?

kkimura said:

I've been using Oasis humidifiers for years. Last Winter I found faint water stains on the labels of some of my ukuleles. Needless to say I'll be switching humidifiers next Winter. Maybe I'll give the Music Nomad Humilele Ukulele Soundhole Humidifier a try.

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While you are researching, check out the Boveda (49%) packets. A close friend and classical guitar player uses them on his 6 & 12 strings. What's nice is they work "both ways" bringing humidity up and bringing it down. Sounds unlikely, but I've used them in three closed cases, each has a hygrometer and during dry Wisconsin winters and humid Augusts, all stayed withing a +- 4% of the 49%. ( PS- I also keep an Oasis in each uke sound hole as the cases are a snug fit!)

https://bovedainc.com

One other piece of wisdom.. my friend suggested "seasoning" a new case with a Boveda pack and Oasis before using it on a new uke. Presumption is that the padding will absorb some of the moisture right away. Who knows... ? Can't hurt!