The Acoustic Saver by Karen & Betz

Having lived in places as cold and dry as Alaska in the winter, as hot and humid as Coastal Carolina in the summer, or as dry and hot as year-round in Arizona I know the challenges of trying to keep guitars safe and in optimal playing condition throughout the wide and wild ranges of humidity we all experience.  I have also been fortunate enough to own some beautiful and collectable instruments, and I know the frustration of not being able to display them as they are kept locked in their hardshell cases.  Monitoring and dealing with humidity is a fact of life for guitarists and other stringed instrument players, and techniques and strategies are always a hot topic among pickers and collectors.

The old rule of thumb for proper care of a guitar was that if you were comfortable, your guitar was comfortable. This was true enough when considering temperature, but it completely ignored humidity. If your instrument is in your house and not in a car trunk, temperature is really not an issue. It doesn’t get hot enough to threaten to loosen glue nor cold enough to check the finish. Humidity, however, is another story. Read any book or article about the care and feeding of an acoustic guitar and the first thing they say is to keep the instrument at the proper humidity level.  Too dry and seams can open, the wood can crack or the ebony fretboard can shrink, exposing the ends of your frets.  Too humid and the glue can weaken, the wood can warp or mold can grow inside the guitar.

The Acoustic Saver is an heirloom quality cabinet designed for the sole purpose of storing and displaying your fine guitars in the safest manner possible. You would expect a cabinet that was designed right from the start to properly store guitars to have a lot of features that a guitar player would appreciate, and it does. Your guitars are supported inside the cabinet with no undo stress on the neck or joints. The hangers are designed to allow the entire body of the instrument to swing out of the cabinet to insure you can remove or replace them without the risk of bumping into the cabinet or the other guitars.

Utilizing the proven technology of the Piano Life Saver System by Dampp-Chaser, the air inside the cabinet is monitored to insure that the relative humidity is correct and stable. How do we do it? It is best illustrated by looking at the comfort control system in you own home. There, you have a furnace or boiler to provide heat and an air conditioner to provide cooling. But the system doesn’t stop there; it also has a thermostat to control the heating and cooling equipment. You set your thermostat at 72 degrees. If the temperature in the room drops, the thermostat senses the change and turns on the heat. It allows the heat to run until the room temperature is again 72 degrees, and then it turns the heat off. Automatically. If it gets too warm in the room, the thermostat again senses the change, this time bringing on the cooling until the room is again a comfortable 72, then the cooling is turned off. Automatically.

This is similar to how our system will operate, except instead of a furnace and air conditioner we have a humidifier and a de-humidifier. And, instead of a thermostat, we have a humidistat. That’s right, this is a controller that constantly measures the humidity inside the cabinet to keep it at a stable 45% relative humidity. If the humidity drops below 45%, the humidistat senses it and brings on the humidifier. If the humidity rises, the humidistat senses it and brings on the de-humidifier. Automatically. No sponges, no drips, no desiccant packs.

Then there is the cabinet itself. American-Made craftsmanship designed for people who know wood and appreciate fine woodworking. Your guitars are no longer going to be in stashed in the back bedroom. This is a piece of furniture you will be proud to display, with selections of woods and finishes to compliment any decor. All designed to frame the art that is your guitar collection. The paradigm has changed.

Please visit the Acoustic Saver web site.