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Acoustic Guitars

Whether or not your guitar’s been frozen in its cryosleep case for the winter, you’ll want to take some steps to make sure it experiences a healthy thaw.

Managing your instrument’s humidity and temperature are important pieces of a year-round maintenance regimen.

Here in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, we’re going from the dry, cold conditions of winter to the warmer, humid conditions of spring. As you probably know, these fluctuations can impact the well-being of your beloved instruments. So, here are some tips from our team on how to effectively care for your acoustic guitars during these seasonal shifts.

Before delving into specific tips, it's crucial to understand how seasonal changes affect acoustic guitars. Wood, the primary material in our guitars, is highly responsive to variations in temperature and humidity. When exposed to dry and cold conditions, wood tends to contract, leading to potential issues like cracking and changes in playability. Warm and humid conditions can cause the wood to expand, resulting in swelling, warping, or changes in tone.

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Steve Albini in the control room at his Electrical Audio studio in Chicago.

Photo by Kevin Tiongson

Words of wisdom from the legendary engineer, proprietor of Chicago’s Electrical Audio, World Series of Poker champion, and, in the band Shellac, the compass for brutal guitar aesthetics.

“All day every day, we’re grinding it out,” says engineer Steve Albini of his team at Electrical Audio, the Chicago studio he built and has run since 1997. “We’re constantly in session, constantly under fire.”

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What assumptions do you make about this guitar's sound?

Photo courtesy of Martin Guitars

Why do we all reach for the same words when describing our acoustic guitars? Luthiers chime in on how we talk about sound.

Someone—the historical record is unsure exactly who—once opined that writing about music is the same as dancing about architecture. The speaker saw little value in trying to formally analyze or describe a piece of music, an art form so inherently personal and subjective. I might also find it hard to communicate to someone what makes a musical work exciting to me, but when it comes to guitar tone, this is exactly my job at Acoustic Music Works. Whether it’s over the phone or in copy on our website, I’m called upon daily to put the tonal attributes of a particular instrument into words.

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Martin GPCE Inception Maple Demo | First Look
Martin GPCE Inception Maple Demo | First Look

Skeletonized scalloped bracing makes this most untraditional Martin flattop light and extra resonant.

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A 97-year-old flattop with beautiful inlays, built by the Larson brothers in the late 1920s.

Photo by George Aslaender

Built in the 1920s by the storied luthiers, this guitar has maintained an exceptional tone over the years.

From around 1900 up until World War II, Swedish immigrant brothers Carl and August Larson’s two-man, Chicago-based workshop turned out an amazing assortment of handmade instruments. Their products ranged from ukuleles to harp guitars, standard guitars, mandolins, mandolas, mandocellos, and even a mandobass. I found this 97-year-old Larson brothers flattop at the 1994 New York Guitar Show, when interest in the brothers’ work was on the rise but the actual instruments were hard to find, with even many experienced dealers knowing little about them.

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