Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain Jim
I have wood and carbon fiber guitars. And, I have lived on a boat......At this point, I don't see me buying any wood guitars in the future... from a practical perspective, carbon fiber is easy to live with. From a sound perspective... yeah, carbon fiber is easy to live with.  |
I'll agree with Captain Jim on this one. I have three CF guitars now (no Emeralds, however) and don't intend to buy another wooden one in this lifetime. But there is one all-koa Taylor 424 that is just too pretty and sounds so good, so it will remain with me for life. But all the other wood guitars are slowly drifting away. Low maintenance and worry-free is.... freeing.
It isn't inexpensive, but I found that the Blackbird
El Capitan is very Taylor-like in its tone, and really looks like wood too.
My house regularly gets into the 35% RH range, and I don't have any problems. When it gets lower than that (like right now at 8°F with heavy heating) I use in-case humidifiers. Living on a boat should not over-dry your wood guitars, even without OCD levels of humidity care. As Jim said, if you are comfortable, the guitar probably is too.
I used to live in Alaska where winter indoor RH was hard to keep
up to 20% and humidifying was mandatory for wood instrument survival. That is how I got into CF guitars in the first place. But in the summer and on boats, there were never any problems with the woodies.