Colder (or warmer) temperatures, and impact on guitar.

[Rosewood99]

Originally Posted by rollypolly

This is not my experience. Usually if we are blasting the heat in winter, the humidity drops. If we leave the heat low, the humidity increases or stabilizes at least. I guess it depends on your Hvac system? Ours has a humidity pad that doesn’t seem to work very well.

That’s been my experience as well.

[Mandobart]

Originally Posted by rollypolly

This is not my experience. Usually if we are blasting the heat in winter, the humidity drops. If we leave the heat low, the humidity increases or stabilizes at least. I guess it depends on your Hvac system? Ours has a humidity pad that doesn’t seem to work very well.

Here's the facts (again): relative humidity is the ratio of the actual amount of water vapor in the air to the maximum amount of water vapor the air can hold without precipitating out. As temperature rises, RH ALWAYS DROPS, unless you're adding moisture to the air. Warm air can hold more moisture.

It doesn't matter if you're using electric baseboard heating, a heat pump, gas furnace, fire place, etc. One caution is any heating system that brings in cold outside air (as opposed to just heating the air in your house) is likely to further drop RH since the outside air tends to be colder and drier when we're heating.

This subject is like electricity - everyone knows a little, everyone has some actual personal experience that we draw conclusions from. But not everyone understands the actual science and principles about this more-complex-than-it-first-appears subject.

[desert2000]

Nugget of guitar wisdom I learned in college: while a radiator can nicely cradle the neck, the radiator will quickly dry out the guitar. This is not good.