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  #1  
Old 02-09-2019, 08:20 PM
Malcolm Kindnes Malcolm Kindnes is offline
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Default Guitar in South East Asia

I am in Vietnam at the moment and I have brought a guitar over here from Ireland. Obviously the 100% humidity here has affected it's playability, but I know I can have it adjusted.
I plan to return here in the fall and I have a friend here who will keep the guitar for me so my question is, would the guitar suffer more by being brought backwards and forwards from Vietnam to Ireland, or would it be better left in Hanoi. It is not an expensive guitar, but has a solid spruce top.
Hopefully someone who lives in south east Asia will see this and advise me.
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Old 02-10-2019, 02:53 AM
Wade Hampton Wade Hampton is offline
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Malcolm, not only do I not live in Vietnam, but in my youth I worried quite a bit about having to go there!

Having lived in a humid climate, my experience would indicate unless the guitar actually gets wet, (as in submerged or close to it) the biggest problem is the strings getting killed by the excess humidity. Put some coated strings like Elixirs or Cleartones on it, and it should be okay.

Of course, now that I’ve written that, if you leave the guitar in Vietnam you’ll come back in six months, take the guitar out of its case and some hideous poisonous creature will LEAP out of the soundhole and bite you, and you’ll die cursing my name as you go into convulsions and turn purple and foam at the mouth as you fall to the floor with an appalling thump.

So maybe you should get a second opinion....

But, honestly, so long as the guitar is kept in a case and isn’t allowed to get wet, it should be okay. I’ve never lived in the tropics but have lived in a subtropical city, and aside from changing my strings a lot I never had a problem.

Personally, I suspect that traveling back and forth between Ireland and Vietnam with a guitar is probably more hazardous to it than leaving it Vietnam when you’re back on the Auld Sod.

Hope that makes sense.


Wade Hampton Miller
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Old 02-10-2019, 03:25 AM
Malcolm Kindnes Malcolm Kindnes is offline
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Thank you Wade,
Your comments are always worth reading, well thought out and amusing. That's more or less what I think myself, better to leave it here. It's in a gig bag not a hard case, but as I said it's not an expensive guitar anyway and bringing a hard case from Ireland to Vietnam is not really worth it. I suppose I could buy a hard case out here, I hadn't thought of that.
Anyway if you ever feel the urge, Vietnam is a lovely country, the people are super friendly and you can get paying gigs where people actually want to listen, quite easily.
Regards,
Malcolm
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Old 02-10-2019, 03:44 AM
Wade Hampton Wade Hampton is offline
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I have, in fact, heard good things about Vietnam as a travel destination, and I doubt anyone would be shooting at me if I was to go there at this late date. But you need to understand that the very word “Vietnam” itself triggers an involuntary reaction among many of us who obsessed over our country’s military misadventures in the region during a formative period in our lives....

Whereas those who actually went there back then are probably much less melodramatic about the whole thing than those of us who didn’t.

Anyway, what brings you to Vietnam, aside from your formidable Irish charm and musical abilities?


whm
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Old 02-10-2019, 05:23 AM
Malcolm Kindnes Malcolm Kindnes is offline
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What brings me to Vietnam? Last year I was visiting a friend in Cambodia and was just idling around at a sculptors studio, when I met a very personable young man. We got talking, he is a guitar player, we played some tunes together and he simply invited me to visit sometime. As I am recently retired and have no commitments, lots of time and not much money, here I am. Simple really, I'm learning in later life to just go with the flow. I have met some very nice people here from all over the world and I am planning to spend a large part of next winter here.
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Old 02-10-2019, 06:03 AM
zeeway zeeway is offline
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I lived in Nha Trang for a year in the sixties on an all expense paid tour courtesy of my Uncle Sam. My main concern for leaving guitar there would be the rainy season, and the mold that likely would pop up in a dark, damp guitar case. If you have a friend that would air it out from time to time, you may be okay.

...or it may be time to join the carbon fiber revolution...perhaps you should visit Emerald Guitars in Donegal, while you are back in Ireland. I recommend their X20.
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Last edited by zeeway; 02-10-2019 at 06:21 AM.
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Old 02-10-2019, 06:12 AM
Malcolm Kindnes Malcolm Kindnes is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by zeeway View Post
I lived in Nha Trang for a year in the sixties on an all expense paid tour courtesy of my Uncle Sam. My main concern for leaving guitar there would be the rainy season, and the mold that likely would pop up in a dark, damp guitar case. If you have a friend that would air it out from time to time, you may be okay.
Thank you, yes I will be leaving it with a friend who is also a guitar player.
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Old 02-10-2019, 08:31 AM
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Skip Ellis Skip Ellis is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by zeeway View Post
I lived in Nha Trang for a year in the sixties on an all expense paid tour courtesy of my Uncle Sam. My main concern for leaving guitar there would be the rainy season, and the mold that likely would pop up in a dark, damp guitar case. If you have a friend that would air it out from time to time, you may be okay.

...or it may be time to join the carbon fiber revolution...perhaps you should visit Emerald Guitars in Donegal, while you are back in Ireland. I recommend their X20.
I likewise lived there for a year ('68-'69) courtesy of Uncle Sam and have no desire to go back as I have enough Agent Orange in my system as well as a liberal dose of PTSD to remind me of the place every day of my life. You are aware that Agent Orange birth defects are showing up several generations after the fact? Personally, I'd be afraid it's still active in the environment. As to guitars, I had an Epiphone Caballero when I was there and had no problem with humidity - of course it was in a soft case and played daily. Nice guitar - it was destroyed during a rocket attack sometime in 1969.
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Old 02-10-2019, 08:47 AM
gitarro gitarro is offline
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Use some humidipaks in your gigbag and keep it in a dry and cool place that is not in the sun.
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Old 02-10-2019, 12:35 PM
Mycroft Mycroft is offline
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Looks like everyone has already covered most of the possible issues already, Malcolm, but I will mention one other possibility. Rust on the metal bits. I missed the traveling on Uncle Sam's dime ( although it was an issue that I was thinking about a lot when it all ended just before I got out of High School), but spent a year traveling through S.E Asia and India during my Wandering Hippie with a Backpack period a few years later. (Indo, Malaysia, Thailand, Burma (this was before it changed names) India, Sri Lanka) I hauled an inexpensive Philippine-made 000 that I had picked up at a hock shop in New Zealand. Could have been the cheap nature of the components, but I did get oxidation showing up on the machines and frets.

TW
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Old 02-10-2019, 12:49 PM
mawmow mawmow is offline
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I used to live nearby salted sea water with 80% humidity in Summer. Got no problem. It is Winter drying out that brings cracks when going under 40%. But I never heard that yearly swings would damage solid wood acoustics though they need some truss rod work twice a year (when they get wet and again when they dry out).
So, it is your choice.
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Old 02-11-2019, 03:49 AM
Malcolm Kindnes Malcolm Kindnes is offline
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Thank you all for your comments. I think I will leave it here, I'll let you know it's condition when I get back here.
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Old 02-11-2019, 04:30 AM
Wade Hampton Wade Hampton is offline
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After Mycroft wrote:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mycroft View Post
Looks like everyone has already covered most of the possible issues already, Malcolm, but I will mention one other possibility. Rust on the metal bits. I ... spent a year traveling through S.E Asia and India during my Wandering Hippie with a Backpack period a few years later. (Indo, Malaysia, Thailand, Burma (this was before it changed names) India, Sri Lanka) I hauled an inexpensive Philippine-made 000 that I had picked up at a hock shop in New Zealand. Could have been the cheap nature of the components, but I did get oxidation showing up on the machines and frets.
Mawmow in Canada wrote:

Quote:
Originally Posted by mawmow View Post
I used to live nearby salted sea water with 80% humidity in Summer. Got no problem. It is Winter drying out that brings cracks when going under 40%. But I never heard that yearly swings would damage solid wood acoustics though they need some truss rod work twice a year (when they get wet and again when they dry out).
So, it is your choice.
Actually, Mawmow, latitude might play a role here. I grew up in Kansas City and later worked as a professional musician in Chicago, and both cities experience extreme heat and humidity in the summertime. And here north of Anchorage I live just a few miles from an arm of the Pacific Ocean called the Cook Inlet.

I've also spent time in Helsinki, Finland, Stockholm, Sweden, and most recently Bergen, Norway and Reykjavik, Iceland, and it seems as though the more northern the waters, the less salt there is in the water and in the air.

So in none of the places I've lived or toured have I had any significant corrosion of the metal parts on my instruments, even when the humidity has been hellish and borderline unbearable.

But maritime climates farther south actually do seem to accrue more metal damage than northern locales. My repairman here in Alaska had to do extensive work on a Gibson Mastertone banjo that had been kept in Honolulu, Hawaii for more than thirty years, and it had the most appalling corrosion to of all the metal parts: tone ring, flange, hooks, brackets, you name it. He had to take a wire brush to all of the metal parts to get the corrosion off the nickel plating, strip the plating off, then get the parts re-plated before he could continue with the restoration.

Looking at it when it first crossed his bench, it reminded me of the sort of encrustations that you see in underwater photographs of shipwrecks. It was truly gnarly-looking.

Another Anchorage guitar repairman, Mike Fleck, used to live in the Lower 48 states and worked at the Parker Guitar factory back when it was an independent company. They put stainless steel frets on those instruments, which you'd think would make them impervious to corrosion. Yet they used to get a lot of warranty claims from Parker guitar owners in Florida from the frets rusting up.

It turns out that in warmer maritime climates, there are more chloride ions from sea water in the air than in coastal areas further north, and those ions can bond to some metal alloys and corrode them.

Or something along those lines - I might not have the exact terminology correct, but what it amounts to is that in tropical and semitropical areas there can be significant corrosion to the metal parts of guitars. I saw that for myself on that banjo, and have Mike Fleck's story of what they saw coming in as factory warranty returns at Parker Guitars.

So I don't doubt that Mycroft's description of his experiences in Southeast Asia are accurate, and I don't think it was necessarily due to his guitar being cheap. The Gibson Mastertone banjo I saw was an expensive, professional quality instrument, but that didn't stop the metal parts from getting all crusty and cruddy. It was something in the air down there.

So, Malcolm, it might be a good idea for you to ask your friend to give the tuners and frets on your guitar a wipe down with a clean dry cloth once a month or so while you're gone.

Just a thought...

Hope that makes sense.


Wade Hampton Miller
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Old 09-23-2019, 02:32 AM
Malcolm Kindnes Malcolm Kindnes is offline
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Hi everyone,
I'm back in Vietnam and the guitar has survived the summer. Unfortunately it ended up being stored in a hotel storage unit rather than my friends house, so it is a little over humidified to say the least, but I think with a good dose of air conditioning it will be ok. I can't seem to find humidipaks here and of course I didn't think to bring any.
The weather is lovely, the food is great and the dollar goes a long way, I'm looking forward to my winter.
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Old 09-23-2019, 03:24 AM
Wade Hampton Wade Hampton is offline
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Sounds good, Malcolm. Please continue to keep us posted on your adventures in Vietnam.

Where exactly in Vietnam are you? I don’t mean the street address and room number, just the general region.


whm
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