Cold Weather Care..

[Gfunk_Minor]

I'm sorry if this has been addressed before, but with the freeze we just went through in Texas last week, I didn’t feel like searching the forum for relevant threads.


Short story is, while I prepared as best I could for the storm, the idea of being out of power for almost 4 days, and its effects on my guitars did not cross my mind. As you can see, most of mine hang on a wall in my music room. That wall is the wall between heated space, and an unheated garage. Last Monday night, after a day without power, the temperature was 43 degrees in my home. The temp varied between the mid 40's and the mid 50's, due to an average of 3 hours of power and 6 hours without, until Thursday morning when we got full power again. As you can guess, some of my guitars have noticeable neck bowing. My Classic Cinnamon Burst has almost a quarter of an inch of bow, and my “Honey” (Avatar Photo) doesn’t appear to have been affected. The others all have varying degrees of bow. I know some will chastise me for having my guitars hang on the wall, and we can have that debate when we’re not cleaning up from a generational storm.
What I am really looking for is encouraging words, or a suggested plan of action to make sure my “girls” get back into playing shape with no more stress that necessary.

And, I know not to do anything for several days, or longer.


Thanks!

G

 

[sonar1]

Leave ‘em alone.
Watch the humidity.

 

[Wrench66]

Imagine going on tour with your guitars and they are frozen solid for days....

They’ll be fine.

 

[Roxy13]

Let them sit for a week or two and they may very well put themselves back as they were before you make any adjustments. I've been through this too. I live in northern Ohio in a rural area. I once went through a 4 day power outage with real air temps at worse than -20F and the wind chill was in the -60F range. The guitars were fine after they warmed up and had time to reacclimate. My water pipes, not so much.

 

[kakerlak]

Leave ‘em alone.
Watch the humidity.

We were wirhout power about a week in 2007 in OK, following an ice storm. House got down into the forties, but what was more significant was the walls were sweating, condensation just running in little rivulets all day long. Pictures warped in their frames, we've battled mold and mildew ever since. The guitars were in cases the whole time and were fine, but I think moisture could be playing a role here.

 

[gball]

Imagine going on tour with your guitars and they are frozen solid for days....

They’ll be fine.

Yeah, this. We used to yank our gear out of a frozen trailer and walk right into the hot club, plug in, play the set, then dump it all back in the cold trailer again for the night. Never hurt anything.

 

[MP4-22]

Like you already stated give them time when power is restored and house is stable and then dial them back in. When i moved two years ago the new house made my guitar necks move a lot.... I was pretty shocked, It was annoying because i had 8 guitars to adjust lol

 

[Gitter]

Well, it seems you got plenty of "encouraging words", so "a suggested plan of action" would be to put them in their cases next time. They're musical instruments, not framed art or vases. Polyester finishes are pretty durable but nitro is unpredictable. There's still the possibility of lingering effects like finish checks and cracks down the line. Keep an eye around the nut and neck joint areas after they get acclimated to the environment again. Best of luck.