Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head And Other Frigorific Rainforest Challenges

One of life's great challenges is walking into a guitar store in the winter, but only if you're bespectacled. I often make a spectacle of myself, especially in guitar stores.

My greatest guitar store faux pas happened in London (ON) in the early days of my 'career'. I picked up an acoustic guitar and started playing it. My first thought was 'this sounds like sh_t'.

It couldn't possible have been your playing, Ian?

Yes, that's always a possibility but in this case a closer inspection of the miserable guitar yielded the discovery that it was a left handed model. In piano terms, that's like playing with oven mitts on while doing a naked hand-stand, exposing your two-part buttocks tattoo which reads 'me dumb'.

Music stores are troublesome, though, because of their humidity. In the wintertime, when you walk into a music store wearing glasses on a cold day...boom! Condensation on your specs, to the point of temporary blindness. It's hell, I tell you. Hell! Music stores need to keep the humidity around 45-55% for guitars and 40-45% for pianos in order to keep the instruments from drying out. The optimum air temperature for a guitar is 72-77 degrees fair, in height.

Did you know that in 1724 Daniel Fahrenheit published an article in which he detailed achieving the lowest temperature in his scale by mixing a frigorific mixture of ice, water, and ammonium chloride. This temperature became known as 0 degrees Fahrenheit, but what's really important to remember is that 'frigorific' is a real word. Regardless of its meaning, I intend to use it because I like the sound of it, i.e. my poisonberry Slush Puppy was frigorific.

Frigorific: causing cold: chilling.

My winter in Canada was frigorific. It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times. Best not lie.

So, the point of this blog, other than enlightenment of the unwashed masses (all four of you now), is to make the point that in order to maintain a high quality guitar at the proper humidity, I'll need to turn my home/condo into a rain forest. I'm currently shopping for a high quality guitar but I'm not exactly Mr.Maintenance (ask Wendy), so I worry about it cracking if I don't maintain relative humidity around 48.7%. Sure I could buy a 200 gallon humidifier but I hardly want Toucan Sam flying around my house because it reminds him of the Brazilian rainforest.

Ian Fun Fact #12: I simply can't maintain my home at the proper guitar humidity without creating a habitat more suitable to lightning, lichens and toucans. The very thought of my dilemma is frigorific.

Ian's Alter Ego Fun Fact #12:  you can buy small humidifiers that fit inside your guitar case for $25. Problem solved.

Seriously? Bye-bye rainforest...hello guitar!