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Dave spent a lot of time researching humidifiers for our new shop and he selected one from TAC a California company.

This is about a $2,000 unit that also contains a state of the art reverse osmosis system and filters.

In the past the problem with ultrasonic humidifiers is the white dust from mineral deposits in the water. Where I live our hardness is over 400 ppm making ultra sonic like a snowfall on Christmas Eve....

But this system we have been using for a little over a month now and we are quite happy with it.

It's not a consumer product in the sense that you unbox, fill with water and let her rip. You have to install it, plumb it and in our case the GFCI that was part of the power cord was too sensitive and tripped for unknown reasons twice. So at the advice of the maker we tossed it and all is well.

So our new shop in the woods of Michigan just three miles outside of the People's Republic of Ann Arbor is heated and cooled by a Mitsubishi heat pump and we can now bask in 45%+ RH all winter long.

Some more details. It's very quiet, no more schlepping water, the RO filters should last an entire season and are not very expensive to replace. It's behind where I work and does not bother me at all.

Now here's the bottom line from me. When asked for advice on learning to build guitars I often tell people to find and install a humidity solution for your shop as job one. Nothing... is more important in my view or you are building time bombs that will fall apart with the change of the seasons. All things have costs and guitar building is certainly no different. It does not have to be this unit but before you worry about what bandsaw seal up that shop and do what you have to do in your climate to be able to achieve and maintain reliably an RH of around 42 - 48%. There are regions where the numbers can be different but it's a must to get this solved for where you are.

Thanks

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Nice small unit. How's the accuracy compared to your calibration?

I'll be schlepping waters for the foreseeable future but someday I might get water plumbed to the shop.

It was funny how my cough diminished after I traded the ultrasonic for a steam humidifier. The ultrasonic also gave a pretty high particle count as measured by my particle meter.

I think it's excellent we have a synthetic hair hygrometer that we calibrate annually and that read 48% when the unit read as pictured.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

I had similar prior experiences with ultrasonic and was always very disappointed with them too. This is a misting system so I may be wrong about it being ultrasonic. It has an ozone generator too to kill bacteria that's pretty high tech.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Thanks for a timely post on humidifiers!

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

"Now here's the bottom line from me. When asked for advice on learning to build guitars I often tell people to find and install a humidity solution for your shop as job one. Nothing... is more important in my view or you are building time bombs that will fall apart with the change of the seasons. All things have costs and guitar building is certainly no different. It does not have to be this unit but before you worry about what bandsaw seal up that shop and do what you have to do in your climate to be able to achieve and maintain reliably an RH of around 42 - 48%. There are regions where the numbers can be different but it's a must to get this solved for where you are."


+1 and Amen.

Preach it brother.

X2 for repair!
I'm hired as an"expert".
That means knowing how much water is in a customers guitar.
REGARDLESS of what they say!







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