Today I learned one of the biggest advantages of an acoustic guitar over electric

Today I learned the value of an acoustic guitar during a thunderstorm. Power went out (it’s still out) and I could keep myself nicely entertained! Yay.

12 hours later the power is still out and the acoustic is very entertaining!

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I don’t need no stinkin’ acoustic (unless maybe it is a resonator…) - I have battery power! :battery:

but even when I have electricity, I still play my electric unplugged. It simply isn’t distorted those times!
:slight_smile:

On top of that, it is the time when my house humidity is <30%. Maintaining a nice acoustic will be no fun.

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I’m at that time too, so when they’re not being played, my guitars are in their cases with humidification devices. The acoustic uses D’Adario Humidipaks.

I keep my electric humidified as well. I don’t want fret sprout.

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I quite often will pick up an electric and play without plugging it into anything if I don’t feel like wearing a pair of headphones or making a lot of noise.
Come to think of it, I can do that with a steel string and a nylon string too. Silent guitars for the win!

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For me that means they won’t get played when one that is out is right there too. Also, in mid summer, humidity will jump between 30% and 70% in the house depending of if it rained.

Surprisingly, it is not too bad. I do need to nudge the truss rod sometimes tho.

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The main time I see humidity in my house get that low is in winter when the central heating is on. You can raise the humidity with small bowls of water sat on the radiators. (It depends on your location whether this scenario applies to you or not of course)

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My guitar time is the same every day. I take them out and put them in their stands, do my hour and a half to two hours of playing, then put them back in their cases. In the spring, summer, and fall, when they stay in their stands, they still only get played in that block of time.

If I were to randomly start playing at odd times, I’d annoy my wife more than I already do. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

My first guitar was electric and I didn’t have an amp for 2 years!

Kids these days

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100% for me too. I’ve had one expensive guitar crack because of low humidity and now own an even more expensive guitar that I really don’t want to fall to the same fate. So I’m monitoring humidity closely and using the humidipacks from d’adario to manage the expected dry spells later this summer (southern hemisphere)

For sure,
Acoustics are grab and play. No elec. needed.
While I do get power outages in my hood on occasion, it’s not to often.
But I surely dig my no power needed acoustic for playing on the back stoop in the summer. Just grab and go. And I do that too most every weekend in the summer. Sometimes on the weekdays too.

However I also have a Casino. A hollow body electric. While it’s not as loud as a real acoustic, it is for sure playable w/o electricity too. So it kinda depends on what your electric is as to whether it’s enjoyable to play w/o electricity.

As for cases.
I don’t find it hard to get which ever guitar I want to play out of it’s case. And that’s where all of mine reside. It’s one of a few benefits of living in a 830 sq ft. house. Everything is within real easy reach.
I do tend to grab one guitar at the beginning of the day and that’s the one I play all day though. But that’s alright, tomorrow, I’ll play a different one. Not like I got a lot of them to choose from though. 3 regular players (2 elec., 1 acoustic 6 string) and 2 others (1 elec. that I don’t like the tone of, and a 12 string acoustic) that only get sporadic use. Of course, all in their proper cases. :wink: w/o added humidity control either. I’d do that (add humidity control), but I never have and for as long as I’ve played (50 years round abouts), I’ve never had one issue from not humidifying them. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it I guess. I do have a lot of house plants though, so perhaps that helps, I don’t know.

My other guitars didn’t crack. Sigh. It was an extended and record setting drought we had with low humidity for quite some time. I wasn’t the only one in the area that had problems with their guitars. Where I live is typically quite humid.

I’m keeping close eye on it this time for sure.

I often play unplugged and see no problem with it. For me the most valuable lesson from playing on acoustic guitar is dynamic. On electric, especially if you’re mostly playing rock and metal like I do, it’s easy to not pay enough attention to that aspect of your playing when you have distortion, compression and playing palm muted riffs. But on acoustic all sound is within the guitar itself and your playing, so in order to not sound monotonous you have to learn to play with dynamic.

That sounds also quite romantic.
I bet, playing in the dark is quite a good practice too!

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Same here!

Ditto this. I also have a casino and I’ll often pick it up without plugging it in if I don’t want to make a ton of noise.

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HBs the perfect compromise. BUT …
If my power goes, like Tony I’ll grab one of the acoustics, as there’s always one on the front row stands in front of the rack. :sunglasses:

Starting to feel pretty fortunate that I can do whatever I feel like with my acoustics. My humidity is very stable here and might vary between about 42% as a low and 56%-58% for a high year-round. That’s with AC running in the summer as well.

I think if I had to be checking on humidity packs all the time and hiding acoustic guitars in cases right after playing them I might not own any.

It’s not that hard.

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Wow. When I turn the A/C on the humidity drops to low levels. From 60s to 20s and 30s. I talked to my luthier about it and he said not to be concerned if the majority of the 24 hour period the humidity is in the 60s. For us, usually the a/c in the summer is only on for about 8 hours.

100% It’s just an awareness. Similar to how I’m aware of whether my guitar is in tune.

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Island life on the edge of a rainforest has a big impact on just how much of a drying effect the AC has. Likewise in winter when it rains for days on end my electric baseboard heaters keep it warm inside but not dry. Right now I’m 20.4C and 48%RH.

But are you aware of the state of your guitar’s tuning when it’s inside of a case and you haven’t seen it in a few weeks? I should also mention that I own 19 guitars, and while they all get played I can go a few months without picking one of them up.