You might think a guitar is a hard wearing piece of equipment. In some instances you may be right, but neglect your guitar and its looks will slowly start to deteriorate, sound quality reduce and may become faulty. Without a guitar case your beloved instrument is a sitting duck to potentially harmful effects of the atmosphere and its surroundings.
Since you are reading this article im going to assume that you don’t have a guitar case. In that case you probably leave your axe lying around whenever you are not using it. Depending on where you leave it, it could be at the mercy of the atmosphere. Unless your practice room or house is air tight, and has a controlled environment, then there could be harm occurring to your guitar and you don’t realise it.
If your guitar is left in a room with varying heat and humidity there is every chance that this could be taking its toll on it Excessive variations in humidity could very well be warping the finger board or even the body itself.
Leaving your guitar in your garage after that band practice? There is every chance that your garage is going to be damp to some degree. We all know what the effects of water and oxygen are on metal fixings. The control knobs, bridge, you strings etc could be rusting before your very eyes. Not quite that fast, but we don’t want any rust. Replacing these components is a expenditure that we really don’t want to be putting out when it can be easily avoided.
Only the other day a young guy walked onto the bus I was on with his guitar over his shoulder without a case. If you have spent a load of your hard earned cash buying your guitar you want to run the risk of damaging it, or even someone else damaging it when you are out and about. If your going to practice with your band at a rehearsal room you really need to have a case to avoid causing unnecessary damage.
When you are not playing your axe you want to keep it safe from potential damage too, leaving it lying against a wall, your bed, chair or anything else is an accident waiting to happen. If it falls over who knows what damage it could do to itself, or anything that it happens to fall on top of.
As you can see there are plenty of reasons to bite the bullet and get a guitar case for your pride and joy, be that a soft case or a hard case. It may seem like a hardy instrument but its made from natural materials and is therefore very delicate and needs to be looked after properly. The rest of this site is going to look at your options for protecting your musical equipment.
