In this instructional video, Lauren Bateman shares her experience of cracking a Taylor 324CE acoustic guitar due to the extremely dry New England winter climate and explains that such damage is common and not catastrophic. She outlines why wood guitars crack (low humidity causing wood to shrink), how to create a "happy" environment for guitars (maintaining 45‑55% relative humidity and 65‑75 °F temperature), and practical steps for both preventing cracks and repairing an existing one. Key remediation actions include consulting a luthier for structural support and rehydrating the instrument with D'Addario Humidipaks (Restore for cracked guitars, Maintain for ongoing care). She demonstrates how to place Humidipaks and hygrometers inside cases and directly in the sound hole, and reviews alternative hygrometer options (Music Nomad). Bateman also covers fretboard health, recommending deep conditioners (Dunlop) and regular conditioning when changing strings, especially for rosewood or ebony fretboards. She reviews comprehensive cleaning kits (D'Addario, Dunlop) that include microfiber cloths, mats, string cutters, cleaners, and lubricants. Finally, she offers long‑term storage advice: detune strings before extended case storage to relieve wood tension, keep humidipaks in the case, and monitor humidity with a hygrometer. Throughout, she reassures viewers that cracked guitars can still be played (citing examples like Woody Nelson and her own heavily used guitars) and points to a separate step‑by‑step string‑change video for deeper maintenance details.
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Yep, this is my Taylor 324CE and I cracked it. Okay, and if this happened to you, don't worry, it's not the end of the world. It's actually a lot more common than you think. But what we're going to do in this video is talk about things you can do to prevent this from happening in the first place, but also what to do if this does happen to one of your guitars. So how did this happen in the first place? Well, I live in New Hampshire, okay? I live in New England, and the winters here tend to be very, very dry, okay? This is just normal. Lived in New England my whole life, and I've had guitars for multiple decades, and I've never cracked a guitar, um, due to weather. But this is the first year, and it unfortunately was my Taylor. And the reason is the humidity, okay? So when the air gets dry, your guitar is made of wood, okay? So it also dries out. And when wood dries out, it shrinks, and when it shrinks, it cracks. And when I finally noticed the crack, which is just a little hairline crack— I don't know if you'll see it here, I'll see if we can find a video where it shows up a little bit more clearly— but just a little hairline crack here on this little hip. And that's a very, very common place, especially in tailors. I guess this is a very common problem in tailors. I didn't know this because they have a slightly thinner top it can crack a little bit, but not the end of the world. What I did was I just took it to a luthier who just put a little support on the back to try and keep it from spreading, and then I used some of the techniques I'm going to share with you in the video here to rehydrate the guitar and keep it healthy. And like I said, if this happens to your guitar, it is not the end of the world, all right? There are guitar players like Woody Nelson who play with holes in their guitar. I think Woody Nelson's guitar has a giant hole, and he put a pickguard over the hole. So it just goes to you, you can still play a guitar even if it has a crack in it. I'm going to show you my Crafter real quick. This is my Crafter guitar. This is my performance guitar. And this guitar, you might be able to see down here, there is a giant crack. There's also pieces of wood missing from me strumming, um, but there is a giant crack. I did that with a microphone that was in my bag. Now I've had this guitar, um, for well over a decade. She still plays fine. I still use her. You know, she's broken, she's beat up, she's still usable, and I still love her. So if you get a crack in your guitar, again, happens more than you think. It's not the end of the world. We just want to do the right things to take care of it. So now what can we do to prevent this from even happening in the first place, or reduce the chances of this happening? So guitars kind of have a happy place, all right? And that's with humidity. Okay, so like I said, the winters here get very, very dry. It's not uncommon for humid— uh, humidity to go down to like 10%, 12% 18%. Guitars like to live in kind of like the 45-55% range. Okay, now if you're somewhere, say you live down south and it gets really, really humid— it gets humid here in the summers too— you might have to dehumidify your room. Okay, so there's always something to play with in terms of keeping your guitar happy. Okay, and again, in terms of like temperature, usually like 65 to 75 degrees is great. So my office here is in the attic. In the winter, what I do is I do have a humidifier up here that I run, and I try to keep the moisture around 45 to 50. I shut that room and I keep the heat on somewhere between 65 and 70 so that my guitars can have a happy space to live in the winter. Now, in the summer, I cannot keep my guitars up here in the attic because it gets so hot and humid up here, I'd have to leave them in the room and have the air conditioner running 24/7. So I usually bring my guitars downstairs where we have some air conditioning and the temperature and humidity stays more in a happy spot for the guitars. So that's step number 1, is finding a space where your guitars can be happy. And if you can't, what can you do? So I want to introduce you to some products that I use, all right, and used with my Taylor when I was trying to recover it. So this is what I used on my Taylor tailor once I finally saw the crack. These are the Dioderio Humidipacks. All right, these things are great. I use them with my guitars. You use these in the guitar case, okay? And that's tricky for me because oftentimes my guitars are out in stands or they're hanging on the wall because I play them a lot or I'm filming here. Um, so I typically don't keep them in a case, but once I saw that crack in my tailor, I opened up one of these. So this This is, um, this is a Maintain pack. I opened up this one, which is the Restore pack. So if you have a guitar that's cracked or gotten severely dehydrated, the Restore pack is what you want because it's going to introduce the humidity back into the guitar in a healthy way, not too quickly because that can cause other problems. And then once you get it to the right humidity, you can just use the Maintain pack. So let me show you how these work. So basically, they're just little gel packs. I took these out of my tailor 'cause now that it's in the case. So this one's, you know, it's still, this is still squishy, but it's not as full as it was. They're just little gel packs and as the humidity comes out, they will get used up. And there's these little pouches. So you slide the Humidipak into the pouch. So this goes inside the guitar. There are 2 packs. And then this one goes in the headstock. You'll actually see if I take this one out, it's pretty dry and crunchy. It'll get very, very crunchy once it's dried out. And that's how you know it's time to replace these because they get very thin, very dried out. So what you would do is you'd open up your guitar case and you would put this in the headstock hole and you would just drop it into the guitar case. This one is— you are going to slide it inside the sound hole. So what I did is I put one pocket in between the B and G string and I put another pocket in between the A and D string. All right, and this just sits inside the guitar like that, and then you put it in your case and you let it sit. Now, if you have a case that has a humidity reader, great, you're gonna know where your guitar is at. So if you don't, like most of my guitar cases don't, you can get some products. So this one is from Dioderia. I like this one. This is great for inside the guitar case. It's just their hydrometer. Okay, so you can just plop this into the case. I'd probably put it in the side with the body of the guitar because there's more wood. I think that's the more important area to keep a hold of, and it tells you. So if I look at this, it's reading that the humidity Humidity in this room is 37%. Okay, it's, it's low. It's not dangerously low, it's not 18%, um, but if this were inside my guitar case with the Humidipaks, it's probably going to be closer to 45%. Okay, and then it tells me the temperature. It is 68 degrees in this room right now, which is a very happy space for my guitars overall. Okay, so you can put this right into your guitar case, and then when you open it, you'll be able to see, hey, what's the temperature, what's the humidity. Awesome. Very, very simple. For guitars that sit out, I like using this. Um, so usually there's a sponge that goes in here that you can wet with— it's distilled water. Okay, so there's a sponge that you use with distilled water. You don't want to use regular water because then you can put mold inside the guitar, and that's not a good thing. So there's usually a sponge that goes in here to create humidity, but because I have the humidifiers in my room, I don't use the sponge. I just use it more to tell me what is the humidity in my guitar. So let me grab my Crafter since this usually sits inside my Crafter. So you'll see I have the sound hole, and again, I'm just going to shove this in between the middle two strings. Boom! And it just goes right in the sound hole like that. And then it tells me— see, this one's a little bit different. It's saying it's 73 and 38%. So it could, it could be warmed up because I've been holding it in my hand, but again 37 on that one, 38 on this one. It's telling me that my humidity is somewhere between 37-38%, and it's somewhere around 68 to 73 degrees, which is a very, very happy temperature for guitars. So that's what this one does. It just sits in the guitar, and this way when I'm working, I can just kind of walk by, check, and be like, oh yeah, the humidity is good, or oh, the humidity is a little low, I need to turn up my humidifier, or the humidity is too high, I need to turn my humidifier off. Um, so just gives you a quick reading on the guitar. Now this one is, uh, Music Nomad. Okay, same concept, it just goes inside the guitar. You can close this inside the guitar case too. Um, this is less expensive than the D'Addario products. I just find the D'Addario products work so much better, particularly if you're in New England like me where it does get super, super dry. Um, definitely go with the D'Addario product. So those are some things that you can do to keep the humidity and the the temperature going well so that your guitars are in happy spaces. Um, but what else can you do to take care of your guitar? Now, not only is the body of the guitar made of wood, but so is our fretboard. And if our fretboards get dried out, unfortunately the frets can pop out of the fretboard, and that's not a good thing. Um, one of my original guitars, my first guitar, I haven't done anything to maintain it. That one hasn't cracked, strangely. Uh, little Ibanez. And it— but the frets are completely dried out, and you can see in the top that it's dried out. So how do you prevent that? Well, you would use something like a conditioner. So this is a Dunlop product that I like to use. It's a deep conditioner that you would put on your fretboard if you have like a rosewood or an ebony fretboard, okay, kind of a porous fretboard, just to put moisture in. And I usually put this stuff on when I change my strings, okay? I'll do it before the winter and after the winter because that's the dry time, right? Um, Diodera has a nice kit here Okay, this is a cleaning kit, so it has some string cleaners. A microfiber cloth is really nice. Also comes with a nice mat, okay, which is nice to, to protect your guitar, especially if you have a shiny finish. A lot of my guitars are matte finishes, but like my PRS hollow body has a very, very glossy, shiny, shiny finish. My Ibanez electric has a very glossy, shiny finish, so you want to take care of that. But they also have— it's It's a hydrate formula that comes in this. So if you don't have a guitar maintenance kit, I'd highly recommend you go check one out and buy one. Like I said, this D'Addario one is pretty good because it comes with a microfiber cloth, it comes with the mat, it comes with string cutters. So when you change your strings, you're going to want to be able to, to cut that. Has a cleaning spray, some string lubricant and cleaner. I'm not really big on, on cleaning my strings. I'd rather just change them and get a fresh set of strings. But just so you know, it does come with this. Dunlop also has, um, something very, very similar to this, a cleaning kit. Like I said, they usually have this— these two products that come together. They have a full cleaning kit that has a lot of other things, bells and whistles. I don't really use many of those. The biggest ones, even in this D'Addario one, is the cleaner, okay, to clean the guitar, and then the conditioner, okay? Those are the most important things. Microfiber cloth and a mat. Okay, and a string cutter, also very, very helpful. Um, so if— whether you buy a Dunlop product or a D'Addario product, they're probably going to have all of those things if you get a cleaning kit. So I just want to show you some of the products I use to maintain and clean the guitar. But there's one more thing I want to talk about, and that's when you're keeping your guitars stored in their cases. So if you're storing, great, put in a D'Addario Humidipak, make sure the humidity and everything's great. But if you're going to store a guitar in a case and you're not going to play it for a long time, you should really detune the strings to release the tension on the fretboard. That's something a lot of students don't know. So if you're storing a guitar, if it's not like my guitars that are sitting out here that I play a lot, if you're storing it and you're putting it in the case and you're just going to let it sit for a very long time, you should detune those strings to reduce the tension the strings have on the wood. This way you don't, you don't cause issues or warp fretboards or anything. So that's just one final tip for you on the guitar maintenance. Now if you're someone who wants to change your strings and condition your fretboard, I have a really great video step by step over there on how to change the strings on your acoustic guitar and do some of this prep and maintenance work. So if you're interested, go check that video out right over there.
