The Blog

First published October 2012 - republished annually each October When I was young and innocent – young and stupid would be more accurate – back in the 60s, I carried a Martin D-28 all over Canada and down into California - in a cardboard case – hitchhiking, jumping trains and delivering drive-away dealer cars. The guitar not only survived my careless treatment but never suffered any ill effects from a lack of humidity. Truth be told no one seemed to be aware of any issues related to dry air back then.

Fifty years later it's different. Everyone is concerned about humidity – too much in hot summer or southern states and too little in dry winter conditions or high altitude climates. Why the change? ...more importantly..is there any reason for a guitarist to worry about the humidity?

To begin let's define humidity, or more accurately, relative humidity. The measurement of moisture in the air is always expressed as a percentage of the total moisture the air could hold – relative to the temperature. Listen to the weather report and you'll hear the announcer say something like “The relative humidity today is 40%” That doesn't mean 40% of the air is water vapour. It means that the air outside is holding 40% of the water vapour it is capable of holding. That's an important point to understand and gets us 1/2 way up humidity mountain. Its drier at the top which, of course, is the reason for the climb. To reach the summit we need to add in the temperature factor. Cold air holds less humidity than warm air but because we're measuring that vapour as a percentage of the air's ability to hold moisture it's not unusual to have a humidex reading of 40% or 50% or more in the height of winter. The air feels dry but has a humidity readout of 50%?

The same reading in summer produces insufferable dripping (dare I say it) sweat. Cold winter air simply can't hold much moisture so even a high (remember- relative to temperature) humidity reading is still pretty dry. 50% of not very much is still not very much. Here's where it becomes a train wreck for musicians, people, dogs, cats and pretty much everything except goldfish: Let's assume, for the sake of argument the humidity reading outside your window on a 0 Celsius (32 F) day is 40%. That's the air you're importing into your home. Question - Is it still going to have a relative humidity of 40% once you heat it to the 20-degree range (70F)? Absolutely not,

We're measuring the amount of moisture in the air relative to what it can hold and warm air can hold more moisture than cold air. Cold winter air, once heated to a comfortable temperature, can have a relative humidity of under 10%. Nature arbors a vacuum but she gets pissed off about discrepancies! The air in a building may have a very low humidity level but everything else in the building doesn't. That's a discrepancy in need of correction so moisture starts moving out of your skin, your furniture and (finally some relevance) your guitar into the air to achieve a balance. Your skin cracks, furniture joints dry out and guitar strings start buzzing. The balance, of course, is never achieved because we keep on sucking in new cold air, heating it up and lowering the interior humidity.

Buzzing strings and sharp fret ends are canaries in the coal mine for an acoustic owner - early warning signs of a need to humidify. The strings are likely buzzing because the top of the guitar has dried and dropped. Even 1/100th of an inch produces noticeable changes in playability. (NB. Altitude and atmospheric pressure can also cause a guitar top to move like a barometer). Fret ends are protruding because the neck is shrinking in girth as it sheds humidity. The guitar will be less playable – but more critically, continued exposure to dry air may result in permanent damage. Don't believe me? Take a look at every reputable guitar maker's warranty. Ask yourself why they all (we're no different) specifically exclude cracking due to lack of humidification. Wood shrinks across the grain as it drys. Constrained wood such as guitar tops with the bracing running perpendicular to the grain won't stop shrinking. It simply splits. What started life as a beautiful solid wood acoustic guitar can be reduced to kindling without a bit of care. So now we're solid on what relative humidity is all about and we're paranoid about protecting our guitars from its insatiable thirst. Good. Let's dump the theory lecture and put a working game plan in place.

If the environment where we keep our guitars is too dry the solution is to raise the humidity level. Not rocket science. But not brain dead simple either. The operative word in the above sentence is “IF”. Before we start pumping all kinds of moisture into the air we should know how much (if any) hydration we need. Over hydrating a guitar has its own set of problems. We also need to have a system that works for our specific needs. Establishing the actual relative humidity is accomplished with the use of simple (and cheap) little metering device called a hygrometer. Park it in a room and the needle or digital reading will pretty quickly tell you the relative humidity of that room. Once we know how dry the air is we'll use some sort of humidifier to raise the level to 40% or 50%. Here's the rub (or rubs). Rub 1 - No hygrometer I've ever seen is accurate. They can't be trusted. But they can be calibrated. Do a web search for calibrating a hygrometer with salt and you'll find a few dozen sites explaining how to establish your hygrometer's inaccuracy. Then add or subtract that amount to get an accurate reading. Rub 2 – Most methods of maintaining a decent moisture level suck the big one. Despite what that heating specialist (fast-talking salesman) told you, whole-house humidifiers attached to the furnace are useless. If you have one take your newly calibrated hygrometer on a tour of your house and watch the reading swing wildly from room to room. In-case, or soundhole humidifiers aren't ideal either. Some are better than others but they all rely on passive evaporation to draw out their moisture - not highly effective! They hold micro amounts of water that may or may not reach some parts of the guitar (one manufacturer specifically warns that their soundhole humidifier may do little or nothing for the neck. In very dry climates in-case humidifiers are, by themselves almost useless.

My personal preference is a stand-alone in-room humidifier. They don't cost a lot (most hardware and home decor stores run pretty good sales this time of year) and they do the job well. They have their own built-in hygrometer (no more accurate than the one you bought – you did buy one right? But at least you'll know and compensate for the error). Provided you keep your guitar in the same room as the humidifier (did I really need to make that point?) and you fill the humidifier when it runs dry (again, it seems obvious but...?) you'll go through the driest winter with a beautifully playable guitar. Some additional notes: A very good guitarist in Nova Scotia told me that he didn't need to humidify his guitars because he lived right beside the ocean. He was wrong (about humidity not about where he lived) The humidity level in his house in January was 22%. The physics of heating cold dry air doesn't change because you've got a lobster pond across the road. Another guitarist – this one in Alberta – had some musician friends over last October and handed one of them a guitar he'd stored away for a few months (no humidification) The guitar had cracked in storage. Some areas of the continent are drier than others. If you live just east of the Rockies the air you get is already dry at the best of times. Don't wait for the first snowfall - and don't rely on a tiny in-case humidifier. You'll destroy your guitar in a matter of (very cold) days.

Oh..and that Martin I campaigned across North America? Back then the construction techniques weren't as precise nor were the glues as binding as today. Wood may have been more seasoned (I have my doubts) and homes weren't very well insulated. Or perhaps I was just lucky on the road. I do know that somewhere near Salinas, ......

How much does a good acoustic guitar cost and what goes into a guitar to make it worth its price? In other words "How can a musician figure out the "real" price of an acoustic guitar? Tough questions? Not really. We know the answer. We'll share it with you and tell you how we came up with the number. Firstly we want to establish what constitutes a "good" guitar. For our yardstick we're going with the following:

• an all solid wood body - no laminated tops backs or sides. "Laminated" is nothing more than the industry's way of saying "plywood" - kind of like "The parrot is only resting" 
• quality hardware. (e.g tuning machines that stay in tune, and bone or Tusq rather than plastic nuts and saddles)

Next we need to consider how those materials are cared for and assembled. Proper drying, honest grading and carefull storage of wood all have a huge effect on the final product. It may be tempting to cut costs by using wood too soon (think Orson Wells) or save on real estate by not having enough dry rooms but the results show. The third component of our "good" guitar is the actual assembly. 21st century technology such as CNC machines are fine for tasks like carving neck blanks but can't compete with skilled hand work for setting those necks - especially if you want a guitar with more than ho-hum sound. 

So our baseline is an all solid wood guitar made from dry selected woods and put together with skilled human hands. How much does that guitar cost? That depends. In addition to the cost of the actual materials and workmanship you need to factor in the cost of getting the guitar from the factory to your eager little (sorry Donald) hands.

The industry term for that trip is "distribution". It's one of the messy secrets of the music business that - from factory to brand to distributor to regional distributor to dealer - it can add as much as 60% to the final price. That's right - as much as 60%. Each step involves not just shipping and warehousing but credit departments, sales departments, accounting departments etc....hundreds or thousands of people. Guess who pays their salaries.

We're going to suggest that the real price of a guitar is the lowest price paid by anyone in that distribution chanel. If a factory sells a guitar to a disributor for $800 and through multiple markups that guitar eventually sits on a dealers wall with a $2,000 sticker price is the real price the original $800 or the final $2,000? We'll go with $800. When so much of the final price has little or nothing to do with the materials and workmanship its time to rethink how guitars are sold. This is the 21st century. There's no reason to pay prices based on a creaky distribution system that dates back to the launch of the Titanic.   

Every year since we began crafting guitars we've made incrimental improvements to each production run. For 2015 the changes go far beyond "incrimental".  From milling and drying our own raw wood to adding a new side bending system, we've revamped almost every step of our guitar making. Here's a link to some of the things we've changed.

All the sound you cannot see

We've started tracking how many guitars we send out each year as gifts -who buys them and who receives them. The results may surprise you.

We used a scale from 0 to 100 to represent the number (not the dollar value) of guitars we could clearly identify as gifts. We went back to the start of 2014 so this graph takes into account birthdays, graduation, anniversaries Christmas etc. There's a couple of days left in this Holiday season's buying binge but based on our findings so far and our experiece in past years here's what we think is solid (semi or non -scientific) evidence of who is giving and getting and who is not.

When it comes to guitars as gifts wives are astoundingly generous. Husbands not so much. There isn't a month that goes by that we don't get requests from wives to help them pick out a guitar for a special occasion. There's a  lot of very lucky husbands in this country.

Wives may be great givers but when it comes to guitars they they're not so lucky. Either there are very few married female guitarists or husbands are spending way too much time in Victoria Secrets. If you're a husband looking for a guitar for your wife we'd suggest takng a very good look (and listen) to our new Opeongo.

Parents giving guitars to their kids tend to break down into two groups -by far the most common is the father getting a Dreadnought for a son to stop the boy from taking his own MacKenzie & Marr guitar. The other (very surprising) parent buyer  is one who call us in November or December to buy a guitar for each of their children. That sort of call is not an everyday occurance but we never say no to supplying family with matching MacKenzie & Marr guitars.

Kids - almost always adults - picking a guitar as a gift for a parent is usually accompanied by a touching story of love and respect. We treasure those stories - perhaps because we're at the age where our own children are grown - learning to make their way in the world and developing new and wonderful ways of relating to us.

Finally there's one group of guitar givers not represented by this graph. Regardless of who is the end recipient of each MacKenzie & Marr guitar we remain grateful for the purchaser's faith in our company and our instruments. To us that's a gift we treasure. We want to thank you and to wish you and your's the best of the Holiday Season.

Occasionally we get a bit goofy and offer a one hour or one day sale on one of our guitar models.
The only way to catch theses deals is to "like" MacKenzie & Marr on Facebook because that's where we announce them so why not click here, hit the "Like" button and be prepared to save some loot?

Fair warning to Keith Richards (Mr. Clapton pay attention too). I hooked my iPhone to my MacKenzie & Marr Ian Tyson Limited Edition with a gizmo called an iRig, fired up "Satisfaction" in the associated program and played along. In all humility I was astoundingly good - better (again with humility) than Keith himself. In fact Keith was doing such a fine job on rhythm I added my own embellishments to the tune. Later Willie Nelson backed me up on "Pancho and Lefty". I outdid myself. You'll have to take my word for it since no one else was around to judge. The electric sound was also delivered to my earbuds so only I could hear it.

Jonathan Mackenzie, the other founding partner in MacKenzie & Marr Guitars prefers acoustic folk with a bit of Celtic flavour. He has little love for electric guitars. I, on the other hand gravitate towards acoustic blues with built-in raunch. Truth be told I am a secret rock n' roller at heart. Hanging my head is shame, I'll also admit to being a bit of an Apple fanboy so when I saw the iRig I couldn't resist. It's not much more than a cylinder that connects an electric guitar to an iPhone or iPad and headphones or powered speakers. Coupled with a free app the iRig allows multiple guitar effects and an infinite number of settings for tweaking the sound. I had my Ian Tyson Ltd fuzzing and buzzing, reverbing and wah-wahing. At one point I hit the "Heavy Metal" setting and - no word of a lie - the guitar sounded like a Kirk Hammett rehearsal. Cranking out full-on rock 'n roll from a solid wood acoustic guitar with a built in pickup blew me away. Doing it through headphones will no doubt make my wife ecstatic. She already labours under the misapprehension that I lack any real guitar playing skill.

In addition to all the cool effects the app offers the ability to load and play along with a tune from the device's iTunes library. The song can be slowed down without changing the pitch - a great way to learn. If you're intrigued by the idea of your amplified acoustic guitar doing double (or triple etc.) duty as a full electric axe and you own an iPhone, iPod or iPad here are some links you may want to check out:

The iRig -available at most Apple Stores for $40.

Amplitube iPhone App - the free app from the same people as the iRig. There are multiple add-ons that can be purchased

iShred App - another free app that works with the iRig. I found the pre-sets to be a bit more interesting than those supplied with Amplitube

Taylor EQ App - If you're just looking for acoustic amplification through the iPhone and headphones this does the trick. The maker claims the various EQ presets duplicte the unique sound of different Taylor guitars but to me they all sounded the same. No effects

Have fun....oh and if you see Mr. Richards, don't tell him how good I think I am. He's already got one high maintenance ego to worry about. He doesn't need another.