Hello, my name is Betz (Lawrence Betzel on the drivers license).  Having lived in places as cold and dry as Alaska in the winter, as hot and humid as Coastal Carolina in the summer, or as dry and hot as year-round in Arizona I know the challenges of trying to keep guitars safe and in optimal playing condition throughout the wide and wild ranges of humidity we all experience.  I have also been fortunate enough to own some beautiful and collectable instruments, and I know the frustration of not being able to display them as they are kept locked in their hardshell cases.  Monitoring and dealing with humidity is a fact of life for guitarists and other stringed instrument players, and techniques and strategies are always a hot topic among pickers and collectors.

The old rule of thumb for proper care of a guitar was that if you were comfortable, your guitar was comfortable. This was true enough when considering temperature, but it completely ignored humidity. If your instrument is in your house and not in a car trunk, temperature is really not an issue. It doesn’t get hot enough to threaten to loosen glue nor cold enough to check the finish. Humidity, however, is another story. Read any book or article about the care and feeding of an acoustic guitar and the first thing they say is to keep the instrument at the proper humidity level.  Too dry and seams can open, the wood can crack or the ebony fretboard can shrink, exposing the ends of your frets.  Too humid and the glue can weaken, the wood can warp or mold can grow inside the guitar. 

Where are your guitars right now?  Do you have a room in your house that looks like this?  It seems you can either have your instruments safe in their carrying cases or available out on the floor.  How comfortable are you with your instruments leaning against a wall or propped up in a stand?  Where do you put all the cases to try and keep your guitars accessible?  Would you like a better alternative?  If so, you are in the right place because there is a new paradigm for instrument care and storage and it is the Acoustic Life Saver System.

What is the Acoustic Life Saver?  It is an heirloom quality cabinet designed for the sole purpose of storing and displaying your fine guitars in the safest manner possible.  You would expect a cabinet that was designed right from the start to properly store guitars to have a lot of features that a guitar player would appreciate, and it does. Your guitars are supported inside the cabinet with no undo stress on the neck or joints.  The hangers are designed to allow the entire body of the instrument to swing out of the cabinet to insure you can remove or replace them without the risk of bumping into the cabinet or the other guitars.

Utilizing the proven technology of the Piano Life Saver System by Dampp-Chaser, the air inside the cabinet is monitored to insure that the relative humidity is correct and stable.  How do we do it?  It is best illustrated by looking at the comfort control system in you own home.  There, you have a furnace or boiler to provide heat and an air conditioner to provide cooling. But the system doesn’t stop there; it also has a thermostat to control the heating and cooling equipment. You set your thermostat at 72 degrees. If the temperature in the room drops, the thermostat senses the change and turns on the heat. It allows the heat to run until the room temperature is again 72 degrees, and then it turns the heat off. Automatically. If it gets too warm in the room, the thermostat again senses the change, this time bringing on the cooling until the room is again a comfortable 72, then the cooling is turned off. Automatically.

This is similar to how our system will operate, except instead of a furnace and air conditioner we have a humidifier and a de-humidifier. And, instead of a thermostat, we have a humidistat. That’s right, this is a controller that constantly measures the humidity inside the cabinet to keep it at a stable 45% relative humidity. If the humidity drops below 45%, the humidistat senses it and brings on the humidifier. If the humidity rises, the humidistat senses it and brings on the de-humidifier. Automatically. No sponges, no drips, no desiccant packs.

Any system that can increase the relative humidity will require water.  And moving water around expensive wooden instruments is something you would do very carefully.  That is how we approached it.  The cabinet includes a reservoir and a custom fill system.  When the water level in the reservoir drops, a flashing light in the cabinet is activated.  We provide a container that tells you exactly how much water to add to bring the reservoir back to the proper level without over-filling.  When you open the cabinet doors, there is a brass fitting designed to receive the spout of the container.  You add the water and the system is recharged.  How long does the water last?  A lot of factors can impact that, but when tested in Arizona, with indoor relative humidity as low as 13%, a single charge of water regularly lasted more than 3 weeks.  So you can go on vacation without worrying about dry sponges in your guitar cases back home.

The cabinet also includes storage features you will appreciate.  There are two drawers for picks, capos and strings.  There is also a very roomy section with movable dividers for storing anything from recording equipment to sheet music.  And it is tall enough for the sheet music to fit.  everything together in one place.

Then there is the cabinet itself.  American-Made craftsmanship designed for people who know wood and appreciate fine woodworking.  Your guitars are no longer going to be in stashed in the back bedroom.  This is a piece of furniture you will be proud to display, with selections of woods and finishes to compliment any decor.  All designed to frame the art that is your guitar collection.  The paradigm has changed.