It’s hot outside and you’re hungry and thirsty. You’ve just pulled up to your favorite cafe. Sure, you could bring the guitar inside the air-conditioned restaurant with you, but you’d feel self-conscious.
1:30 pm – It’s 95 degrees outside, but you’ll only be a little while, surely it won’t hurt to leave your guitar in the car – or will it?
1:35 – You’ve walked into the restaurant, waited in front of the register and finally you’re seated in a comfy, air-conditioned booth.
1:45 – Your waitress brings your iced tea and tells you your sandwich will be out shortly.
1:52 – Your sandwich arrives blazingly fast and looks delicious!
2:00 pm – You’re half finished with your sandwich.
Meanwhile, back at your car… the temperature is nearly 130 degrees inside, and the wax that keeps your pickups sounding great and prevents microphonics is slowly dripping, sliding off of the pickup coils.
2:10 – You’ve finished the other half of your sandwich and your iced tea, but you’re still flirting with the waitress.
Meanwhile, back at your car… half the wax has probably slid down the coils into the pickup cavity where you’re not likely to see it, even if you don’t have pickup covers.
2:15 – You suddenly pretend to be uninterested in the waitress as her husband comes in to take her home after her shift, and you quickly pay the tab and slink back out to the parking lot.
Scenario #1 – You set up gear at your gig and start playing at 5pm. Your bandmates give you looks that confirm your fears that something isn’t sounding right with your guitar, but you play on.
Scenario #2 – You set up gear at your gig and start playing at 5 pm but abruptly stop. Every time you touch your guitar, every time the pick hits strings, the amplified noise blares through the speakers. Your guitar is unplayable.
It Can Get Worse!
If left in a hot car for an hour or more, wood glue used at the factory to fasten necks, nuts, acoustic guitar bridges, and bracing can soften with predictable and disastrous results.
The moral of this story is to bring the guitar inside the cafe with you. You’ll greatly impress the waitress and she’ll run away with you and become your number 1 fan! 🙂
If you feel you may have damaged your pickups, we can re-pot them for you at a reasonable cost. If the glue has loosened on your acoustic guitar bridge, we can reattach it
At Hank’s Guitar Shop, we can mend just about anything that ails your guitar, bass, violin, ukulele, dulcimer, lapsteel, etc.
