bass is moist

[mr mastodon]

i thought it was just excited to see me! essentially I took a few days off of playing to heal my hands after a vigorous run. I visited family and left my bass in my house with my roommates. it's a plywood, no big deal I thought.

well I come home and the fingerboard is completely moist and sticky. as are the strings. the good part: the fingerboard no longer needs to be steel wooled. I imagine the moisture from the rainy weather cleaned the dry crusty crap off.

the downside: even after wiping it feels sticky to play. I know this will go away. but for future reference, is this a good or bad thing? I imagine the latter but I heard plys aren't affected. strings definitely were though. and were certainly out of tune.

should I leave it in it's case next time as opposed to leaving it exposed to the elements in my room?

[Rebop]

For shows, I try to not worry about that stuff. I've played outdoor gigs with my prewar Epiphone like that. So muggy that the entire bass would get condensation sweat all over it. Some venues even have these water vapor misting systems to make everyone feel cooler. Well, in Florida it usually doesn't work and only makes everything stickier and wetter. My bass hated it (which is why I got a cheapie for gigs like that now) but it's still here and hasn't suffered. If you're leaving your bass somewhere that fluctuated that much in temperature/humidity/whatever to cause condensation like that though; sounds bad. Keeping it in a case may buffer the temperature changes a bit and help prevent that sort of thing from happening. My non-expert advice would be to keep it somewhere climate controlled if it's a good bass you care about.

[LeslieD]

Even if you have a plywood bass, you should at least take measures to ensure you don't get drastic changes in humidity (at least when you're not playing it). You can still end up with a warped bridge or fingerboard. It's always a good idea to keep a digital hygrometer around to measure the humidity where you keep your bass.

I've played many summer evening gigs with 100% humidity and a very sticky fingerboard. I just always tried to keep a towel handy to clean things up between songs. My ply and hybrid basses didn't have a nice bright & crisp sound in those conditions, but for short term exposure it wasn't a big deal.

[Marc Piane]

Do you oil the fingerboard? When the weather gets humid often the fingerboard will 'sweat' some of the oil you have applied. I've found lemon oil gets sticky like you describe. Mineral oil is nice alternative IME.

Truthfully I almost never oil my board though. Just a dry washcloth and elbow grease to remove the funk. It is my understanding that ebony doesn't need much care.

[fdeck]

I've had the situation where: 1) I let the rosewood fingerboard on my ply get a bit grungy from not wiping it off; and 2) there was a sudden change in the weather, for instance taking it out of my cold basement on a hot humid day. Indeed, my fingerboard felt sticky and moist. Wiping it down with a cloth was usually sufficient to cure that problem.