Guitars are not furniture. The wood is not as thick and sturdy as your furniture. They have less (if any) varnish. They are far, far more susceptible to changes in temperature and humidity. You need to control your guitar's environment, you need to change the strings (which involves knowing what kind to put on), and you need a professional to give it adjustments once or twice a year.

Environment

There is one type of guitar that requires almost no care at all. It's a guitar made from carbon fiber instead of wood and is very, very, VERY expensive. The other 99% of guitars in the world require you to take proper care of them, especially in the wintertime. In winter, the cold air doesn't evaporate water much, so the air is very dry. What moisture there is present is on the ground in the form of snow and ice instead of floating around in the atmosphere. The heater in your home isn't helping, either; not unless you happen to have a nice big pond in your living room from which that heater can evaporate some moisture. Odds are your heater is just baking the moisture out of your guitar because the air is dryer than the wood instead of the other way around. This can lead to warping, cracks, shrinkage, all sorts of structural problems. This doesn't happen to your furniture because the wood of your furniture is much thicker. The top of an acoustic (or hollow-body electric) guitar is only a few millimeters thick. Solid-body electrics are not immune to damage from dryness either. Dryness can cause the neck to shrink inwards some, while the metal frets (the lateral pieces against which you press the strings to change the pitch of a note) will not shrink. The result is that the frets stick out the sides, cutting your hands, and the channels the frets are seated in can open up, causing the frets to come loose. 

Summer is no picnic for guitars, either. Excessive humidity can cause the wood of a guitar to swell up, which causes all sorts of maladjustments.

So, what do you do? In the wintertime, get a hygrometer from your local hardware store to measure the humidity in the area where you keep your guitar and use a humidifier to bring the humidity up to around 50%. You can either use a room humidifier of appropriate size for the room or use small refillable humidifier packets that go inside of your guitar case (I use both). In summer, you usually can't do much about the humidity, but as long as you keep the temperature down below 80 degrees Fahrenheit then you will be fine.

 

Changing the Strings

Unlike a piano, a guitar is meant to have fresh strings every month or so because, unlike a piano's strings, a guitar's strings come into direct contact with your fingers with all the oil, dead skin cells, dirt, and general yuckiness that entails. Don't worry, though, a set of guitar strings usually costs anywhere from $5 to $20, depending upon how fancy the strings. There are a dizzying array of strings available, and you need to know what kind and what gauge, or size, strings your guitar has. If you put on strings of the wrong size, that changes the amount of tension of the strings, which changes the pressure on the neck and body, which changes the whole balance of the guitar. As mentioned on the previous page, if you're starting out with a steel-string acoustic you may want a guitar tech to readjust the guitar for lighter gauge strings. In this case, when you change strings, you'll want to put the same on again. I recommend you just keep the string packaging in your guitar case so you can reference it when buying new strings.
 

Strings are marked with the numerical gauge, as well as a generalized size like "light", "medium", "extra light", or similar. The numerical gauge can be "10-46" or ".010 -.046". Or 9-42. Or 12-56. Etcetera. Know the numbers, ignore the words. The word descriptions vary from one manufacturer to the next. Just like in clothing what one manufacturer calls "large" might be what another calls "medium", and one string manufacturer's "light" might be another's "medium-light". The numbers, though, are far more specific and useful. The numbers refer to the actual diameter of the strings in thousandths of an inch. A set of "10-46" is the same as a set of ".010 - .046" and means that the thinnest string is 10/1000th of an inch in diameter and the thickest string is 46/1000th of an inch in diameter. When buying strings you will also need to tell your salesperson whether this is for an acoustic guitar or an electric guitar. Electric guitar strings are usually steel-wrapped in nickel. Steel-string acoustic strings are usually steel wrapped in bronze, which won't work as well with an electric guitar's magnetic pickup but sound warmer on an acoustic guitar. If you don't know what kind of strings your guitar has on it, and it still has the ones it had when it was new, tell your salesperson what guitar it is and they will know what strings it came with. The manufacturer's website will also have that information. It isn't really necessary to stick with the same brand of strings unless you want to, but it is absolutely vital that whatever gauge of strings the guitar is currently adjusted for is used again. Otherwise, you're going to have to pay for a complete re-adjustment. A complete set of heavy-gauge steel strings can have 40 pounds more overall tension than a set of light-gauge steel strings.

 

These fine distinctions do not apply to nylon strings. Nylon strings are all roughly equal in size and the difference in tension and sound is achieved mainly from the composition of the strings. If you're buying new strings for a nylon string guitar, you only really need to know whether you want high-tension strings, or normal, or low-tension strings. High-tension strings (sometimes called "hard" tension in the world of nylon strings) have a sharper, brighter tone to them. Lower tension strings (sometimes called "soft") sound mellower. If you're not sure which you want, get normal tension strings. Odds are that's what your guitar came with. Note that with nylon strings, the difference between "high" and "low" tension sets is not very much and won't affect the overall balance of the guitar like steel string tensions will. Putting "hard" tension nylon strings on a guitar or ukulele that came with "normal" tension won't require a tech to completely re-adjust the whole instrument. The difference between "high" tension and "low" tension nylon strings is only a couple of pounds. 

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Every guitar tech offers basic string change services, but I recommend that everyone learn to do it themselves. The method of changing strings depends upon the type, style, and manufacturer of the guitar, but the internet has a vast collection of video tutorials on how to do it. I recommend starting with the guitar manufacturer's website.

 

Bi-Annual Check-Up

As mentioned before, over time the tension of the strings can pull up on the neck of the guitar, throwing it out of proper alignment. Additionally, changes in humidity can cause wood to swell or shrink and result in changing the amount of curvature of the neck, and simply playing the guitar vibrates it and can cause screws and bolts holding everything in the proper position to come loose. That's why it's highly recommended that you take your guitar to a professional guitar tech at least once a year; twice a year is better. Once a couple of weeks after the weather turns cold and then again a couple of weeks after the weather turns warm. A "set up", as this is called, will include a full adjustment and inspection and they will adjust your guitar so that it plays as well as it possibly can. The electric guitar has more options to adjust than does an acoustic but those adjustments are easier to make, usually turning some screws and measuring the results. Because acoustic guitars have components glued on rather than bolted on, acoustic guitars can require whole alterations to components, or even fabrication of new ones. In the end, each type of guitar has roughly equally time-consuming adjustments to make, has a roughly equal need for those adjustments, and roughly equal cost of those adjustments. The exception being things like 12-string guitars or guitars equipped with the aforementioned "Floyd Rose" style of bar, but as a beginner you should be avoiding both of those.

 

Keep it Clean

One final tip about the maintenance of your guitar: keep it clean. Washing your hands before you play will prolong the life of the strings. Keeping the body of the guitar clean will prolong the life of the finish. Your local guitar store has a wide variety of cleaning products for guitars, stop by and ask someone to recommend a cleaning kit for your specific guitar. It's not expensive at all and could save you a great deal of money.

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