Lugnut, thanks for your response! I think that it is better to live in a very dry vs. a very humid climate, as far as audio equipment is concerned. Also, you ought to see some of the abandoned cars in the desert! 50+ year old cars that have been stripped of paint by the wind blown sand, that maybe have a very light coat of skim surface rust, but haven't rotted...for over half a century! There's nothing like getting a used desert car for sheet metal integrity. Commercial and military jets are also "mothballed" out here. The only problem that I've noticed is that when I play vinyl (I listen mainly to CD's right now, though). I clean my vinyl on a VPI, final clean with a carbon fiber brush and compressed air, and then hit the LP with a Zero-stat. The record plays fine, no static pops, but when I go to flip the record to the other side, the static build up (from the friction of the stylus on the grooves?) is UNBELIEVABLE! I am using an SME 10 table, which has some type of vinyl surface on the top of the platter...maybe this accounts for the static build up. Right now (8:15 PM) it's 88 degrees outside, 10% humidity, 25 degree dewpoint, with an 82 degree heat index (that's right, it's so dry that the heat index is LOWER than the actual temperature)! Inside my living room, the humidity is reading 20%, Funny, but I really don't miss the damp and dreary weather (not to mention the "dingbat" politics) of Massachusetts, where I used to live.
Dangers of Dryness
I just saw a thread that asks about the effects of excess humidity. Well, out here in the Southwestern Sonoran desert, we have the exact opposite extreme. Relative humidity regularly drops below 10%. Over the summer moths, we range from 5% to 30% humidity. This is one of the few places in the USA where the Heat Index is actually LOWER than the ambient temperature! I don't have a static electricity problem (good grounding) and I use a great wax on all wood surfaces. Any potential problems for audio gear operating in this "bone dry" region?