Moving musical instruments across the country – what’s to know?

Musical instruments come in all shapes and sizes. When it comes to relocating, this can be a problem – especially if the move is long-distance. Sure, a harmonica is a piece of cake to move, but a piano or double bass? Not so much. You need special skills and knowledge for moving musical instruments across the country. For this reason, we are here to help with some useful tips and tricks!

Get help from professional movers

The smartest, most practical choice to keep your instruments safe is to hand them off to the people who know how to handle them: professional movers. In fact, if you hire the best piano movers FL has to offer, you needn’t worry about most of the below points.

The pros can take care of the entire process for you. You can even rely on packing services FL has to wrap, pack, load, and unload your instruments the right way. All you have to do is make the call and arrange the dates.

 Are your movers good at moving musical instruments across the country?

Before you run off and contact the first moving company you come across, you need to do a little research. In this specific case, you need to learn whether a given business knows how to move musical instruments cross-country.

Mind you, this is a little different a task than that of residential movers Florida offers. A cross-country move requires some different tools. Here are the basic things that you should expect from movers adept at moving instruments across great distances.

• Trucks with climate and humidity control for moving musical instruments across the country  – this is especially crucial for temperature-sensitive instruments like harps
• Prior experience with instrument transportation
• Packing equipment – cases, wrapping, well-designed boxes for different kinds of instrument
• Trolleys for transporting larger instruments like pianos or big amps

Don’t skimp on wrapping and packing

High-quality musical instruments cost an arm and a leg. Damaging one can be nothing short of a disaster, especially if the damage is severe enough to put it out of commission. To be sure, competent long distance movers Miami can take care of your instruments properly. However, some of you will remain dogged in, at least, doing the packing on their own.

For these people, we have a simple piece of advice: cutting corners on wrapping/packing materials for moving musical instruments across the country is downright silly.  As a general rule, you want to place your instruments in their original casings as much as it’s possible to do so. But in some cases, that won’t really do – for example, a simple guitar bag is far too soft to protect its contents. Never put more than just one instrument in a box, though. Buying or borrowing hard cases and wrapping materials should be your main goal.

Here are some handy pointers for the most common kinds of instruments.

String instruments

Overall, stringed instruments are less of a challenge to move. Most of them are small enough to carry around quickly in a single hand. That said, that doesn’t mean you can just put them in the case and call it a day. Moving musical instruments long distance is never that easy, after all.

When packing these instruments, it’s always a good idea to loosen the strings a little. The wood that comprises the instruments will likely bend and contort from changes in temperature, and the tight strings might create unnecessary tugging (the strings can deform, too, but they’re much easier to replace).

Once you’ve done the unwinding, wrap the instrument and place it in its case. You ought to leave it loose-stringed for at least 24 hours after the move to let its wood settle into the new climate.

Moving musical instruments across the country: large instruments

As you’ve probably learned from when you got one, big instruments are a pain to handle. And you’re right if you’re anticipating that moving them across the country will be a chore. However, that chore needn’t be filled with the stress of worrying that your instrument will end up looking like it took a tumble down a hill made of sandpaper.

To that end, make sure to keep your instruments safe and snug in their casings. Use as much padding and wrapping as possible. If an instrument is disassemblable, take it apart and pack it accordingly. Don’t cram in padding to the point where you can’t close the casing. You can treat amps with the same methodology of how to pack and move musical instruments of a larger size.

Brass instruments

Packing brass instruments is pretty easy, all things considered. They can be disassembled into a ton of pieces, for the most part, so they can fit in pretty small boxes. Therefore, the packing process is fairly straightforward. Simply wrap them in something like bubble wrap and place them in their appropriate boxes. Also, consider packing the mouthpiece separately.

Don’t start preparations for moving musical instruments across the country at the last minute

This is more of a general piece of advice, but it certainly applies to moving musical instruments across the country. Depending on how many instruments you have, the amount of work needed to pack and move them will range from sizeable to Herculean.

For that reason, you will only cause yourself headaches if you put it off till the last moment. Not only that but doing it in a rush will make you do a sloppy job. That will only result in damaged instruments.

To that end, make sure you have everything ready for your packing and moving. Gather the supplies, plan out how and when you’re going to pack, call your friends/family members to have them help you with transportation. Basically, set up everything in time so you don’t have to rush moving musical instruments across the country.