Humidity
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What a reed is
A shaped piece of cane, a grass, cut thin at the tip. It takes up water readily and changes dimension as it does.
Which is why it plays differently wet
The tip swells and softens, and the response changes. A player wets a reed deliberately before playing for exactly that reason.
And why it warps dry
Drying is not uniform. The thin tip loses water faster than the thick heel, the fibres move at different rates, and the flat table that seals against the mouthpiece stops being flat.
So the damage is in the transition
Not in being wet and not in being dry. A reed that goes from soaked to desiccated in an hour, repeatedly, is a reed with a short life.
Which is why reed cases control humidity
A sealed case holding a humidity pack keeps the swing small. That is a purpose-made product with a flat holder and a seal, and this catalog does not make one.
What a jar can do
Hold the sealed environment, if the reeds are on a flat surface inside it. 224 jars here, and a wide straight sided one with a liner will keep a humidity pack working.
What it cannot do
Keep the reeds flat and separated. A jar of loose reeds is a jar of reeds resting against each other at angles, which is its own warping problem.
Mould is the other half
Cane held wet in a sealed container grows things. The target is stable, not saturated, which is why the packs are two-way rather than simply adding moisture.
This property gives no humidity number
Because there is no regulation and no consensus standard to quote, and a figure invented by a container catalog would be acted on. The reed and pack manufacturers publish theirs.
A band room is the hard case
Hundreds of reeds, a room that heats and cools daily, and no individual control. Bulk sealed storage with a pack does more than anything else available.