The scientific proof of opening up

[Toby Walker]

Originally Posted by Rmz76

P.S. For those curious about what dealers I may me talking about. I will not mention their name, but there is a popular guitar store near Los Angeles, CA specializing in rare guitars that is a good example.They will often put up demo videos to their youtube channel of vintage guitars that sound horrible. The person conducting the demo will talk about specs and is usually careful to not weigh in with their opinion but an impression is being made that the guitar sounds amazing. I really don't see the retailer as doing anything wrong here. It's just unsettling to have a product not valued based on its tone to have it's tone showcased and associated with it's value. This specific store also likes to often feature celebrity/VIP clientele which just seems to be the icing on the cake.

I probably won't be the first one to tell you that it's virtually impossible to accurately judge the tone of any instrument based solely on the sound coming through a set of even the best speakers hooked up to a computer. Yet, some dealers and their clientele will use that method in accordance to whatever degree of reliability they put their faith in.

Your viewpoint - "They will often put up demo videos to their youtube channel of vintage guitars that sound horrible" - is just as subjective as anyone else's, but also tends to cram all vintage instruments into one neat little box. As I'm sure you're aware of, there are wide differences in the tonal quality of vintage instruments. Whether the tone is good or bad is entirely up to the listener.

I agree with Wade here... the best, most reliable way to answer address this question is to ask the professional dealers their opinions on whether or not a new instrument does or does not break in over time. I'm sure many of them have had instruments in stock long enough to hear the differences for themselves.

[Toby Walker]

My own, completely unscientific story.

I own a 1990 Martin 000-16. For eight years that was my ONLY acoustic guitar, which I used extensively up until 1998. Without caring about humidity or temperature, I stored it underneath the bed in my apartment without taking it out of the case once.

A couple of years later I pulled it back out again and - yes, this part is completely subjective - the tone had noticeably changed. The instrument was warmer and much fuller.

Could it have been my imagination? Might be, but I doubt it. Either way, it sounded much better to ME.

[Gary1953]

I'm in the camp that guitars open up with play and time.

I've had new shoes that are more comfortable and fit me better after break in. I have had new blue jeans that are broken in and old that feel wonderful. I have had new speakers in my guitar amps that sounded better after many hours of play. I have solid body electric guitars that sound and play better after I've played them and warmed them up after a half hour.

Recently, I picked up a 1974 Guild F50 that sounds amazing. It has been played a lot over the years by some previous owner. But I have no idea how it sounded new.

Unfortunately, there is not a scientific tool that one can measure break in with. But observing break in on a personal level is still empirical evidence, validating it.

/2 centavos

[rokdog49]

Originally Posted by David MacNeill

Song, ya had me at NASA.

I was hesitant to offer my hunches about temperature but your equations seem to be saying what I’m feeling: a cold guitar doesn’t want to vibrate as much as a warm guitar.

To me, this is why a period of three to four minutes of some good hard strumming seems to effect a guitar before playing it.
You are "warming" the top by way of vibrating it.
Same principle as that do-hickey people pay money for to "open up" their guitars. For those who don't understand the word "do-hickey", it's also referred to as a "thingamajig."

[merlin666]

So whatever this "opening up" things means it seems for many this is a good thing. However, in my limited experience I have a guitar that I bought in the 70s because I liked its crisp, zingy, and punchy tone. Now 40 years later the **** thing sounds all warm and is full of overtones that want to carry on and on. It's also possible that my playing style changed a bit (I certainly even forgot what kind of songs I was playing then) and my ears lost the ability to hear those high frequencies anymore...

[devellis]

There is no convincing scientific evidence either to confirm or refute the idea that guitars "open up." Nor is there a precise definition of what it means for a guitar to "open up." This is all within the realm of subjective judgments.

While I like objectivity in its place and spent much of my career working on issues related to measurement, I'm fine with subjectivity in certain realms, and aesthetics is one of the most obvious. I don't think we need external proof to argue that things change over time. The real issue is how and how much they change. Those "how" and "how much" questions also depend on the listener. Some people will notice different changes and ones of different magnitudes, as compared to other people. So, we know that changes of some sort are happening (entropy and all that) but we can't really describe them in precise detail. Does this mean we're just fooling ourselves into thinking something is happening that isn't? Well, sometimes yes and sometimes no.

Aesthetics -- like how one interprets an instrument's sound -- are subjective. We can try to identify objective correlates of subjective judgments (a worthwhile enterprise) but until we have a set of objective indicators that accounts for all of the variation in subjective judgments, there's still a degree of subjectivity involved. And there's the issue of the transmitter vs. the receiver. For musical instruments, the relevant receiver is a human nervous system. You wouldn't build a radio transmitter without a thorough understanding of the receiver it was intended to broadcast to, now would you? Well, I'd argue that we need to understand certain things about the neurological "receiver" that captures the sounds our instruments make to understand the system fully. That isn't necessary for a very workable partial understanding, nor is a complete understanding of the physics of the "transmitter" (i.e., instrument) necessary for having a pretty good grasp of how instruments work. My point is, some aspects of understanding all of the things that influence how we perceive instruments aesthetically, and how those perceptions change over time, are currently beyond our reach. And they're likely to remain beyond our reach for a good bit longer. They're not incomprehensible in principle, but the work necessary to unravel all of the complexities fully isn't likely to happen any time soon.

So, any opinion, on either side of the "opening up" issue is just that, an opinion. My opinion is that instruments can change during the first few years of their existence. I present this not as something that I expect anyone else to agree with but merely as a report of my own subjective experiences. I haven't noticed that every instrument changes but I've perceived changes in some of them that I attribute (perhaps incorrectly) to the passage of time. I don't think every change in an instrument associated with time has to be an improvement or that every instrument has to change in ways that are readily noticeable. But some instruments do seem to have changed and others seem not to. My experience doesn't support buying an instrument whose tone I don't like on the presumption that it will change in ways that will make me like it better. But your experiences may differ from mine and who am I to tell you what to do.

I'd love it if we could fully understand this issue with precision. But we don't, and we may never. That's fine. I can still choose the instruments I like, the foods I like, the art I like, and the people I like without a comprehensive understanding of the internal or external foundations of my liking.

[1Charlie]

I own a '31 Gibson and a '34 Martin. They sound considerably different from one another, even though both are all-mahogany and small-bodied. And each sounds considerably different than their modern counterparts. Whether they sound "better" is an individual preference.

What is unknown (and unknowable) is how they sounded brand new. Is the difference I hear from modern replicas in the wood from which the vintage guitars were made, the hands of the maker, the environmental conditions in which they were made (unregulated), time, play wear, or all of the above.

I don't really care. I love to play them, and that is all that matters to me.

[justonwo]

This article provides some explanation in a way that may be satisfactory to the OP. It talks about the effect of aging on the material properties of the wood.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...96207416300541

[Alan Carruth]

I do have some reasonably solid objective evidence that the response of a guitar can change with playing, over both the short ('warming up') and long ('playing in') term. Naturally, with such a controversial subject, I'd like to get better data before I say it's 'settled', but I think it's likely. So far none of the models I've seen, such as the 'moisture' one, are entirely satisfactory, but, again, it's going to take some work to sort it out. First we have to show that it happens!

There is one reasonably well done study in the on-line 'Savart Journal' that claims that the Tone-Rite is not effective. Keeping in mind that the device works at a frequency that is far lower than any resonance on the guitar it may not be 'proof' that 'playing in' doesn't happen from other causes.

The speed of sound of a compression wave in the material of a guitar is not directly related to the way it produces sound. A high speed of sound indicates a high ratio of Young's modulus to density, but there's more to it than that. We're looking at bending waves here, so there is a possibility that things are more complicated. The shear moduli of the wood may be involved, for example, and we know that wood can do odd things when subjected to shearing forces over time which could affect the way the wood 'plays in'.

[Edgar Poe]

Even if you could some how capture every frequency response from a guitar, and record it, then in 40 years capture the same responses, too many factors would be involved that would make ANY testing almost worthless.
Factors that you most likely can not reproduce at 40 year separation in time are.

Strings.

Humidity.

Acoustics, where you are listening to the guitar, even paint on the wall will change the acoustics in a room.

Recording equipment would have greatly improved over time. Which may be the actual reason that it appears guitars open up. Hearing it on a cassette, then 40 years later on a Cd, would of course make it sound much better.

Time of day.

Players ability. Same artist would have improved or declined from age and experience.

Someone else would not be able to play EXACTLY like the original player 40 years earlier.

Weather. On and On and On.

I just don't see how ANYONE will ever be able to PROVE the claim of guitars opening up.

I will amend that last comment.
IF someone 40 years from now can bring a guitar back here in this time period. then the original player could play it, the original equipment could record it, and the original ears could hear it. Otherwise, ain't gonna happen period. Too many variables.

Ed

[muscmp]

you could have done a search of the forum and reported back in a week and a half after reading all of the threads.

play music!

[guitar george]

A properly humidified guitar will sound better than an under or over humidified guitar. Part of "opening up" may have something to do with the fact that, over time, guitar players become more aware of and monitor humidity levels.

[tippy5]

Not sure why some school, conservatory or company can not construct a 1-5 year test for sound evolution on a guitar.

Some of the test parameters can be:

Strum all 6 strings with a robot arm.
Same exact tension string, strings screened before installation.
Exact string height calibration.
Same mic placement.
Same test chamber/room humidity for the whole test.
Spectrum analyzers and measurement equipment.

Even electric guitars "go to sleep" from not being played. I hope my new Alvarez Baritone loosens up. And I hope the 2006, incoming, Goodall Cocobolo dreadnaught that I just bought is ready for prime time.

[JimmerO]

Originally Posted by cotten

I get to hang out with professional pianists and cellists sometimes. They may not use the same opening up lingo that guitarists use, but, believe me, they have their own terms that are roughly equal. I remember asking a World Class concert pianist what she thought of a brand new Bosendorfer Imperial 290, the one with 97 keys versus the usual 88. She smiled, and chose her words carefully. She praised its design, materials, and workmanship, then added that it was only a baby, that it would be even more exciting to play in 3-5 years.

Generally speaking, few professional cellists prefer new cellos. They like those whose tone has matured. They know exactly what they mean, even if non-musicians, especially engineers, do not.

Fine art is not easily measured by science.

cotten

Make that two of us. I am married to a professional Cellist who is also a fine pianist. Classical musicians talk about new instruments breaking in all the time.

And I too am an Engineer though sadly not retired yet.

It's pretty well accepted that wood will change over time. But for me the question is, will age universally make an instrument better? It may sound different but is it a good change or bad? Of course, that will always be subjective. That said, some instruments are made from the beginning with old wood so one would expect them to change less. But there are a lot of variables. I bet some sound change is from expansion contraction and how that affects a piece of wood that's glued in a fixed positon.

I know that Cellists will play on a brand new instrument for a few years and then expect to take it in for a major setup often including removing the top. It generally just takes a few years for an instrument to settle down and stop expanding and contracting as much as an older instrument.

Now if you really want to bang your Engineering head against a wall, go with a string player when they try out bows. It's just a piece of wood (Pernambuco now but I think they used to use Hickory) with horse hair tied between two ends so you'd expect there to be very little affect on the sound from one to another. Your ears will amaze you at the difference. I was a doubter but sure enough there can be quite a difference. So nothing really surprises me when it comes to sound quality and musical instruments and what people hear.

[Wade Hampton]

Originally Posted by Song

I don't doubt that a guitar could sound better as glues cure and provide a better coupling between the parts.
A guitar changes over time (breaks in).
But when I read posts about guitars sounding better as they are playing (30-60 minutes or whatever),
that is our 99 deg body and hands warming the guitar and strings imo.
Just wanted you to know I respect your opinion.

Likewise. I should also point out that I've never made any claims about instruments needing to "wake up" and sounding different after a short amount of playing time that's measurable in minutes. I do think that's a separate issue, and your explanation about body heat makes perfect sense there.


whm