Quote:
Originally Posted by guitaradam
What has your experience been with new, custom construction, in terms of the time needed to let a guitar settle in, acclimate, and become the voice it ultimately becomes? And can builders do anything to help that along? Do you have to wait for a few years to really hear the sound "open up"? What are your thoughts?
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I’ve commissioned guitars from John Slobod, Leonardo Buendia, Michael Bashkin and Tom Doerr, and mandolins from John Monteleone, Stephen Holst, Stefan Sobell and Northfield. I also owned Tyler’s first guitar under his own name, ser. # 1701 (01 built in 2017).
A guitar’s sound will change pretty dramatically in the days after it is first strung up, as the woods and joints adjust to the tension and being vibrated through play, so builders will usually keep the guitar around for a while, playing it occasionally during this ‘settling in’ period, before they ship the guitar out to the client. I don’t think this is something most clients usually witness, but I got to do so at last year’s Artisan Guitar Show. I played a Tom Doerr guitar that I believe he said he had strung up the day before. Over the three days of the show I and many others played it numerous times and on the last day, I found its voice had noticeably developed.
With my commissions, I’ve found that all the qualities of a great guitar’s voice are present from the very beginning, – just in different proportions or stages of refinement, but a great guitar will be great from the get-go. As it matures through playing, the constraints on its potential slowly fade away and its true qualities blossom without confinement. When it has a young voice, like most youngsters, it will need a guiding hand to develop that potential, so play it, play it, play it.
Some think this process can be accelerated artificially by placing the guitar in front of a speaker and playing recorded music through it for an extended period to vibrate the strings, or by using a ToneRite, which works in basically the same way to achieve the same purpose. A friend gifted me a ToneRite a few years back and I’ve used it now on half a dozen instruments. When I first get an instrument, I keep the ToneRite on for the first full month, because hey, it couldn’t hurt, right? I don’t want to divert this thread into a discussion of the pros & cons of the ToneRite, because there are already plenty of those; I’ll simply say that after extensive use on a variety of guitars and mandolins, I haven’t noticed much acceleration in the maturation of an instrument’s voice by using one. YMMV.
I write extensive reviews of my instruments which you can find at
my website (or click on the links to specific instruments in my signature below), and I will usually spend months, or even a year or more with a new instrument, observing its development, until I feel like its potential is emerging and I have a real handle on its true voice before I feel confident in writing any evaluation. So yes, I think it takes a while and I don’t think there are any shortcuts; just play the heck out of it.
One final thought about ‘opening up.’ I believe it’s real but I don’t think we can observe it. The time period is too long, too dependent on our questionable memories of its initial sound, and too colored by our affections for particular instruments to make any definitive evaluations. For those who like to geek out about such matters, see
this thread. I think my guitars do sound better over time, which is all that matters to me, but is the guitar actually better, or have I just learned through long use how to get better tone from it, or do I just like its sound better? Still an open question...