Brand new guitars and their breaking in/tone change

[silverspear]

I've just took possession of a lovely Avalon, that's fresh from the factory.. I'm just amazed how the tone and response changes in the first few days of this beast!

The first hour I got it, it was pretty responsive, but there was not much on sustain and bass response. after 1 day, I'm seeing more of it... I've read often that luthiers all comment how much a guitar changes in the first hour, day, week of it's completion..

Any one has stories like this to share? where you took possession of a brand new guitar very early in it's life, and how the guitar changes over the days and weeks?

[Mbroady]

All the (wood) guitars I currently have came to me factory fresh. All of them sounded great to my ears. And yes, all of them seemed to show a rapid increase in “Mojo” similar to your experience. Particularly in the low end and harmonic content. I think the most marked change was with my voyage air. At first it was a bit thin sounding but within a weekend of jamming it developed a sweet low end.

All of them continue to impress and improve, IMO

I have also heard luthiers comment on this phenomenon
They say a guitar does not know it’s a guitar until it has the strings on it and has been played for a while.

[HeyMikey]

I’m finding the same is true for some older guitars that have not been played or rarely played for an extended time. It seems they need to be woken up, revived, whatever you want to call it to reach their full potential. It won’t make a bad sounding guitar suddenly sound good, but a week or two of constant playing could make some good guitars open up and sound better.

I will add that this is one reason, in addition to having it inspected, why it is good to have a trial/return period when buying a new guitar.

[boombox]

Congrats on the new Avalon - I found your post about it in the Custom Shop. Mine, when it came from Ireland, was supposedly "ex-demo", but clearly hadn't been played much. After an initial period while I was playing it all the time, I didn't notice the subtle changes. However, once it got into rotation with my other guitar, each time I came back to it, the differences in it were more marked. Give it 6 months and you will no doubt really see the difference in yours. I wish I'd recorded mine when I first got it and then 6 months/a year later to see the difference. The difference in sustain on mine was particularly noticeable, though mine was spruce over EIR.

[redir]

I build about 3-4 guitars a year and yes it's quite an experience to see how fast a guitar breaks in when it's 'virgin' strings are put on for the first time. I don't even begin to pass judgement on a guitar when it's first strung up. I'll play a few chords and hang it on the wall for a few hours then come back to it, make note of the changes then leave it till the next day. the next day it's a totally different guitar. It's pretty incredible really. But that process only goes real fast for a few days to a week then it slows to a crawl. Last year I started using a Tonerite to speed up the process and really break them in.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by silverspear

…Any one has stories like this to share? where you took possession of a brand new guitar very early in it's life, and how the guitar changes over the days and weeks?

HI ss

No shortage of 'stories' actually.

I know a luthier and I used to go to his shop to play-in guitars fresh off the bench for a few continuous hours a few years back. They showed pretty amazing changes with a couple hours playing fresh-off-the-bench. Brought a friend with me once on one of those excursions and he was pretty blown-away at the changes.

Any he was shipping overseas he wanted more stabilized in the tone department, and those were the ones we played in. It didn't change from from horrible-tone (which they did NOT have) to stellar-tone, but it did knock off harshness…what I thought of as a raw-edge…

He (the luthier) used to say he heard changes at 3 hours, 3 days, 3 weeks, three months, and three years. I'd extend that another iteration to encompass at least 10 years.

I've had some guitars which 'matured' at around 10 years, and one which was still improving at 20…that particular one started out great and just kept getting better.

Some people theorize Cedar matures quicker than Spruce or Mahogany but that has not been my experience at all. While I agree that Quality Western Red Cedar initially sounds warmer than Spruce, two guitars I own with that top continued to age quite well past the decade mark.

I'm genuinely interested in what differences the Tone-Rite type devices make, or torrification etc.

I look forward to people's 'stories' in response to your query. Hope you enjoyed mine…

[silverspear]

Originally Posted by ljguitar

HI ss

No shortage of 'stories' actually.

I know a luthier and I used to go to his shop to play-in guitars fresh off the bench for a few continuous hours a few years back. They showed pretty amazing changes with a couple hours playing fresh-off-the-bench. Brought a friend with me once on one of those excursions and he was pretty blown-away at the changes.

Any he was shipping overseas he wanted more stabilized in the tone department, and those were the ones we played in. It didn't change from from horrible-tone (which they did NOT have) to stellar-tone, but it did knock off harshness…what I thought of as a raw-edge…

He (the luthier) used to say he heard changes at 3 hours, 3 days, 3 weeks, three months, and three years. I'd extend that another iteration to encompass at least 10 years.

I've had some guitars which 'matured' at around 10 years, and one which was still improving at 20…that particular one started out great and just kept getting better.

Some people theorize Cedar matures quicker than Spruce or Mahogany but that has not been my experience at all. While I agree that Quality Western Red Cedar initially sounds warmer than Spruce, two guitars I own with that top continued to age quite well past the decade mark.

I'm genuinely interested in what differences the Tone-Rite type devices make, or torrification etc.

I look forward to people's 'stories' in response to your query. Hope you enjoyed mine…

wonderful story! thanks so much for sharing!

[Joel Teel]

Originally Posted by redir

I build about 3-4 guitars a year and yes it's quite an experience to see how fast a guitar breaks in when it's 'virgin' strings are put on for the first time. I don't even begin to pass judgement on a guitar when it's first strung up.

^^^THIS^^^

Building guitars is a marriage between "Art" and "Science"...if you're careful, and pay attention to what you put into this union, it's bound to yield good results...but the "wildcard" in the overall equation, is the element of "Alchemy"

You can carefully, and methodically, control the first two elements, but the third is a form of magic...and is always exciting to see (hear) unfold before your eyes (ears)

Joel

[Rodger Knox]

Originally Posted by redir

I build about 3-4 guitars a year and yes it's quite an experience to see how fast a guitar breaks in when it's 'virgin' strings are put on for the first time. I don't even begin to pass judgement on a guitar when it's first strung up. I'll play a few chords and hang it on the wall for a few hours then come back to it, make note of the changes then leave it till the next day. the next day it's a totally different guitar. It's pretty incredible really. But that process only goes real fast for a few days to a week then it slows to a crawl. Last year I started using a Tonerite to speed up the process and really break them in.

I don't build quite that many, but otherwise pretty close to the same, except for the Tonerite.

[Marcus Wong]

I personally can't stand the sound of new guitars. Being the owner of a guitar dealership where I am constantly presented with freshly built guitars, I just wish there was a way to have guitars played in faster than a tone-rite. The guitars usually start sounding more like themselves after a few visits from friends and customers

[silverspear]

it's amazing for my first experience with a factory fresh guitar.. after 3 days, I'm seeing more low end coming out, that I didn't hear on the first day... it's amazing..I just had to say that!

[jjrpilot]

I agree 💯! All of my guitars past and present, save one, were brand new. The tone does change rapidly at first then it sort of levels out for awhile before you hear more changes etc.

Also someone mentioned guitars that need to wake up after not having been played for awhile and I can confirm that as well at least in my experience.

Bob Taylor says that a guitar will also face another big change tonally at 10 years.

[BillRomansky]

My most recent is a Loar LH-250 I got a month ago, and it sounds better every time I pick it up. I chose this model as the cheapest all-solid wood model that had “the sound”, and it just gets better and better.

[jseth]

(I realized that I hadn't mentioned that my Goodall is Mastergrade redwood over mahogany...)

I felt quite privileged when James Goodall called me on the phone to ask if I wanted to be the first to actually put strings on my new Goodall Grand Concert... he and Luke had finished it earlier than anticipated, so I toddled on down to the shop in Fort Bragg and put strings on it!

While I played it a bit in their front room/showroom, I was more overwhelmed by the whole affair than I was evaluating what the guitar sounded like...

When I got home, I took my new Goodall into my little "listening room", a perfect environment in which to play the acoustic guitar, and my favorite room in the house for sound - basically an all-tile and glass room with no parallel surfaces, lots of reflections for a nice delay/reverb.

After about 10 minutes of playing, I remember thinking to myself that I had just made a HUGELY expensive mistake! My Goodall sounded nothing like all the other fine examples of James' work I had played previously...

I put the guitar down and made dinner, came back to playing about an hour later... and amazingly, the guitar's tone and volume had shifted! Still not "quite right", but much better than just an hour before...

That little guitar kept changing for the next month in very large increments... and continued to change for the first 8 months to a year... an astounding phenomenon, and one that I had not experienced with my first hand-build 32 years earlier, my Mark Angus F-40 (1979).

When I said something to James, he responded that he figured I knew that the guitar wasn't going to sound "right" for the first while, or else he would've warned me about what was coming...

I suppose that, with a factory built instrument, one never knows exactly how long the guitar has been "off the bench" and strung... i have spoken with several other luthiers who told me they NEVER let a guitar leave their shops until it's been around for a month or so...

One other builder said, "It takes a new guitar a good bit of time to figure out that it's not just pieces of different trees anymore..."

[justonwo]

Originally Posted by silverspear

I've just took possession of a lovely Avalon, that's fresh from the factory.. I'm just amazed how the tone and response changes in the first few days of this beast!

The first hour I got it, it was pretty responsive, but there was not much on sustain and bass response. after 1 day, I'm seeing more of it... I've read often that luthiers all comment how much a guitar changes in the first hour, day, week of it's completion..

Any one has stories like this to share? where you took possession of a brand new guitar very early in it's life, and how the guitar changes over the days and weeks?

Yes, I’ve owned a number of brand new luthier builds and have broken in a dozen or so for friends or luthiers at shows. They change dramatically in the first several hours of playing. I usually get good stability and great sound after about 20 or 30 hours of playing. New guitars usually feel stiff and a bit harsh for the first few hours.

Circa OM - This guitar started out fine but sounded stiff/brash. That went away after a few weeks of playing. It is now super sweet and not the slightest bit stiff.

Buendia Tree OM - Leo made this guitar a couple of years ago and I was the first to play it after stringing it up. We both sat there and listened as it completely changed character in 30 minutes. Everything about that guitar changed as we sat there. We were both unimpressed at first. At the end of that half hour, we were both gushing.

Baraniks of many shapes and sizes - I usually help Mike sell guitars at his west coast shows. Like any good luthier he builds them at the last minute and strings them up with hours to spare. I break them in. I’ve done a dozen guitars of his. They all change a lot. They go from stiff to complex, as per usual. Even an hour of playing makes a difference.

New Era Euphonon - A friend lent me his brand new Euphonon for a few weeks. Stiff at first. Amazing after 2 or 3 weeks of playing.

So yeah, playing in a new guitar is important. They can change a lot.