I'm glad I waited

[MBee]

I've got a beautiful little Webber L00 I bought new about 2-1/2 years ago. It is spruce (Engelmann I think), and beautiful figured mahogany. I've always liked playing it because of the neck shape and body size, and I never get tired of looking at it. I would say I play it almost every day, at least 30 minutes. It has that clear balanced mahogany tone, but it's always been a little on the thin and quiet side. I put an ARC armrest on it a few months ago to try to boost the volume, but it didn't seem to make a whole lot of difference. So I've wondered occasionally if I should trade it for something with a little more punch.

Well about a month or two ago, I noticed that I began to unconsciously gravitate to this guitar more and more. I realized a few days ago that it has begun to open up amazingly. It still has that balanced, linear mahogany sound, but I would now also describe it as thick, loud, and meaty. Last night I put in DADGAD and it just roared. The harder I dug in with fingers or pick, the better it seemed to like it.

Needless to say, this guitar is staying. It's now got a few little dents and scratches, and weirdly, these don't bother me at all. It's my little sidekick. The moral of the story: I'm glad I waited.

Anyone else have this kind of shift in how they feel about one of their guitars?

[jseth]

Oh yes! It's very common, in my experience, for acoustic guitars to change tone and volume dramatically, over time... it has both happened to one of my guitars and it's happened, noticeably, to friends' instruments as well.

The time frame is never a proscribed function; I've seen it take hundreds of hours of play over a 6-8 months period, but I've also heard it happen in both shorter and longer periods.

There just is no standard period of time/play that is a litmus for this... personally, I think it's the amount of energy and love that's poured into an instrument that accomplishes the shift, but I've always tended towards the "air-y fairy"!

[ricko]

I bought a new D18 in 2019 and I loved the way it sounded right out of the gate. Over the last two months, though, I've noticed that it has really blossomed into something even more special. Louder, deeper, warmer--just beautiful. I'm glad to hear that yours has responded similarly.

[jazzereh]

This is exactly the reason I wonder about folks selling guitars that they've only had for months. OK if the size is an issue but many sellers seem to say they are selling because some other guitar just sounds better.

I think some players sell far too early.

[Br1ck]

This is a main reason I advocate towards two things. The first is being ultra selective, the second is living with a guitar for a long time, maybe a year.

I realized this last summer how my 70 Guild D 35 has grown on me during the last eight years. The guitar probably did not change much, just some after the bridge and neck work settled in. But over that time, my playing improved to where the D 35's strengths lie, balance and clarity. That and a perfect for me neck.

My home built adi top mandolin took three years of hard playing to mature, so someone rejecting an adi top guitar in six months makes no sense to me. My last thoughts on the matter is you have to play to what a guitar want to do. You just can't play the same way on a 00 as a dread. It is a learning process and a large part of what is exciting to me about a new instrument.

Now if your hand cramps up after ten minutes or half an hour, a guitar will never work. But buying a guitar without playing it for two hours is something I don't do. In fact if I can put a guitar down in half an hour, it's rule number one for rejection. It is not always a quality tone that does it for me. Last time out I was rather enthralled by a 62 Gibson L 0. It was in the same room as a BRZ D 28, and several LG2s. And my department store birch archtop does the poor depression farmer thing better than any other guitar I own.

[b1j]

My tiny 0-18 never ceases to reward me for picking it up. How does that pretty little thing boom out like that under a moderate strum, and then fold back into a sweet, graceful bloom under my fingertips? And I thought you needed a dread for the that kind of sustain. Humble spruce and mahogany, that’s all it is.

I think I like the 0 even more now than I did before the dreads (which I love!) came along. It’s a tenor to their baritones.

[zombywoof]

Yup. Decades ago, I bought a 1956 Epiphone FT79. I only snagged it because I got it so cheap I figured after putting a bit of work into it I could easily flip it for more than double what I had in it or use it for trade bait. Sat on it for a year or so and then had to work done and offered it up in trade. Got some nice offers but I found I was just not willing to part with it. A few years later I tried again with the same result. I guess over the years that guitar and I had just gotten used to each other. If I learned anything along the way, it was not to play what you are planning to say goodbye to.

[Athens]

Webber’s are GREAT guitars.

I had a 000-12 that I sold back to the fella I bought it from. If I had the chance I’d buy it back in a heartbeat.