Not opening up, waking up. And guitars lie.

[Dek431]

On seeing the opening up thread for the xxxth time. I thought I'd bring up the waking up. You know your old guitar has been neglected and sounds a little um sleepy for 15 minutes. Any ideas why. Another topic is the lieing guitars. They are all capable, you play instore then take it home and find it dissapoints after your initial strum and impression. Maybe fools you over a few months then it hits you it ain't all that.

[Bridgepin]

I am very happy to say that I have never gone through that, I am a very picky SOB though

[Huckleberry]

Well I've definitely experienced the 'waking up', most noticeably on my Martin HD-28. I don't have any theories on what causes it, other than:

1. It was a new guitar, so perhaps the finish/joints hadn't quite finished curing yet and some slight stickiness was impeding vibration until it loosened up.

2. The guitar was just acclimatising to different humidity/temperature between the case and the room.


I've never experienced a lying guitar as such, but I do notice they sound very different in different acoustic spaces. My own living room is ok but not great; my parents' dining room has beautiful acoustics - I just love playing there!

[suky]

I had a Baby Taylor that i swear was a "Cybil". It had multiple personalities...i never knew what sound I was going to get out of it from one week to the next... I had to have the neck adjusted 3 times this past winter...and after new strings i hated it for at least a week.... When it was playing well though it had a wonderful sound...

[Aiello1218]

I say the different sounds are probably from humidity changes. Also remember when you buy a guitar in a store and then take it home and play it, you are in different rooms. The one in the store is supposed to sound good because of the acoustics in the room.

[maverick-tx]

My 514 seems kinda picky sometimes. It lied to me today and blamed the strings for sounding muted and thick even though the strings are only two weeks old...busted

[66strummer]

There is something about room acoustics in certain music stores. My house deadens the crap out of everything with small rooms and wall to wall carpeting. My guitars will almost always sound better played somewhere else!

[Glennwillow]

Maybe I am not paying enough attention, but I don't think I have ever experienced this "waking up" thing. There are days when a guitar just doesn't sound its best for some reason, and yet if I pick up another, it sounds fine. So it's not me, it's the guitar. Maybe humidity or strings or ??? But I don't ever remember hearing the guitar get better, at least for that particular day.

A guitar that lies? My house, particularly the living room, is really acoustically dead compared to a guitar store. So I purposely like to find livelier spaces in the house with more reflective surfaces. I also notice that the length of my fingernails makes a huge difference (the shorter, the better) and the age of the strings makes a big difference. But nobody (and no guitar) was deceiving me. I have been known to deceive myself at times, not on purpose of course. Perceptions can be transient, that's for certain...

Regards, Glenn

[catdaddy]

Originally Posted by Glennwillow

Maybe I am not paying enough attention, but I don't think I have ever experienced this "waking up" thing. There are days when a guitar just doesn't sound its best for some reason, and yet if I pick up another, it sounds fine...

Yeah, that has been my experience also. Adding to the mystery of the situation for me is the fact that (especially in the summer) my house is in a constantly climate controlled state. Central air set at 77 degrees Farenheit.
Yet on some days one of my guitars will just not have "it". So humidity and temperature would not be a factor. Strange phenomenon!!

[mikelhenry]

It could be that the guitar didn't "lie" in the store, but had help from its friends.

There is a phenomenon I call the "chorus effect" in a store where all the guitars on the wall are tuned. You strum a chord on a guitar and get this nice rich sound that you feel absorbed with, then take it home and it is much flatter.

What has happened is the strings on the other guitars on the wall resonate with the one being played giving a much bigger feel to the guitar you played.

The solution is to isolate the guitar you are interested in a practice room and find out what its true voice is without assistance from all the friends on the wall.

[Brent Hutto]

My most recently acquired guitar doesn't "wake up" after 15 minutes but its sound does change in the little while (probably more like 20-25 minutes, usually) after I first pick it up. I'd say it gets warmer rather "open" or "awake" in that the trebles stay about the same but the low end gets louder and more resonant.

I'm guessing it's purely a temperature thing. It's a pretty lightly built guitar and after being in my lap with my arms around it for a while the temperature change probably works a lot like a humidity increase in that it can cause minute expansion in the soundboard. Or something like that. At any rate it is definitely brighter for the first few minutes then warmer in tone the rest of the day.

[goatdog]

I mentioned this "waking up" thing in another thread; it happens with all my instruments but moreso with the Martin.
I agree with Brent about the guitar warming up temperature wise from being held but I think it has something to do with vibrating as well.

[Bob1131]

I, too, have noticed that my guitars seem to wake up after a couple of minutes of playing. IMHO, the short "waking" period is likely due to string condition (oxidation/corrosion). At rest, the strings develop a monomolecular coating of oxidation residue that acts like a deadening coating. After playing them for a few minutes, that residue coating gets broken up allowing the strings to vibrate more freely with increased over tones. If my theory is correct, then "wakening" will be much less with polymer coated strings and more noticeable with uncoated strings. I also think that the player's body chemistry is a factor, in that, acidic sweat left on the strings will cause more string corrosion while the guitar is at rest, which in turn will take longer to break up and a longer wake-up time. Of course, YMMV.

[ewalling]

I'm not aware of the significant fluctuations in sound being described here. Apart from the gradual "edge" disappearing as strings get older, my guitars always sound good to me. and even when the strings could use a change, I find that their quality still makes them good to hear.

[billv]

Maybe it is the player that wakes up after a few minutes!

Seriously, though, our hearing and sense of touch fluctuate from day to day, at least I know mine do...