Does loaning your guitar to another player change the tone?

[Dotneck]

Originally Posted by Dan_A

The guy suggests that how one plays a violin actually changes the tone of the instrument, and that the change in tone lasts. So if you let someone else play your instrument it will (may?) sound different after you get it back.

Depends on how long you let him play it. If he plays it for a couple years it may come back different.

[bufflehead]

This should be a simple theory to test.

If someone with a Collings OM2H would kindly loan me their guitar for a couple years, I'd be happy to play it for you. Please include a $100 bill in the case to cover return shipping and handling. Once the guitar is returned in June of 2022, you can resurrect this thread and report to everyone whether the tone changed during the time the guitar spent with me.

I promise not to use a ToneRite on the OM2H, and to only play it with BlueChip picks. No worries.

[LifesShort]

This idea is crazy, but even if it did change the tone, wouldn't it change back when you play again?

[reeve21]

It probably depends on the Air Resonance Frequency of the guitar....you can look it up on the Acoustic Guitar Forum!

[jbpoolsfla]

Depends on where your sitting

[Silly Moustache]

Originally Posted by Mandobart

Yes of course. This opens up new career opportunities for "professional guitar improvers." These elite few with the magic "makes-guitars-sound-better" gene will be hired to lay hands on guitars, thereby forever improving their sound. They will be in demand for their services at music stores, luthier shops and by professional players.

There will be a darker offshoot of this, where those with the alternate "makes-guitars-sound-like-crap" gene will be discovered and banned from all music stores and forced to disclose their deffective gene to protect unsuspecting instrument owners.

Strangely enough Mandobart, I had a good friend and luthier, who would always call me when he'd finished a guitar and ask me to come take it home and "play it in".

I really wasn't that good a guitarist back then but he was convinced that I could improve that initial "brittle" tone of a brand new guitar, probably by playing it a little too hard for 2-3 weeks before he told the client that it was ready for collection. I guess it was also better that if something came loose/unglued or whatever while it was with me that was better than once the client had it.

I also know two or three people who can make any instrument sound better than most.

[rllink]

Originally Posted by Mandobart

Yes of course. This opens up new career opportunities for "professional guitar improvers." These elite few with the magic "makes-guitars-sound-better" gene will be hired to lay hands on guitars, thereby forever improving their sound. They will be in demand for their services at music stores, luthier shops and by professional players.

There will be a darker offshoot of this, where those with the alternate "makes-guitars-sound-like-crap" gene will be discovered and banned from all music stores and forced to disclose their deffective gene to protect unsuspecting instrument owners.

I mean, people will go through any kind of machinations to magically make them better players, I think people would actually jump on it.

[heavy_picker]

I once loaned my guitar to a guy in a Coffee house and he stole it. That changed the tone between us. I found the trailer he was living in and got my guitar back.

[wisedennis]

Dana bourgeois actually wrote similar thing in acoustic magazine years ago.

[Deliberate1]

Originally Posted by heavy_picker

I once loaned my guitar to a guy in a Coffee house and he stole it. That changed the tone between us. I found the trailer he was living in and got my guitar back.

Friend, I think you need to finish that song.
David

[dwasifar]

I'm guessing this is about 25% reality and 75% subjective confirmation bias.

On the guitar side, we have things like the ToneRite (which I'm surprised to be first to mention in this thread). It works on basically the same principle as what Mr. Violin Guy was describing in the video; certain vibrations make the instrument open up in certain ways. If you don't use the ToneRite or play the instrument for a while, it "goes back to sleep." You can even read the ToneRite manual for instructions on what vibration settings give what effect.

There is some evidence that the ToneRite works, but I don't think its effect is as pronounced as we hear it to be; some of the effect is real, and the rest can be explained by psychology. I suspect the situation is the same for the violinist.

It would be interesting to do a blind test.

[Dru Edwards]

Hi Dan, Welcome to the AGF! Like others have mentioned, you don't have to worry about another player changing the tone of your guitar.

One thing that may temporarily change the tone of your guitar when loaned to a friend is how long the guitar has been exposed to a different humidity level than what was in your home. If you maintain a 40% humidity then lend it to your friend for two weeks who keeps it at 60%, you'll probably notice a difference until it acclimates again.

[tbeltrans]

Martin Taylor, would like to try my guitar?

Tony

[Wade Hampton]

Originally Posted by heavy_picker

I once loaned my guitar to a guy in a Coffee house and he stole it. That changed the tone between us. I found the trailer he was living in and got my guitar back.

Nice guy! I’m glad you could track down the sleazeball and get your guitar back.

What was his pitch that convinced you to loan it to him in the first place? Something along the lines of:

“Hey, man, I’ve got a gig tomorrow night and don’t have an instrument, but if you loan me yours I’ll get it back to you the next day?”

Back during college I had a female friend named Jeanne that I sang with. She was very pretty and had a nice voice, but she liked using her charms to acquire things. She wasn’t offering sex in exchange, don’t get that idea, but she’d get adorable as could be, smile charmingly, then flat out ask for whatever she wanted.

And it worked on a lot of guys who thought that maybe this would give them a chance with this very pretty girl.

She and I weren’t dating, we just played music together.

Anyway, over Christmas break one year my family and I went to visit my godmother, Aunt Phyllis and her husband Dick. She had specifically told my mother that she wanted me to bring my mountain dulcimer with me - her daughter Prudence had dabbled with one for a while so they were familiar with it.

So we went to their house and after dinner I played for them. I’d actually gotten fairly good at it by that point, and she was impressed with my musicianship, not just because she was trying to encourage her godson. They were a very musical family.

So as we were leaving, literally on the front stoop and heading to our car when she complimented me on my playing. “Thank you,” I told her, “now I’m trying to learn mandolin, too.” (I had a real junker, which was all I could afford at the time.)

Aunt Phyllis turned around to her husband and said: “Dick, where’s that old mandolin of mine?” Dick said “I think it’s in the hall closet,” and went to check.

He came back carrying an old bottom-dropper case, then took out a gorgeous old mandolin. It wasn’t a Gibson or anything fancy, but it was clearly old and well made. “That’s a beautiful mandolin,” I said.

“Would you like it?” she asked.

For once in my life I was speechless. I finally managed to stutter that, yes, I would, and once I regained the power of speech I thanked her profusely.

It turned out to be an old Larson Brothers mandolin. Like all of their instruments their name wasn’t in it anywhere, but years later when I contacted Mr. Hartmann, a nephew of theirs who has written the most authoritative book on them and their instruments, he confirmed it.

Okay, back to my charming singing partner Jeanne. When I went back to college I called her and said: “Hey, you need to check out this cool old mandolin my godmother gave me!”

Mandolin was the one instrument she could play a bit, so she came right over, and was just delighted with it. After playing a few tunes together, me on dulcimer and her on mandolin, she actually hugged the mandolin and said:

“Oh, this is SO beautiful.....will you GIVE it to me?”

“No.”

“Please? Pretty please?”

And of course she was smiling, with her dimples and her ruddy cheeks aglow, her big blue eyes twinkling.

She really was very pretty, with the coloring you sometimes see in people of Welsh descent: black hair, blue eyes, ruddy cheeks, adorable dimples.

“Please, Wade, please please please PLEASE?”

“No, and don’t ask me again. It was a gift from my godmother, and I’ll never give it away or sell it.”

And I haven’t. Neither Jeanne or anyone else has been able to pry it away from me. A few others have offered to buy it, but no one else has weaponized their dimples at me in a charm offensive the way that Jeanne did.

She wasn’t playing the femme fatale, she was going for the “adorable girl next door” approach.

Still didn’t work....

Even though she had tried to weasel my mandolin away from me, she was smart enough to never try that again. We continued to play and sing together in a casual way, and after college we both moved to Chicago. By that point I was making a living gigging out in Irish bars. Then, after I won first place at Winfield I was offered a recording contract, and I had Jeanne in the studio to sing harmony with me on a couple of songs.

So I still like her a lot, but I’m not giving her any mandolins!


Wade Hampton Miller

[Gordon Currie]

Originally Posted by rllink

I mean, people will go through any kind of machinations to magically make them better players, I think people would actually jump on it.

Particularly if the machination doesn't involve lots of time and effort.