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A friend told me to put my new ES-175 type archtop up against my stereo speaker, and let the gutar absorb the bass vibrations to help loosen up, and break in the guitar.
C.F. Martin guitar's old advertisments say their guitar will never sound worse than the first day its played.
Stienway piano's are placed in a soundproof room and played by machine for a while before they are sold.
My old Carlo Robelli Eipihone Emperor type restoration sounds better and louder than this new, bigger, guitar.
Is there a way to break in a new guitar, or does it just happen over time?
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08-01-2010 09:48 PM
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Musical OEM (original equipment manufacturers) are not noted for truth-in-advertising. After-market advertising is even further down the list, ranking just below ambulance chasing and weight loss commercials in my opinion (e.g. equal to Harmony Central "reviews"). These people take advantage of the fact that musicians generally are not physics/engineering oriented - not ALL of course, there are many savvy guys on this forum, for example.
Use a little common sense ... the finest guitars and amplifiers, the ones that are iconic in performance, didn't require any voodoo stuff, right? JBL speakers didn't need to be "broken in" nor did those guitars produced in the "golden era". Times change, of course, but come on, guys, doesn't this seem like one of those cable-channel "electric belts" that fat women think can make them lose weight without dieting or exercising?
This is one of my pet peeves and a frequently-stated reason as to why I am a member of some of these forums - to toss a pitcher of cold water on over-heated, over-rated products with no credibility. Most of this stuff is just BS, plain and simple - "Monster Cables" and their like. That type of advertising can be found focussed at every product that a guitarist uses, from plectrum to strings to tailpiece to cables to tuners to bridges to ... and mostly aimed at a younger audience (no offense, youngsters) that hope to take every possible advantage in order to improve their performance.
No problem with that at all - but good equipment is usually a good motivation for good performance. A quality product needs little more to distinguish it from cheap stuff than a discriminating taste and some common sense. If it seems to good to be true then it is too good to be true.
Cheers
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Wooden instruments are susceptive to vibrations (and to many other things too by the way).
My classical Contreras tends to loose some liveliness if it sits too long in it's case. Playing it for half an hour brings it back alive. Actually, only with this solid wood handmade instrument I notice this phenomenon (or at least I think I do...). With a laminated instrument like an ES175 I imagine this to be less evident, but it might be there, who knows.
Just playing it should do the trick, I would stay far away from any gizmos they try to sell you. A good old battering of the strings with some nice flamenco golpes can't be replaced by some device with batteries imho.
Placing it in front of your speakers: yeah, why not: those create vibrations somewhat similar to when you play it I guess. But I doubt if the effect will be greater then other factors as humidity, temperature, your mood for the day, etc.
It might be one of the factors why older well-played instruments sound better. The most logical explanation for that I have come across is that the rasin in wood slowly dries out and then cracks/break thus forming miniscule patterns that might influence the way the wood vibrates. Who knows?
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Yes, that is the accepted reason. There's no need to "exercise" the top of a guitar. If that was truly necessary, every wooden instrument from piano to clarinet, cello to piccolo, would require propping in front of a speaker cabinet for a few years.
Originally Posted by Little Jay
I've frequently noticed that this type of "snake oil" is always directed at guitarists - never any other musicians. It gives us a reputation of being weak on analytical ability ! Obviously the comment is not meant to apply to members of THIS forum
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From Canadian guitar makers, Seagull (bold type is mine)
Here is another discussion on aging machinesAging
How about this? You buy a new TV and it's great but it keeps getting better the more you watch it! Okay, that's not likely to happen with your TV but it will happen with your solid top guitar. A solid top vibrates much more freely than a laminated (plywood) top. This results in richer tone, better dynamic range and better balance of tone. Not only does a solid top sound better initially, over time the vibrations from playing the guitar result in the top vibrating more and more freely. This phenomenon is called 'aging' which means that the more the guitar is played, the better the guitar will sound. It is important to remember in order for a guitar to age it must be played. A guitar left in its case for 5 years will get older, but it will not 'age'.
Acoustic Guitar Central: Aging a guitar with vibrations
And a great article that discusses natural aging of guitars and how and why things change
Acoustic Guitar: Why Do Guitars Sound Better as They Age?
Personally, I think that placing the guitar in front of a speaker is just not going to cut it. The guitar will not be getting the vibrations that it was designed for,at the amplitude it was designed for nor in the way it was designed for (by striking the strings, fretted at different places along the fretboard).
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Doesn't the 175 have a laminated top? So you are "breaking in" plywood?
I have found, over the years, that a guitar -- even a solid-body electric -- sounds much better after a few playing sessions than when it first comes out of its case. The perception of "breaking in" is actually the process of learning how to play a particular guitar to get its optimal sound. Often, we make tiny adjustments in our playing to compensate for the natural tone of a guitar: the player's not "breaking in" the guitar, the guitar is "breaking in" the player!
People who ought to know better have sworn to me that headphones, speakers, and -- of course -- guitars require "breaking in" for them to reach their potential. In the case of solid-spruce top guitars, this may even be true. But the concept of "breaking in" thermal adhesives and petroleum-based materials eludes me.
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Great article, Bill, and from one of my favorite (and most knowledgeable) people too - I have three guitars acquired from Gryphon Strings.
Cheers,
Randy
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To break it a sold tone wood archtop means to play the shit out of it, i.e., do 20-30 minutes of heavy, loud chording stepwise on each fret, continuously. (e.g., 5-6 string dom chords,starting open, moving up one fret, down to 12, back to 1, and so on)'
It's not a musical exercise, but rather a necessary step to get the top to really sing and come alive.
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Why not just play it? To me it's a most joyful experience to notice it to open up after days, weeks of playing. All those breaking in methods only make sense to me if a new guitar had to be used for a professional recording.
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I definitely buy into the "opening up" concept, and have talked to top level luthiers who talk about that process. I have experienced it with a cocobolo acoustic I owned a few years ago. Wonderful guitar, but cocobolo is very dense, and it took a while to open up. I did put it in front of speakers for a while, though I do not know if it was that, or a combination of time/playing that did the trick.
Like lpdeluxe though, I am pretty skeptical about an all plywood guitar "opening up". Maybe. YMMV
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Well, it is true that certain woods or combinations of woods (plywood) do age and some will age better than others. This has to do with grain and the constant change of internal humidity.
Use your brain for just a second and consider what wood is made of: plant fiber. Little strands of basically dead tree cells that just happen to have a fairly high density compared to other members of the plant world. There are lots of pores both microscopic and visual to the naked eye throughout that can absorb water and humidity like a sponge does (only on a much smaller level).
Now that you have it in your head, ask yourself: If I vibrate this at any frequency for a long enough time what will happen? Is it possible that all of the fibers will line up and suddenly vibrate "correctly"? Seriously... Think.
Better sounding old instruments actually has more to do with humidity and temperature than with vibrations. True, all matter (we're talking physics here) does have a resonate frequency and all atoms vibrate. But, as any wooden item ages (be it a guitar or a antique highboy dresser) the wood is going to settle. A good builder/lutheir is going to be able to make a judgment on each specific piece of wood on how it is going to expand and contract with varying humidity over time. As it does, it will eventually settle into a regular shape that it will more likely keep.
This aging process is why older instruments (consider old violins) tend to sound "better" than their younger counter parts. The master than built the instrument judged the forces within the wood correctly and now the instrument is in its perfect shape as the master intended. There is also quite a bit of care in ownership that must take into account on this too.
Proper preservation of original finish and keeping it away from extremely dry or extremely wet humidities will help that shape develop over the course of decades. If it happens over the course of, say a month, then forces within the instrument will not adjust evenly and the instrument will actually sound worse.
Honestly, holding a guitar up to a speaker or playing really hard at first will probably do more damage than good. Glue joints can be extremely sensitive (more than the wood) to vibrations. That isn't to say that regular playing or even loud playing will hurt the guitar. But excessive "breaking in" may just "break" the guitar.
~DB
P.S.: The ToneRite thing sounds like the metal adhesive disks people were/are selling for you to adhere to the back of a CD to make the laser pickup the sound better. Total BS, but they sell them for as much as $100 per "sticker". People can be sold anything with enough "experts" giving advice.Last edited by lindydanny; 08-02-2010 at 12:09 PM.
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To be honest, I never really understood that "breaking in" thing that I hear about lately, especially when buying a new guitar which didn't have a previous owner. My common sense says that when you go to a guitar shop to buy a new instrument you don't buy a guitar which should sound great in the future after "breaking in", but you pay for the sound and feel that you experience in the moment before you decide to give away your money. After awhile, it does breaks in, but mostly because the player grows with it, and its more a kind of psychological thing in my opinion.
I'm thinking, maybe our ears and hands are the ones that break in after all. It's true that a new instrument sounds a bit stiff and intimidating, but that's only until the first ding or scratch appears.
Though how the wood is seasoned matters a lot.
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Reminds me of the same discussion around how to break in a new car engine or a set of headphones, and how it all boils down to YMMV.
My aerospace engineering background gave me enough insight into the world of materials that this kind of discussion really pulls me in.
The resin movement theory is the one that really interests me. It happens with oak cupboard doors and UV exposure/heating; the resin moves outward toward the exposed side or something. It would be really interesting to put a piece of solid wood on a shaker table and somehow monitor the movement of the resin over time. I suspect heating the piece allows the resin to move around more readily too. Depending on the frequency, duration, and amplitude of the vibration set, may be pockets resin begin to form in the piece. The resin pockets would be higher density than the rest of the piece, acting like a naturally forming resonator block of sorts. Wood, being porous material, the resin would be in constant (yet very slow) motion within the piece. I bet somebody will even say that hanging the guitar on the wall all the times will drain the resin towards the tail piece and that it's good/bad for the tone.
EDIT: For future reference, it was oak cupboards instead of maple.Last edited by praesentire; 08-06-2010 at 06:55 PM.
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08-02-2010, 03:38 PM #15Archie Guest
If you really want to break in your new archtop properly, take it down to the crossroads at midnight.
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Sounds like a guitar yoga Originally Posted by praesentire
I still think that it does have something more with getting used to the sound of the instrument, or getting to know it better, recognizing its sound and timbre better and so on. And of course, with the hype...
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To work the wood on a new guitar, only play ballads for the first twenty hours then work your way up to bebop. If the guitar has a bridge pick-up, don't use it for the first 6 months or it will get confused and want to play fusion. Remember to rotate your strings every so often and never turn the tone knob to max treble for at least one year. With patience and care, over time the guitar will produce a nice mellow jazz tone.
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If I play my guitar every day, eventually it may make sounds resembling music. Maybe.
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I'm on the same boat! Originally Posted by Papadoc
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I can't tell if your serious or not. I really hope you're not... Originally Posted by Jazzaluk
~DB
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Jazzaluk wasn't too clear on one point: when he mentions "rotate your strings ever so often", don't confuse that with CHANGING your strings. You must actually ROTATE them. Move the first string to the second string position, second to third string position and so on until you get to the sixth string which is then rotated to the old first string position.
Don't forget to file out the nut slots as the strings are rotated. Maybe sprinkle a few drops of bat milk inside the body every other rotation. Forum members only: I have two-ounce containers on sale ($45.00 each) or super-size your order if you call within the next ten minutes, TWO two-ounce containers for $45.00 plus S & H. (If that seems overly expensive, YOU try milking the little rascals !)
This stuff is entertaining but seriously, ONLY guitarists seem to buy into it and it makes all of us that play the instrument seem .... overly credulous. (I prefer to keep my reputation as a cranky cynic intact )
Cheers,
Randy
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Nah....I'll just get that cannabis.....speaker
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Hey, I'll try that. Maybe the guitar will learn to sound like Johnny Smith without me having to actually play like him. Neat. Originally Posted by Jazzaluk
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Well, it is really only effective on carve tops. Laminents require a totally different approach. Originally Posted by lindydanny
I use a black sharpie pen to mark the top of the string so I can ensure a full 180 degree turn when the string is rotated.don't confuse that with CHANGING your strings. You must actually ROTATE them.
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One last point before I let this topic slip from my personal radar ... after all, we beat it to death a l-o-n-g time ago).
A luthier or a manufacturer says (informally) that a guitar will only sound better after time. Perhaps he is suggesting that, although you may not be stunned by the sound at the moment, just hang on to it for twenty or thirty years and you'll love it (and - coincidentally - he'll be retired).
There are advertisements and there are facts, there are measurements and there are opinions. I would like to see a manufacturer produce a solid guarantee that his instrument will sound better after aging or after "opening up" or whatever one chooses to call the process. Along with a definition of what constitutes "better".
Aging and "playing in" an instrument? A twenty year old novice guitarist buys a D-18 or a J-45 and hangs on to it for forty years. At that point, his hearing is so diminished that over half of the audio spectrum has been lost and - just maybe - his technical abilities have increased.
So does his guitar sound better? To whom and compared to what?
Cheers,
randyc
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