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my experience is that most changes due to the perceived break-in are largely psychosomatic. I think if you had time to let a guitar age for ~50 years, maybe you'd hear some type of change but more than likely you'd have to live to be 200 years old to notice anything.
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07-29-2025 04:20 PM
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I'm willing to accept that I only think I hear it. But I think I hear it. And I've had many brand new flat tops and carved archtops over the years which clearly makes me an expert.
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Well, that you think you hear it (which is, practically speaking, the same thing) is what matters: it affects how you interact with the instrument and how you play.
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I make sax mouthpieces for a living. I can tell you musicians believe a lot of things. These beliefs range from reasonable to the absurd.
There are sax players that actually belive that the brass changes from the vibration via playing. There is zero justification of course.
I can see wood changing some.
The biggest thing that changes is the musician.
After thousands of hours I'd venture to say that the player changes far more than the instrument.
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Why is there zero, documented, recorded proof of this phenomenon?
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Because it is impossible to do. Science cannot do everything nor compete with the human brain and ear. Dare i say the most complex object in the universe is the human brain. This is a know dilemma in science. We cannot put a figure or quantify the human brain like a laptop computer specs. The human ear hears and is at a level that is impossible to obtain in any machine. My ear and my experience is true if you don’t believe it or buy it, i don’t even care.
Originally Posted by jzucker
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The human brain is widely considered the most complex object in the known universe. It contains around 86 billion neurons, each connected to thousands of others, creating a network of incredible complexity according to Psychology Today. This intricate structure and its even more complex function, including consciousness, are subjects of on
I preached on this over 6-7 years ago at Christmas Mass. God came into the world as a human. Talk about a wild thing and he had 2 ears nothing can duplicate.
Last edited by deacon Mark; 07-31-2025 at 08:38 PM.
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Have you guys ever heard of a wolf tone? That's where the structure of the instrument refuses to resonate cleanly at that frequency. So the structure of the instrument can massively affect the sound. Playing the instrument and having sound resonate and conduct through it could absolutely affect its channels, how it passes the sound through, and how it amplifies and expresses it. Further, different parts of the guitar age and break in. The wood dries out, frets wear, the neck accustoms to its bow, saddles weather. Even pickups sound differently over time. Have you ever bought and used a vintage pickup. They sound incredibly aged. But it's just wire! Aging affects the tone of even electronic circuits.
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An interesting experiment is hearing flat tops torrefied and not torrefied and compare the difference. Wood dries and that make changes for sure, but difference are not that big indeed.
But...
I am the only suspecting that guitar dont open up... is just us that get used and learn how to play it?
There are guitar players saying that after a few minutes you play the guitar it warms up and plays better. Well, i suspect is US who gets warmed up.
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THe non torrefied sounds bigger in my opinion.
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It’s not that the guitar plays better. It’s that it may sound better and/or louder. It’s not a psycho-acoustic effect that I have had guitars come through that have sat for decades without being played and become tight and have a very small dynamic range with reduced volume. Given days or weeks of play some (but not all) of these instruments absolutely transform gradually back into incredibly dynamic acoustic instruments with a dramatic increase in potential volume output. The especially dramatic ones are exceptions, as most show subtle changes, and some instruments don’t seem to change at all. There is a spectrum of behavior. Just because one hasn’t experienced it, doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Keep in mind, I’ve handled far, far more acoustic archtops than the average player. Based on that experience, I wouldn’t expect most to have even had the opportunity to experience these sorts of changes, because again, most instruments change subtly, and/or very slowly, while others are static. Originally Posted by Gustavo Eiriz
As an aside, comparing two different instruments with different construction or using different materials is a totally different thing than experiencing the way an individual guitar may change as it is played. It’s not even really possible to compare two guitars made by the same builder using wood from the same billets of wood. Those two instruments can still behave differently over time.
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That’s good enough for me Originally Posted by Spook410
In the academic and business worlds, an expert is someone from out of town with his own slides. And a consultant is someone you pay to borrow your watch and tell you what time it is.
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Then there are ex-spurts. I don't want to be one of those.
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In a sense, we are all ex-spurts. Originally Posted by sgosnell
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