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One thing I've noticed is that my gear sometimes sounds better during the second set of a gig in a new venue, even if I don't change anything and the audience is about the same.
I'm convinced that all that is happening is that I'm acclimating to whatever my gear sounds like in that room. Sounds better after I get used to it. I don't notice the improvement at my regular gig where I'm well accustomed to the sound.
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02-27-2024 07:23 PM
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In a somewhat related issue I recall the following excerpt from Benedetto’s book with a word of caution regarding a builder’s ability to construct the top bracing in a manner that enhances the voice of a new instrument, but over time the “spring” built into the braces begins to relax, resulting in an audible decay in the instrument’s voice.
AKA
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I remember that article. The unplayed one had been in a closet or under a bed and the other one had been played daily all its life. I thought it was in one of the issues I saved, but I apparently threw it out. I’ve tried unsuccessfully to find that article many times.
Originally Posted by wintermoon
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Yeah I know the dealer personally, we talked about it again a few months ago. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
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Regarding the D28s they both went through years of the wood slowly drying out. Isn’t that what most people find appealing about old Martins?
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It's a big part of the reason people gravitate towards most types of old instruments made of wood. Quality control is generally equal or better than ever today but keep in mind that manufacturers were aging wood back in the day, when you purchased a new guitar it already was seasoned to a degree. Today the majority of wood is forced/kiln dried, not particularly ideal. Originally Posted by alltunes
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Without a doubt, wood changes over time. The fir posts and beams in the basement of my 1906 house are what my dad would've called 'harder than a begger-boys heart'. Really difficult to hammer a nail into. Fir is a lot like spruce. Certainly more similar than the sides and back of our maple beauties. When new it's very easy to work with hand tools. Even freshly cut old growth. (it still being cut up here). This ancient stuff is murder. I think it's the resins setting or something. It's not particularly fine or straight grained or pretty or anything. Structural stuff. Originally Posted by alltunes
So... how much time?
And does increased hardness and stiffness in an archtop soundboard make for better tone?
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Factory guitars yes, but with top notch luthiers like Ribbecke, they have a hoard of choice woods stashed away. The guitar I recently got was made of woods that were seasoned for decades. Originally Posted by wintermoon
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Granted there's more individual builders in the US today by far than what there were say, pre '70 when you could probably count them on one hand. Not trying to be a contrarian but how many instruments today come out of long time established small shops like Monteleone, Benedetto, Ribbecke, Campellone, and what percentage of those guitars are built from decades old wood? Lucky owners of those guitars are still a very very small percentage of the guitar buying public. Many of today's builders haven't been in business long enough to stash woods away for decades. Originally Posted by Mark Kleinhaut
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Wood certainly gets harder as it ages, but it takes many years. Old pine, fir, or other species boards can be difficult to drive a nail into, and difficult to break. What effect this has on archtop guitars, I'm not able to say. I can say that it takes 50 years or more for the boards to get that hard. It's a very gradual process, not something that happens in a few months or years.
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I had the great pleasure of working with members of an acoustic research group comprised of luthiers and acoustical scientists. Some of us published in the former Guild of American Luthiers Journal and the Catgut Acoustical Society that was run by Carleen Hutchins.
We did a lot of research on woods, on free plate acoustics, on bound plate acoustics in braced, unbraced, flattops and archtops from violins, violas, cellos, guitars, double basses and string octet violin family instruments.
There's been a lot of public domain researched, tested and peer tested acoustical lutherie that has become SOP within certain circles.
One of the things that has been written about a lot is maturation in wood. In coniferous woods, there is a unique physical phenomenon that doesn't happen in disiduous woods: The constant and rapid growth of the tree all year around that slows during the winter and so concentrates that growth into a ring dense with cellulose resin. Those rings are crucial in the first stages of maturing of an instrument as is a finish that releases plasticizers over time (lacquers and varnishes can take years and decades to set up). A tree has one purpose, and that is to support the growth of the nutrient gathering top branches to the top of the forest canopy. UP. Straight along a shaft of light. Strong enough to be narrow in that pursuit and strong and light enough to support all those branches at the top of an old growth forest. That's the purpose of wood.
Luthiers take that material and turn it into very thin pieces of tree that are thin enough to transmit vibration with very little lost energy. In a good instrument, those vibrations are very subtle with overtones. In a good instrument, the rich overtones and fundamentals create patterns of vibration with EVERY SINGLE NOTE, and each note generates a different pattern of vibration on the top and back. We can't see this because it's fast enough to move air at thousands of times a second but it's there. Those vibrational patterns are called Chladni patterns and how clearly defined and how flexible the "tree's" unified cellular orientation becomes the coherent "musical instrument" wood is a function of how the wood's resinous cells are microscopically broken and reassembled in coincidence with the music it "learns" to play.
In other words, if you have a piece of wood that's green, it's as stiff as a tree needs it to be. When it's used, the cells become more compliant in their binds to one another. If you play it in this process, it enforces the places where nodal lines form, and like a folded piece of paper, it'll move along those microscopic creases forming something that'll not resist vibration but work with it.
Finishes learn. Ever had a complete strip down and refinish on a guitar? It's not the same instrument. All that crazing? Some of that is there for a reason. That sparkly shiny new coat needs to off gas and set up and learn to work with the wood. It's the new kid in the class. The player is an essential part of this process. A player with a musical personality "imprints" his/her prejudices about what frequencies are important and they become more compliant.
This, in short, is breaking in.
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Thank you- this is awesome! I have a new employment idea with this. For a mere $35/hour, I will personally play your high end guitars and break them in for you with an imprint of my personality! Step right up! Who’s next? Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
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Can you perform this service at wedding receptions? Originally Posted by Mark Kleinhaut
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Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
No, wedding guests would interfere with my vibronic connection. I require total silence
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Mark, that is very true. Steve Andersen had an amazing collection of seasoned wood at his Seattle shop. It was impressive. Some of it had to be nearly as old as me. That's old! Knot as knarly however! Originally Posted by Mark Kleinhaut
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Not sure if this applies but as an old cabinetmaker we liked old wood because it moves less and made for a more stable assembly (or mabey we were kidding ourselves) we always tested for moisture to make sure the wood was ready but you cant hear furniture now I wonder if the chairs I made 40+ yrs ago sound different sound different now.
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If you get a chance to visit the Paul Reed Smith factory in Maryland (which I highly recommend), you'll see his wood stash. He's been buying or gathering every piece of wood he saw that looked like it might be useful as or on a guitar for many years. There are pieces of furniture in there, doors, floors, shelves and just about everything else that's ever been made of wood. Originally Posted by skykomishone
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There was a network of luthiers around New England, an informal cadre of friends known to one another. At the sighting of any available structure, whether it be an old trashed piano in someone's driveway (old soundboards, braces and if old enough, ebony keys and even ivories used for classical bridge ties) to a pair of giant european blue spruces that had been planted and grown so high that they were lifting the house off its foundation, to an old covered bridge that spanned the Connecticut River between NH and VT which had been split by a floating iceberg one very wet winter, word went around and we'd all show up with tools and hauling vehicles. Wood of first growth forests felled in early settlement days, extinct species with grain lines so tight you would NEVER see such woods now.
We'd descend on the wood before the town clean up crews took it all to land fill. It'd cure for seasons in our wood rooms and then be made into what ever could be measured from the pieces.
We see each other and the instruments we made were referenced as "Bridge lot" or "Wellesley house lot" or Vermont Barn lot wood. Each a distinctive treasure saved only for the most special commissions.
Wood like that doesn't just grow on trees...anymore.
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That's supposedly how Charles and Elmer Stromberg procured their woods, demolished buildings, etc.
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I want a guitar made from a chunk out of of the old Trocadero. For those of you who don't know the Troc, it was built in 1870 and was one of the foremost burlesque houses in the world for a very long time. If wood could talk...... Originally Posted by wintermoon
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Hah, my dad worked there in the 50s while going to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. He also waited tables at the legendary Peps during that time and saw many jazz stars. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
I want a guitar made from a chunk out of of the old Trocadero. For those of you who don't know the Troc, it was built in 1870 and was one of the foremost burlesque houses in the world for a very long time. If wood could talk......
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Yes indeed! But the tops that opened up at the Troc were not on guitars. The burlesque side of the business had a lot more color. Strip joints were a great place to play music, too. When I was in high school, our drummer somehow managed to get us a regular gig at the Alibi Lounge, a long gone T&A palace at New York Avenue and the boardwalk in AC. I don't know how he did it, and I don't care - it was a fanastic gig. We got to play pretty much whatever we wanted to play, and the audience was as appreciative as the dancers. But no one was more appreciative than us - we actually got paid to be there Originally Posted by wintermoon
There were some great places to hear live jazz in and around Philly well into the '60s - Pep's, the Showboat, Red Hill Inn and many restaurants, clubs and bars with live jazz. The Latin Casino got top national acts - when my wife was 16, she saw Ella there and remembers the details to this day. The Philly scene was the big time for me as a kid, since I grew up in Atlantic City. Ellis Tolin (a great big band drummer, for those who don't know of him) opened Music City shortly after I was born, and the place hosted a lot of serious live jazz sessions. But by the time I got here in the late '60s, it was just a music store further up Chestnut Street.
We did have our own jazz venues in AC, from little bars to clubs like Club Harlem where I first met Pat Martino when he was playing for Willis Jackson - he was 19 and I was 17. We had huge rooms, like the Round the World Room at the President Hotel and the ballroom at Steel Pier. They were big on Latin jazz at the RTWR - IIRC, I saw Tito Puente there a few times between 1962 and 1964. And we saw major jazz bands like Maynard, Kenton, and Sal Salvador at Steel Pier.
Oh, the stories they'd tell if guitars could open their tops and talk to us........
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My drummer studied w Ellis Tolin @ Music City before attending Berklee.
I just finished the Lee Morgan bio Delightfulee and Tolin's mentioned. Apparently name jazz musicians coming through town gave workshops there in the afternoon before their gigs and the last set was reserved for exceptional students sitting in. According to people that were there Lee blew Chet Baker off the bandstand during one of those sessions.
Speaking of Lee, my longtime bandleader, tenor man Sam Reed said the Max Roach/ Clifford Brown quintet had a weekly Sunday gig downtown. Sam was in attendance and said Lee was so brash he would always jump up onto the bandstand uninvited and spar w his mentor Brown.
What I'd give to hear some of that!
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