Guitars tone changing over time

[yngzaklynch]

If you all will indulge me I'd like to discuss this topic a little. We all know that guitars get a little sweeter with time. The John Mayer article got me thinking about this a bit. John touched on that his 25th Anni guitar just one day sounded great and how much he loves it. Awesome stuff. A close friend of mine has an EBMM EVH that he bought new way back. I can tell you it is easily one of the absolute best sounding electric guitars I've ever played in my 39 years. Remarkable thing is he said it sounded good when he bought it, but something happened after 2 years. He told me that around it's 2 year mark the guitar just started to sound incredible, and believe me it does. So with this in mind... have any BFR owners noticed their guitars tone start to change? I have a JP6 BFR that is absolutely smoking in every way. I would say it's tone is more mids than anything else. It cuts and sustains so well. If it gets any better man am I in for a treat. Anyone experience their EBMM guitars tone change?

Jim

 

[mb99zz]

Can't say for sure I've noticed this as I've only been playing EBMM's for a few years now. I think it's in my head, but my Silhouette Specials grows on me more and more...feel and sound. I'm not sure if the natural tone is changing or I'm just learning how to manipulate the Silo more to exploit the capabilities of that wonderful guitar.

 

[DrGonzo5150]

Great topic! Can't wait to hear everyone's opinions.

Past the drying of the woods, appropriate setting of the glues, paints, lacquers etc i'm not sure what it could be... But I know my acoustic has certainly got better with age. Hmm.. I'll sleep on it and think

 

[DrGonzo5150]

Don't know if it is correct, but this was an interesting read:


"First of all, solid wood will not age if it is not played. This is very important because buying an old guitar does NOT mean that it is aged. This is due to the aging process. Anyone who tells you so is misinformed.

"aging" occurs when the wood is vibrated. What happens is that the sap in between each grain of the wood loosens as it vibrates. When the sap loosens, the wood becomes more free to vibrate, and as we know, vibrations are everything in an acoustic guitar body. The amount of aging depends almost PURELY on how much you play the guitar. A guitar made in 1996 might not have aged as much as a guitar made in 2000. It depends on how much it is played.

It is not the "moisture" that needs to escape. If the moisture escaped from the guitar then the wood would crack from being too dry.

As for the finishes... it's negligible to be honest. yea yea, poly finishes are cheaper, but only if they're applied carelessly. Gloss does indeed hinder vibrations, and therefore, the aging process as well, slightly, but it is by no means enough to be anywhere close to meaningful. The vibrations age the guitar at the molecular level. There's no way that a 5micrometer thin coat of gloss can have that much of an effect on the whole top wood.

The aging of a guitar is usually better off if you do it yourself. Your playing style will reflect the kind of aging that your guitar goes through. The more of one note you play, the more the guitar will respond to that frequency. Everyone plays chords or styles more often than others. The guitar ages to what you play as well.

There are, however, other means of aging the wood. If I'm not mistaken, Alvarez uses a technique to age their woods slightly. They put their woods in a room and then play music at the wood to let it vibrate. It's "fake" aging, but the results are there. This process, however, does not fully age the wood. There's no substitute for good ol' playing.

There's a machine that accelerates the aging process. The guitar is placed inside a glass case and is subjected to a constant stream of changing frequencies. The atmosphere inside the case is temp/humidity controlled to assure the guitar takes to the sound quickly. There's also a machine that shakes the guitar at various frequencies to accelerate the aging"

 

[peterd79]

Can't say for sure I've noticed this as I've only been playing EBMM's for a few years now. I think it's in my head, but my Silhouette Specials grows on me more and more...feel and sound. I'm not sure if the natural tone is changing or I'm just learning how to manipulate the Silo more to exploit the capabilities of that wonderful guitar.

i've heard a lot of theories over the years about guitars and how the wood tends to "breathe" as it gets older and really cures. Though i'm not discrediting this i feel that a lot of our tone comes from our fingers and how we attack the chords, notes, scales,etc. and for me i've noticed in the little while i've owned my 20th i've become more comfortable each time i pick it up that i have changed the way i attack notes and my playing has improved vastly since i picked it up... thus the TONE has improved as well...

so is it that the guitar changes or that the guitar changes us? either way EBMM guitars in my honest opinion is the best guitar builder on the face of the planet and i won't buy another electric guitar from any other company again.

 

[GHWelles]

The tone of my 20th seems to have improved, but it is hard to tell if it is just me getting used to it or if something more is going on.

 

[OU812]

A friend of mine who's a good guitar tech jokes about this and says its when the wood stops thinking its still a tree lol. I've heard about the frequency thing and vibrations mentioned earlier, its quite interesting. It wouldn't surprise me, as some of the best sounding and playing guitars are ones people have played a lot. Pickups and their magnets age as well, so keep that in mind but the process is very slow.

 

[beej]

its when the wood stops thinking its still a tree

Brilliant. I am going to hold on to that one.

 

[the24thfret]

I've heard before that older guitars' pickups lose magnetism over time and the tone changes, though I'm not a tech and cannot confirm this at all.

 

[hbucker]

So much of this tends to sound like voodoo to me. Yet I can't deny that my guitars have generally sweetened with age. One of them being my EVH that I got new in '93. Another being a guitar I built in '98.

The idea that an unplayed guitar will not age is also something I've heard and it has to do with the sap/resins in the wood. Eventually, they harden but before they do, if the guitar is played, the resins will rearrange themselves based on the frequencies vibrating through the guitar. This sweetens the tone. If you find a closet classic that has never been played, odds are, it will sound "new" forever because the resins have hardened and can never be rearranged.

Again, sounds a little like voodoo to me. But I can't deny that my older guitars have gotten "sweeter" with age. I easily get my best tones out of my EVH. It's a remarkable guitar.

 

[Colin]

I agree with the guitar sound changing but I think it has more to do with me rather than the guitar. Perhaps it's my perception as I notice the nuances of the instrument more?

 

[tommyindelaware]

i'm gonna be checking this here contraption out at the namm show next week.
ToneRite® Guitar: 3G | ToneRite Inc.

 

[ScreaminFloyd]

For me it could be a combination of things. The Guitar, Tubes, Speakers, Wood of the Guitar, Hardend finger tips and the Weather. I find some days you have to put it down and other days you can't put it down. Warm Summer
days sound better than long Winter days. I can feel my guitar and how warm it gets after playing it for awhile and have wondered if that affected the tone.
I can remember years ago learning my open Chords and how the A Chord sounded out of tune. Now it's not even thought about. The Muscle memory kicks in and our mind and fingers minipulate the notes and the tone follows.
It's a mystery, Better left alone. If everyone could play and find a guitar and a tone in 10 miuntes the fun and intrigue would be gone.

 

[ScreaminFloyd]

I never really thought before how a cut of wood could have a memory to a tone or vibration. This is an awesome thread.

 

[dfrady]

I bought a Weber mandolin about 8 years ago and it has opened up very nice in tone since I bought it.

 

[shredhed]

I don't think they change for the better. It's all in the mind

After all, have you ever heard of a guitar sounding worse as time goes by??

It would happen equally as often..........

 

[whitestrat]

After all, have you ever heard of a guitar sounding worse as time goes by??

Yes. My JP6 sounded worse as days went by plugged in. Mainly because I was getting used to the AN/SS combo, and disliking it more and more. The LF/CL sorted that out.

But this isn't about the plugged in tones. It's about the wood. The JP6 sounded better and better acoustically as time went by. It's deeper, warmer, and less rigid, which is what I like for these shred-type guitars.

Same goes for my Silhouette Special. I remember what it used to sound like unplugged, and it's significantly different. Yet, I remember liking it as it was new, so not all guitars age the way the owners would like them.

It used to be tighter, and brighter, but now it's sounding warmer and darker. For this format of blue/rock guitars, I like them bright and snappy. Alas, I'm playing this one less and less each day. (no thanks to the fabulous JPX7)

 

[yngzaklynch]

I don't think they change for the better. It's all in the mind

After all, have you ever heard of a guitar sounding worse as time goes by??

It would happen equally as often..........

Far more often than not, anytime I talk to someone who has owned multiple guitars over a long period of time they typically tell me the guitars sound better than when they were first bought. Thats been my experience as well.


Jim

 

[OU812]

Brilliant. I am going to hold on to that one.

He jokes when he says it but there could be some truth to it in regards to how the wood reacts. Its funny nonetheless.
He's got a lot of one liners, one day I was sitting in his shop and in comes this guy with a fairly thick German accent and hands Mike (the guitar tech) an old beat up 70's Strat with a humbucker in the bridge, saying he just bought it and needs a setup. Mike looks it over and says to him, "Who did you get this off of? the Scorpions?". I almost died laughing right there and then.

 

[Mark M]

I tend to think we get better at playing the given guitar. In the case of John Mayer, he has played Strats for a long time. The MM would be very different until he got used to it. I suspect it is very much like learning to drive a given car, you just get used to the way it works, its nuances. Eventually, after a couple of months, the car just starts to feel right.