Ray wrote:
Sort of get the impression that the people who know what they are talking about agree that a guitar "opens up" over time. Pete Buckle explained to me that it's the way that the wood fibers knit and sort of settle into each other over time with use due to the vibes and all. I've also read in places that you can put a guitar in fron t of speakers and the vibrations will have the desired effect. Ag, I'm not going to do that and for me really I cant really rememeber how the thing sounded a week or a month ago or whatever. But just browzing around and found this link on another forum. Any thoughts?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/technology/05tonerite.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Ray, I am really disappointed. I saw the title "Opening up an instrument" and, quite naturally, I thought, imagined we were going to be treated to pictures of you literally opening up an instrument you could peuter with the dinguses in side. This, of course, was going to be followed by a plea along the lines of "oh heck! What do I do now?"
Do try harder.
It seems that there is an "opening up" period for instruments, and that this varies from wood to wood. Spruce takes longer than cedar for example. I've heard this attributed partly to the wood continuing to dry, but nobody has ever told me that if you buy two identical guitars and you play one for 10 years and leave the other in it's case that they will sound the same.
How much the guitar has been played recently also seems to have an influence. If I take my two identical acoustics and play A for five years it will sound better, more open or whatever than B. If I now put A in it's case and play B for five years then B will get the benefit. But, the theory goes, if I put B back to bed and take A out of it's case it will not have regressed back to new, but it will need some playing to get back to where it was.
