Ever FEAR "opening up" sound so good???
 

Yup, just a warm Sunday afternoon little bored here in California. Feel free to skip this thread if you have no idea what I'm talking about.:D



Say you bought a new guitar and you absolutely love everything about its tone. An absolute perfect tone for highs, mids, and lows. It's the tone in your head when you think of acoustic guitar. It's your Holy Grail tone.

Wouldn't opening up alter this tone? Sure, some may say it only gets better but what if what you like about this guitar is the crisp highs and just enough bass. Wouldn't that crisp disappear a little and bass increase as it ages? Or at least the guitar will mellow right?

So I read many threads here with NGD and people claim how much they love their guitars and its tone. If what they love about it is the high end sparkle/crips and just perfect amount of bottom end, would this still be the case after it mellows and ages a bit?

Anyone sell their guitar(s) because it actually opened up and altered the tone??? What was it and how did it change?

Cheers!

Apparently, the advocates seem to agree that it is always to the better.

Someone on this forum once suggested that you shouldn't buy a guitar that sounds great because it's at its best and will soon fall off. Better to buy a guitar that sounds like it might sound good when it opens up.

Maybe you two are related?

I have had a few Martin rosewood dreads in the past that became a bit mushy and unfocused once they opened up, so I know what you mean. Changing string brands, pins, and saddle material can sometimes restore the crispness you want (key word being "sometimes")

In my experience when guitars open up the sound is not altered enough to make that much of a difference; i.e. the tone "changes" but does not change it enough to be radically different from the original sound. The tonal qualities that endeared me to my Gibson are still there, although the sound of the instrument has changed subtly through its short life. :)

I might be in a minority here, but I actually enjoy the focused, brand new sound of a guitar. I've played many used instruments where the previous owners hardly ever changed the strings or kept them in a environment where they could survive.

Besides, shouldn't people go in with the mentality that they like the sound of the guitar when they first pick it up? I would never buy an automobile if someone told me "It'll get better with age"...

Been at this for 40 years and have never had a guitar get worse sounding from playing.

I've heard (read?) Jeff tweedy talk about a j45 that he has that became a dog the more it aged. I do think it's a possibility that a guitar could degrade as it ages but I'd guess it's the exception, not the rule.

I remember a similar theory from James Taylor in some sort of feature on him I saw. In JT's case it was a J-50 (there may have been more than one, I remember a room with dozens and dozens of guitars in cases), which is still the iconic "JT" sound to me as opposed to the Olsons he's played in later years.

If thought my Masterworks sounded like seraphim singing when I bought it.
It was six months out of the factory at that time.
It is now two years old.
The seraphim have grown into Angels.

In a few years, if I'm still here, I expect it will get better yet.

I figure it's rare for the sound to go bad as a guitar ages.

I believe the lack of a definition of what "opening up" means creates a lot of mis-information when discussing the aging of a guitar. A guitar doesn't all of a sudden snap into a better tone, it's not a light switch. It's a gradual process over many years involving different features of a guitar, such as the materials, glue, lacquer, tension, climate, history, or repairs. When a guitar is new, there is a big change in a guitars tone as the glue cures, the lacquer cures, the wood adapts to tension and climate, and the geometry of the instrument settles. After 2 to 3 years, these changes settle down and the guitar stabilizes. What comes after is the magic, the change of age. After 30 to 40 years, there is a change that can only be explained by age. It is a relaxed tone, open, mature, it has what my son jokes with me about "old man strength". He is bigger and stronger, but I can still kick his butt. Can't be explained but it does exists. Opening up does not mean Vintage tone. Guitars do improve with age, just like me.

........Mike

Ahhh...the perfect new guitar changing for the worse...

It's called "closing down."

First, any changes that occur are gradual over a period of years, so you will have a long time before you even notice any changes. Those that claim to hear significant changes within a period of a few months are just falling victim to expectation bias.

And you already recognize that tone is subjective, and know that any changes aren't automatically better. But the changes do tend to be subtle, so you'll still have the same basic tone. It'll just be a matter of whether you think its a little better or a little worse.

Guitarists are a strange bunch, indeed...

"When you buy a new Martin guitar - that's the worst it's ever going to sound."

Mr Chris F Martin IV - in Brighton (UK) some time ago.

I know I was there.