Does a guitar´s tone and sound improve with age?

[donlyn]

Does a guitar´s tone and sound improve with age?

My simplest answer is most do, and some do spectacularly.

Been playing for 60 years, pretty much exclusively acoustic instruments without plugging in for more than half of that. Close to 40 years is my best guess-timent. I find the ones that do that the best share two characteristics:
- all-solid-wood construction; and
- spruce-topped rosewood back and sides.
But like the joke about psychiatrists and the light bulb, the light bulb has to want to make the change. Maybe the wood doesn't want to be a guitar.
And I am in no way discounting other wood combinations, as I have heard quite a few different ones myself that sounded really good. Including other guitars of mine. My 25 year old Taylor 355 spruce/sapele has an amazing tone.

I have a few duds in this regard, but since I got them initially because they sounded good, they are still fine instruments that are a bit set in their ways. Maybe just like their owner, namely me.

Just don't buy any guitar on which you are depending on it to improve. Nor get rid of something just because it doesn't improve. Doesn't make it a bad instrument per se. That's if you got a good one to begin with. Besides, you and your ears and fingers have some say, and/or blame to lay, about this. You are changing too. Experience should improve with age, but you are also aging. Go figure.

Most of my life is behind me and that means I am going to enjoy the best that life brings me the rest of the way. And that doesn't include agonizing about whether a given guitar has improved, is improving, or will improve. Maybe it has, but maybe I can't tell the differences anymore. But maybe by being very familiar with the guitar, I can get the best there is from it.

So now I'm going to shut up and just play my guitar(s).

Time's a-wastin'.

Don
.

[kizz]

Our ears don't, so how would we know ?

[musicman1951]

I am also in the sounds better with age camp, but most of the time the changes are fairly subtle. I would never expect a guitar that doesn't sound very good when new to improve with age to a very good sounding guitar. Then there is the ever present variability between guitars of the same model.

In your shoes I would play as many 00028 EC models as I could get my hands on and buy the one that most pleased my ear - regardless of age. Only good wine improves with age.

[Jamolay]

Or do we hear differently as we age along side a guitar….

[bsman]

Originally Posted by seaveez

My guitars definitely sound better than they did a few years ago. (Oh wait, perhaps I'm just a better player, so they sound better?)

We have a bingo.

Originally Posted by Jamolay

Or do we hear differently as we age along side a guitar….

We have a bingo.

It's impossible to quantify something utterly subjective like "tone" and sound", so it's all relative.

[Bob Womack]

This has GOT to be the Internet.

Bob

[davidd]

With the internet we entered an age where with the click of the keyboard we can find "proof" for every whacky idea. The more information available has not stopped the dumbing down of our society, in fact quite the opposite.

People these days believe whatever they want to believe.

[k_russell]

My experience points to a "Bell Curve" situation.

I find that a new guitar's components need to "seat" and the player must adapt to how the guitar responds to her/his playing. I'd say this phase lasts 20-100 hours. Many variables at play during this time (player's experience, guitar's build, string choices, playing style, etc.)

After this initial phase the player and the guitar obtain a voice and the guitar's sound grows to a peak in quality.

At some point the guitar begins to wear and the quality of the sound begins to decay. Again, many variables involved.

Sooner or later the guitar just wears out. This process might happen over years or possibly decades.

I also think that some intervention by a skilled and qualified repair technician can delay the "wear out" for very long time and possibly restore the guitar's sound to near peak. The instrument owner's good habits in maintenance, storage, and general care will also prolong the quality of a guitar's sound.

[Jdogblues]

They probably improve. But then I think all the prewar blues tunes I love were recorded on guitars that were new at the time.

[Alan Carruth]

bsman wrote:
"It's impossible to quantify something utterly subjective like "tone" and sound", so it's all relative."

Actually, it is possible to quantify a lot of aspects of 'sound', We can objectively measure the frequency response, and quantify the output power for a given input, for example. That sort of stuff used to be difficult, but the computer revolution has made it much easier. There are problems that are difficult to overcome, though.

One is that it's very tricky to relate objective 'power' and 'loudness', which is subjective. Doubling the power of a sound without changing the spectrum barely sounds any 'louder', but adding is as little as 1% more power on an overtone of a 'pure' tone can sound noticeably louder.

Another is that people use terms differently when they talk about 'tone'. In one test that I was told of, folks at a conservatory asked people to give terms that they would use to describe violin tone. They pared down the long list ('chocolaty') to a small number of the most common ones. They had a good violinist make recordings of the same short passage of music using different violins. These recordings were played back in random pairs through headphones, and the listeners were asked to rate them in terms of the various tone descriptors: which is more 'even': 'A' or 'B'. They found three things:
1) everybody uses the terms differently: your 'clear' might be my 'harsh',
2) everybody uses the terms consistently: if 'A' is more 'clear' the 'B', and 'B' is more 'clear' than 'C', you'll always hear 'A' as more 'clear' than 'C', and
3) (the most interesting to me), if some instrument has a trait that you don't like you will find it hard to rate it on anything else; if you don't like 'nasal' sounds, and 'B' is 'nasal', you find it hard to say whether 'B' or 'C' is more 'even'.

One result of all of this is that while we can often say what the outcome of a particular change is in objective terms, it can be hard to say what it will 'sound like'. The measurements I've made on guitars after 'playing in' all seem to show an increase in output in the lowest 'bass reflex' range (again, it's hard to sweat the error bars down enough to be really sure). Glennwillow insists that he hears an increase in treble response over long periods of time. One researcher (Richardson) points out that, since the 'bass reflex' rnage accounts for most of the actual output of the guitar all the way up to 1000 Hz, increasing the low range power can boost the trebles as well. Changes in hearing can also come into play. We tend to be sensitive to sounds in the upper octave of our range, so if you good up to 20kHz you're particularly sensitive to everything above 10K. As the upper threshold drops in pitch over time that 'harshness' limit drops too, and may 'sharpen' our high frequency perception.

As a maker, I'm interested in both aspects of this: the objective and subjective. Over time we have learned to correlate some of the objective changes with subjective judgements of 'tone'. This has, to some extent, validated the saying: "Give them volume and they'll hear tone". But it's all very complicated, and given the slippery nature of tone terminology it's still hard to say in advance how a particular person will receive a given guitar. It's most likely impossible to make 'identical' guitars that sound 'the same', but with care you can get 'close enough' most of the time. Given some basic acoustic measurements I've had some success in making 'tonal copies' of guitars that preserve enough of the basic 'character' and produce a high enough 'quality' of sound to be acceptable in matched comparisons.

[Monty Christo]

Originally Posted by Bob Womack

This has GOT to be the Internet.

LOL, exactly! Do people never get tired of rehashing this topic? Has the OP even once acknowledged a single response to his "question"?

Hook, line, and sinker.

[gurroz]

Originally Posted by Glennwillow

I seem to be in the minority here on the AGF, but I believe a guitar sounds its best during it's first few years. After a number of years, maybe 20-30 or so, the guitar tends to lose bass and emphasize the treble frequencies.

I have had most of my guitars that long or longer and that is what has happened to each one of them. In some cases, the aging has helped because the guitar had too much bass to begin with. So a loss of bass tends to clear up the guitar's tone in a couple of cases.

But in general, I liked my guitars better when they were less old.

- Glenn

Could it be your ears were less old 20 or 30 years ago? My hearing is not what it used to be!

[Glennwillow]

Originally Posted by gurroz

Could it be your ears were less old 20 or 30 years ago? My hearing is not what it used to be!

If the problem were my ears, I'd be hearing less treble frequencies in many of my guitars, not more. But I am hearing relatively more treble frequencies and relatively less bass frequencies so that my older guitars, particularly my 57-year-old D-35, is considerably brighter than it used to be.

When people lose their hearing, they almost always lose it in the higher frequencies, not in the bass frequencies.

In fact, though I am older, my ears are in pretty good shape for a 76-year-old guy based on my last hearing test. I have always protected my hearing. My wife's hearing is a little better, but her hearing has always been better even at age 18 when we first met. She hears the same changes in my D-35 as I do. The guitar sounds brighter than it used to and it has considerably less bass.

- Glenn

[jspe]

In this world it seems to always come down to the bottom line.
As per this discussion:
(A few examples of today's look-ups)
1957 Martin d18: $13000
1964 Martin d18: $7800
1957 Gibson J45: $8200
1959 Martin d28: $14500
There's a local bluegrasser in my town who paid 40000 for a pre-war D28, and he plays it at gigs, and it sounds magnificent.
Just sayin'...

[LAPlayer]

Originally Posted by Moldstar

I have seen plenty of folks complain that their guitar changed for the worse over time; there are a lot of Martin aficionados who feel D-35s and HD-35s become muddy messes 20-30 years after they are made,.....

I'm not saying you're wrong but, how would you reconcile that with the amazing sound from 80+ year-old Martins. Stradivaris...?