Official Luthiers Forum!

First, I'd like to thank the numerous expert contributions to the various voicing and bracing threads going on right now. It's all gotten me thinking more analytically about guitar sound.
A short anecdote: I recently bought for a few dollars a pair of speakers at the estate sale of an audiophile hobbyist. In a box of books from the same sale I found a published article about the building of 'my' speakers, which the gentleman had built when in his late 60s. Although the drivers were of very average quality (Philips),the crossover design and arrangement and size of the ports in the cabinets had been 'tweaked' extensively in a 'voicing' process. I was quite surprised to find that they sounded great- much better than my 'good' quality commercial speakers. Bright, transparent, shimmering,clear bass without boominess, etc etc..
It occurred to me that perhaps I'd just bought speakers tuned by somebody with ears as deteriorated as mine.
It's well known that the frequency response of our 'ears' changes with age.
I wonder if some of the 'desirable' audio qualities of our guitars are due to the age of the makers and buyers. With older makers and baby-boomer buyers, could this be a factor to consider?
Just thought I'd throw this out there for comment- as if the issue weren't clouded enough already!
John

That's an interesting question. We all know that sound preferences are highly subjective. How a person's ears age is a mystery to me, and unless there are extensive tests done to see if there is any hearing loss over age, and what audio spectrums are affected by the loss, it would be hard to draw a conclusion. I'm sure there are audiologists who could give us general information as to how ears "age", but I would have to assume that to some degree ears will age based on what stimulii they are subjected to in life. Maybe not...
Interesting thought though.

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Don-
Loss of the ability to hear high-frequency sounds (with age) is pretty well known. Youthful immersion in rock n roll (or working in your shop without sound protection) only makes it worse. It does vary a lot between individuals, though.
When I taught high-school science we used to do a demo with the audio generator when talking about frequency thresholds. Even when I was 40, the kids could hear higher frequencies than I could. All the teachers I worked with reported similar results.
One starting point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presbycusis

John

Most people do suffer some hearing loss with age. Due to the mechanics of the thing, the loss generally starts out with the highest frequencies first, and moves on down. This seems to happen for most folks, even if they have not been exposed to loud sounds very often. Obviously, more exposure generally means more or quicker loss.

'Loud', BTW, may not be what you think. The duration of exposure matters in that respect. In theory, you won't suffer much harm from exposure to the noise of a router (about 103 dB @ 3') if it's less than 15 minutes or so in a day. However, I remember reading that for constant exposure, eight hours a day, 85 dB is considered damaging. My shop vac puts out 86 dB, so....

The type of sound matters, too. 'Pure' sine wave signals can be a lot louder than they sound: I was surprised recently in driving a guitar top with less than a watt of input power of sine wave to get output readings of over 90 dBA; definitely not good for any length of time. It just didn't sound that loud.

Exposure to a loud sound of a particular pitch can damage that pitch without effecting others around it much. I got dosed with a high-pitched whine from an air-powered turbine blower in the Navy, that was left running overnight to clear gasoline fumes from my division berthing compartment. In the morning I couldn't hear it, even though it was still running, and there are some car alarms that simply don't register. Very weird. This probably has to do with the way the hair cells on the basilar membrane work, or don't.

If you have a high-frequency loss, it effects your perception of tone in ways you might not suspect. for one thing, sounds that are within an octave of your highest perceptible pitch can be irritating. For a young person, who's good up to 20,000 Hz, that means tones above 10,000. For a guy like me, who's hearing pretty well stops above 13,000 Hz, the 'pleasure limit' is closer to 6-7 kHz. This is getting down into ranges where a lot of music is happening. What sounds 'bright' to some folks might seem 'harsh' to me.

Some people have 'stronger ears' than others: they can take more abuse without damage. As with the other insults of aging, this is also one of those things that sneaks up on you. 'One loud concert won't hurt', maybe, but over time they do add up. And I can tell you that hearing aids, for all that they are useful, still suck. So I wouldn't count on being one of those folks who can 'take a licking and still hear the ticking' if I were you. Get some good hearing protectors, and use them.

Annent what John said:

Some store owners don't like teenagers hanging around in front of their shops; it discourages older patrons from coming in. Some while back somebody came up with a setup that 'chirps' a very high frequency signal, that only the kids could hear, and loud enough to drive them off. It worked pretty well.

Then some of the kids started to use that same signal as a cell phone ring: they can hear it, but their teachers can't. Sauce for the goose....