Official Luthiers Forum!

I've built 5 guitars which I judged their tone after a week or so and I've been wrong on three of them. Two of them I almost tore apart and started over and 6 months, yes 6 months later they turned out to be my favorite guitars, as far as sound. The walnut L-00 I detested,hated the tone, and one year later it's my favorite. As well as most people that play it. I'm wandering if the relationship I've developed with the instrument during construction is clouding my judgment. You know how there's a guitar once in awhile that doesn't want to come together as the rest. A maverick,if you will. Clinton

It always astounds me how aweful a brand spanking guitar will sound with its first set of strings, especially within the first few hours of life... No volume, no sustain, no bass. Scary, really. You wind up thinking that you screwed up and that you spent all those hours for naught...

I find it always takes time and a lot of playing to get them to open up, if you will... I have a creeping suspision that age (and having been played a lot) is the major factor that contributes to those old guitars' sweet tones...

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I'd like to be able to prove, just for once, that money wouldn't make me happy...

Without a doubt a guitar has a break-in (settling in) period.
The body parts have to get use to the string tension.
I never judge a new guitar for the first few days.

If a new guitar sounded like an old one from the first note than you probably under built it.

Mike

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Mike Collins

After a 10 year absence I just got my first build back, thankfully. Hope I can hang on to it now. After 10 years and alot of play time it has developed into a really good guitar. It is a honduran mahogany/englemann dread. When new it was a bit "tight" like the new Blueridge guitars now and now it has a lot more punch. It still has a very focused and tight sound, however. I would liken it to the 50's Martins without scalloped bracing. The things I notice are the finger braces are twice as tall as my new builds and the x's and ltb's are at least 30% taller than now and the top is 2.9mm thick which is very thick for how I build. All this being said it has changed for the good but it took a while to "open up" and still isn't as lively as my new builds.

I do believe a guitar will improve with time but it should at least be pretty good right off in my book. Its not gonna ever knock your socks off if its dead sounding now I wouldn't think. Hopefully I'm wrong. If my guitars were too tight when new I wouldn't be selling very many. Most pickers now want some "whomp" immediately and it is possible you just have to be careful in certain areas. I don't compromise my x's much and do most of the voicing with the ltb's and finger braces and a little with the ends of the x's and where I make the peaks. My last two guitars have finished settling in after only minor adjustments to the saddle and I just saw one from two years ago and it is still dead on the same action as when it was delivered so I think it can sound really, really good right off and not be underbuilt. Try hide glue if you don't use it already. I really think that helps the response a bunch.

I like my guitars' tone a lot but if you want to hear an open guitar that will rattle your ribcage try a few Merrill's. Those things are deadly. Maybe he'll cut me in on some profit sharing.

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"We might not be big but we sure are slow"

Yep they often get better and some take longer than others. And there is no telling how long this will be either.

I have found that Adi seems to take longer to open up then other traditional top woods that I have used.

There have been threads here on the OLF before where some of the alpha builders subject the guitar to loud music and a speaker for a period of time in an effort to get them to surrender....... This is when I started storing my guitars between my main stereo speakers. That created another problem, when I played my stereo various guitars would start sounding off and it all sounded so terrible that I could no longer play my stereo......

Time alone seems to help too. Anyone notice this? I have guitars that I never play and when I do pick them up after 6 months or so they seem to sound better even though they have not been played at all. And lastly have you noticed that some guitars when first start playing them seem to improve in 10 minutes or so? Almost like the thing needs to be warmed up.

Go figure.

Hesh, I have noticed this even with old guitars. A friend of mine has a small shop and deals mostly in vintage martins. Sometimes I will stop by and pick up a guitar he has just gotten, start playing it and think this is OK but nothing great. Then after ten or fifteen minutes I start thinking to myself, what a great sounding guitar. It seems to have more sustain and sweeter trebles as it wakes up. Could just be in my head but it sure seems like a real change. Peace, Paul

Just for clarification, most of the aforementioned tops were lutz. I have noticed the mahagony ones tend to open quicker and sound better when first strung up. The walnut keeps getting better and better. As an experiment I built one with hickory sides and back. Sounded thin at first but it's improved 3 fold in 6 months and is a pretty nice sounding guitar!
Clinton