Do you play music TO your guitar

[RusRob]

I know you probably think I am crazy?

 

I didn't believe it was true and really thought people that said it was should be wearing tin foil hats.

 

A number of months ago I was talking to one of the sales guys in my local Woodcraft store looking for a nice piece of Rosewood for a bridge replacement I was doing. I knew from talking to him before that he makes Ukulele's and we were talking about tonewood. Well he then said something like "after the treatment they open up" So as expected I said "TREATMENT??? He then told me he has a gizmo that he built out of a cloths pin and a speaker that he attaches to the saddle and then he pumps music into it. Really? Yes he said he hooks the speaker up to a radio and lets the uke sit there for a week. He told me that after first hooking it up all he can here is a light vibrating noise but after a couple of days he said the noise turns into being able to hear the music being played. He said after a week he can hear the radio as if it were hooked up to a real speaker. He drew a picture of his little gizmo for me and told me I should build one for my guitars (I am just starting to build my own).

 

Now I have also heard of guys placing their guitars next to their stereo speakers and they swear it makes them sound better.

 

SO.... About a year ago I picked up a Martin D-18 that had been quite abused and needed a lot of work including a new finish. I bought it for myself and put it on the back of the bench and have been working on it off and on. I finally finished it a few weeks ago and typical of refinishing a guitar it sounded pretty much like a new one. So I decided to give it my own version of "The Treatment"

 

I have a set of nice Klipsch bookshelf speakers so I took them down and placed them on the floor side by side. I made a spacer for my guitar stand so it sits upright and is facing the speakers. So, Let the test begin. Almost every day I would pull the guitar from its case and place it in front of the speakers.

 

For a week I pumped different music into it, Mostly music I knew had a lot of dynamics. At first I didn't really notice much of anything but after a few days the guitar actually started to respond... I am serious! The first thing I noticed was that the strings started to make noise. After a while I could actually watch the strings vibrate. A couple of days ago my wife came home and I was playing Oscar Lopez into them and we were in the kitchen when she heard the guitar strings vibrating away (this D-18 really likes Oscar Lopez).

 

So the results of actually playing the guitar? I am a believer... Before the guitar sounded really good but it had a tight sound to it (like it was new). The bottom end was pronounced and the high end seemed a bit thin and lacking volume. Now it sounds much more balanced and the biggest thing I noticed the other night. I was sitting on the couch playing and I decided I was done for a while. My wife was talking to me and as I picked the guitar up I was answering her and I felt my voice vibrate the guitar. I thought that was really odd so I picked it up toward my mouth and started talking. I could actually feel the vibrations. My wife looked at me like I was nuts so I haded it to her and told her to do the same thing. She started laughing because she felt stupid and then she got this surprised look and said she felt it vibrating to her voice too.

 

So, Someone may call me crazy and think I should be wearing that tin foil hat myself but I am a believer now.

[jedzep]

Oh yeah, you're batschit crazy! We like that here.

 

That, I think, is the theory behind the Tonerite gizmo, and Howard Stern's speaker/vibrator bit. Good Vibrations.

 

I'm fortunate to have a customer who's out of town and owns a 2009 Santa Cruz 0 or 00, hardly played, stiff as a board. She's away for a month and asked me to restring, grease up, and play it for a month. Well, I'm addicted to buying and playing old flat tops and am pretty much out of $$ for that luxury, so it's a gift to act out on G.A.S. w/o paying for it. In three days of steady flatpicking country blues it's opening up right before my very ears.

 

 

I failed high school physics but I'm loving this.

[MissouriPicker]

I often have all my guitars hanging on the wall. I've got two Bose speakers on my computer and they really push the sound. I put-on a bunch of Cash and Ventures songs and turn the volume up about 2/3 and let it play for an hour or two. In the midst of the music itself you can hear the guitars echoing the tones. It's as if under the sound of "Walk Don't Run" you can hear a seperate roar. Some guitars are definitely louder than others, and the effects of the volume changes with the location of the guitar in the room. When I suddenly turn-off the music, the guitars keep echoing and at times you can see the strings vibrating. I guess this is the tonerite philosophy to an extent. I don't know if this is a long-lasting effect, but it's free and I can do it all day long if I have the interest. I would be interested to find out what the effects on a new guitar can be. All my old dogs are opened-up and I don't know if it changes them any from what they've already become.

[duluthdan]

As much as I want to believe, I cannot risk becoming a full blown tin-foil person. Already have a tin ear, a tin voice, and my guitar playing is not far behind. I have an Englemann spruce topped Martin that a guitar playing buddy of mine said "wow" that's really opened up since I played it last. I didn't have the heart to tell him that since he played it last, its basically been sitting in its case, untouched.

[zombywoof]

Uhhh, no. There used to be a line of thought that if you placed your acoustic on the stage near the drums the vibration would help open them up. But then again folks also smoked banana peels and ate Morning Glory seeds purchased at the local feed store.

[MissouriPicker]

Funny story, Dan, but I tend to think it's the real story behind a lot of the other stories.

[E-minor7]

Love stories like these RusBob, they make it all so, , , , I don't know what.

A month ago or so we had thread about massaging the top and backs - even got a fine description of how to do it.

I tried it on a few guitars and believe some sonic difference was achieved.

Other members were more reluctant. j45nick f.x. was sure he would mess up the whole room he was in if trying the ritual.

Placebo or not - the best way to check is of course to record before and after. I far too often forget to get that done.

 

As much as I want to believe, I cannot risk becoming a full blown tin-foil person.

Ha ha ha, , , be a little fresh - we only live once. . . .

[RusRob]

I forgot that I had saved this article from another forum a while back.

 

I think it was from Acoustic Guitar Magazine a while ago, I would have linked the actual article but unfortunately it is no longer there (that is why I save interesting things I read. After posting this thread I tried to find it on line and then thought I may have saved it. Took a bit but I found it.

 

I didn't know that I actually believed it when I first read it but thought it was an interesting read so I saved it. I am a pack rat when it comes to saving stuff on the internet. (I have two 1.5 terabyte drives so I save a lot of stuff)

 

Timber Tech is the company but are no longer around.

 

(The attached pictures are at the bottom of page)

 

 

Timber Tech Shaker Table

 

So what would happen to a brand-new guitar if you did the equivalent of playing it for 24 hours a day for weeks or even several months? Could you accelerate the aging process in just the right ways and get a broken-in guitar right out of the box, so to speak? I have known several guitar makers who have put new instruments next to stereo speakers, playing music into the soundboxes for a week or two before shipping the guitars to customers. Now there is an industrial-strength version of this technique being used by Timbre Technologies, a company founded by luthier Michael Tobias and SWR amplifier builder Steve Rabe.

 

 

Timbre Tech’s patented process involves clamping the guitar to a shaker table, a kind of super–heavy-duty loudspeaker with a 7,500-watt amplifier and a three-inch magnesium plate instead of a speaker cone, and vibrating the whole thing at much higher forces than ordinary playing would produce. The process takes about 45 minutes and is carefully monitored by acceleration sensors attached to several points on the

 

 

 

guitar. The strength of the vibration is intense, much greater than that produced by playing the guitar, and so the theory goes that 45 minutes on the table is equivalent to several years of normal playing.

 

Upon hearing of this process, one of my first concerns was safety. With such intense shaking, would glue joints fail? Would cracks appear in the wood? Well, so far so good. Timbre Tech has done the shake on 30 or 40 guitars with no damage. As intense as the shaking is, the glue joints shouldn’t be a problem, because a good glue line is stronger than the surrounding wood. It’s probably not a good idea to shake an already cracked guitar, but the process is not so strong as to damage sound wood.

Once the guitar is clamped to the shaker table, the process begins with a reading of the instrument’s frequency response. A reference accelerometer is attached to the aluminum table, and it feeds into a computer that flattens the frequency response of the system. Three accelerometers, attached to the guitar with wax, monitor the frequency response of the instrument at the peghead, bridge, and neck joint. The guitar is shaken at a moderate rate with a full-range audio signal to record the "before" response into the computer, and then the power is ramped up to full intensity. After 45 minutes of shaking, the force is reduced and another frequency response plot is captured. The "before" and "after" response plots are then merged, and the graphical output shows only the change that has taken place (see graph).

 

 

Does it work? Are the results predictable? Does the computer plot show something relevant to how the guitar sounds after treatment?

 

To shed some light on these questions, we tested four guitars: a Sobell owned by Henry Kaiser, a Taylor owned by Laurence Juber, a recent Gibson Roy Smeck Radio Grande reissue owned by Jackson Browne, and a Martin HD-28 loaned to us by the factory.

 

The Sobell is a stiff guitar design to begin with—-I describe it as being 1/3 archtop and 2/3 flattop. Kaiser said he hoped it would come out sounding as though Martin Simpson had been flailing away on it for several years! The verdict? Kaiser gave the shaking a thumbs up. The Sobell developed more low end, and the high end became more detailed and open. The computer plot did not show radical changes, but the changes did correspond with the audible results. The guitar gained nicely overall and had the "played hard" factor that Kaiser had hoped it would develop. My feeling was that the guitar felt more responsive to a lighter touch.

 

The Martin we tested is a scalloped-brace dreadnought with a fairly loose top and lots of bottom end. It was passed around the office at Acoustic Guitar so people could get used to its "before" sound—which was found to be quite good right out of the box. It didn’t sound like a guitar that particularly needed playing in.

 

The Martin changed more in terms of overall sensitivity than frequency response, and that is admittedly a somewhat subjective view of it. Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers and Dylan Schorer, working with engineer Steve Bird, set up as controlled a recording test as was practical, and their report is as follows:

 

"We recorded it before and after the shaking, with stereo mics in the same position relative to the guitar, run through a mixing board set flat and into a DAT machine. We used new strings (same brand!) both times, and recorded the same series of songs, played as consistently as possible. The difference between the before and after tapes is hard to pinpoint and not necessarily consistent from song to song, but we did feel that the guitar was ringing out more in the second session. Even before the shaking, we had to set the mics to the highest bass roll-off to get a decent sound; afterwards, if we had been trying to get the best sound on tape (rather than to recreate the way we recorded it the first time), we would have opted to move the mics further away from the guitar to cut back the boom. The guitar sounded a bit bigger.

"Our ‘before’ and ‘after’ comparison is obviously subjective and fraught with variables (the humidity, how hard the guitar was played during the sessions, our expectations, our memories of what the guitar sounded like before), but the bottom line is that this guitar did seem to be opened up by shaking. Afterward, it seemed to make more sound with less effort—a subtle but nice change."

 

These impressions of the HD-28 shake were very much in line with my own. The guitar was loose and boomed out on the low end to begin with; it did not sound like a typical new, stiff guitar. But what I noticed was an increase in overall sensitivity. Nice old instruments sometimes feel like they are playing themselves; it takes very little effort to bring out a great sound. The shaking increased that factor in the Martin just as it did in the Sobell; these were remarkably similar results in two very different instruments.

 

The most dramatic change was in Laurence Juber’s Taylor 514, a small-bodied cutaway with mahogany back and sides and a Sitka spruce top. Before the shaking, Juber liked its balance—especially for recording—but felt that it definitely sounded like a new guitar. Afterward, Juber says, "It gained another octave of low-end tone, and the highs became much more complex. My wife, Hope, noticed it immediately when I brought the guitar home. It was like when an adolescent’s voice breaks and becomes mature." Juber also reports that his use of the guitar in studio work has greatly increased, as its sound is very mic-friendly. Also interesting is that Juber feels that the guitar is continuing to mature more rapidly than he would expect since the Timbre Tech treatment.

 

Finally, Jackson Browne’s comment on the shaking of his new Gibson Roy Smeck was short and to the point: "Wow!" He elaborated that the guitar now sounds much more like his vintage Smecks. Even the old ones sound different from one another, but now the new one sounds as if it has been played in. Browne now wants to try the shaking treatment on a little-played 1935 Smeck.

Timbre Tech has also treated solid-body electric instruments, again with interesting results. Aerosmith and Eddie Van Halen have recently had instruments shaken, and Jerry Donahue reports spectacular results on two of his Fender Custom Shop Telecasters. With solid-bodies, it seems that the most dramatic results are with bass-wood–bodied instruments, and run-of-the-mill new production guitars get more improvement than instruments already judged to be excellent. The changes in solid-body instruments would seem to indicate that it is not just simple flexural patterns that open up with vibrational aging of guitars. Internal sonic wave patterns in woods also change with shaking, whether done naturally over time or accelerated on the shaker table.

Steve Rabe of Timbre Tech has been experimenting to see if it is possible to "move" dead spots to less musically intrusive frequencies. By emphasizing or de-emphasizing particular frequencies during the shaking treatment, it might be possible to suppress wolf tones and bring life to the dead spots. It might be further possible to program what kind of improvements might be made to an instrument. For instance, by not exciting low frequencies and concentrating the shaking in the mid- and upper frequencies, it might be possible to balance out a too-boomy guitar.

[Gruffchris]

Interesting thread

 

Could the shaking process 'loosen' up the guitar, quite literally?

 

Was there a sound sample on the original webpage? Cause, and I could be missing the point, it sounds like an advert for Timber Tec.

 

Even so it does pose questions to people like myself, who keep there guitars permanently in their cases?

 

To the original story, my guitars vibrate too, but that's cause i live near a main road and the whole house vibrates when a lorry goes past.

[MR GIBS]

You are not crazy, mate. You just love acoustics.

I have a Tonerite device and just in this moment it works on one of my guitars for a couple of weeks.

I concider the Tonerite is a precious thing.

[Del Nilppeznaf]

yeah...gotta be careful with these theories around here RussRob :)

 

I was drastically shot down a few months back for pondering whether a guitar may 'open up' somewhat when hung in a large music store and having constant music played by other instruments ect surrounding it..

 

Then again tho it was by my main nemesis Parlourman doing most of the shooting.. haha ( where you been PM ? )

 

I think any sound vibrations will have some effect on woods over time..esp' of course acoustic wooden instruments... tho I also believe it has more to do with just the natural aging of the woods and construction..glues..joins ect

[ParlourMan]

yeah...gotta be careful with these theories around here RussRob :)

 

I was drastically shot down a few months back for pondering whether a guitar may 'open up' somewhat when hung in a large music store and having constant music played by other instruments ect surrounding it..

 

Then again tho it was by my main nemesis Parlourman doing most of the shooting.. haha ( where you been PM ? )

 

I think any sound vibrations will have some effect on woods over time..esp' of course acoustic wooden instruments... tho I also believe it has more to do with just the natural aging of the woods and construction..glues..joins ect

 

I've been busy, mate. A lot going on at the minute.

 

You know me fhough, im in it for the amusement and what amuses me most, some of the fairy tale followers who will champion such romantic notions tend to be the biggest detractors of a device like tonerite which should actually do a better job in pure vibration terms. Seems to me some are just drawn to the mystic concepts rather than the realities. Each to their own I guess....

 

If playing a guitar some music is going to make it better, will my bike become better if I flash it pics of Bradley Wiggins? ..or my kettle boil a cuppa quicker if I sat it in front of the TV on a loop of adverts for kettles?

 

Don't play music to your guitar, play music on your guitar, as you get better you will make that guitar (and many many others) sound very musical.

[mountainpicker]

Since it IS Sunday...All of life is subjective, there is no objective reality. So it only exists for you. So if you think your guitar is changing, well, then it is. Quantum physics is up against this concept and one of the ways it got there was through trying to find out if light transmits through waves or through particles. The answer is both, depending upon the observer. But enough of the "what is reality?". I too consider my ToneRite as an essential part of my arsenal of stringed musical instruments. I know it works beyond a shadow of a doubt...for me. I don't care if you can hear what I hear or not (some of you don't want to hear some of what I hear anyway, and I'm cool with that). Some of you here have instruments that are sixty to seventy some-odd years old. The wood they are made of is even older than that. That wood MIGHT have come off of trees that weren't subjected to years of polluted air and other human induced environmental conditions, at least for some of its life. Or the tree might have grown in soil of a certain pH factor or any of a zillion variables. It is a theory that one of the things that can't be duplicated in making a Stradivarius violin copy, and they have been made to the nth degree of precision, is that the wood he used was ancient old growth unsubjected to the industrial revolution's polluted air (another thing that we can't duplicate is the actual hand of Stradivari). So, my guitars do NOT have the wood of what we now call vintage instruments, and never will. But all the vibration that those vintage instruments have experienced in their lives CAN be duplicated in this day and age. My 2006 J-50 got played by me for five hours on Friday night and, because the strings are now dead, when I came home that night I put it on the ToneRite where it has remained and is right now. It gets played while I sleep at night! It gets played when I go to work...for days and days. It gets played when I take a shower or cook a steak. Will it catch up to someone's 1942 Banner J-45? I don't know because I don't think I'm going to live long enough to find out. But I do know that I hear a vast difference in this guitar from when I got it three years ago. And all the other musicians I play with every Friday night say they can hear it too and they can also hear when I play a wrong note! If you have an old instrument it probably is already everything it can be and I'm sure you're just happy as hell with that and I say you're a lucky person to own such a thing. But I know my J-50 is more than it was when I got it from being on the ToneRite and continues to get better from using it and since it's me that's doing the listening and evaluating I'm happy as a clam. It works for me and I'd recommend to anyone with a newer instrument getting one. Ok, have at it guys!

[RusRob]

I have a propensity to think along the lines of you ParlourMan and would normally say this kind of idea is pure nonsense. I remember copying that article thinking it was more humor than fact. (I imagined that was a good way to make kindling)

 

But if that is true then why would my Martin have changed in a way that I could actually hear? What spooked me is the fact that when I started this little experiment I could feel the guitar strings vibrate but they were not making any sound (or it was so low I couldn't hear it over the music). At the end of it you could hear the strings and on some music like Oscar Lopez they were vibrating so much they were actually hitting the frets. I also used the same CD's to do this test. I have a 25 disk changer that I have the complete Steely Dan collection, Oscar Lopez, Leon Redbone, Pink Floyd, and the Beatles. I didn't change any of the CD's out and had the volume set at a normal listening volume. So I wasn't doing anything extreme.

 

The Martin seems to like the music in this order:

 

1. Oscar Lopez

2. Leon Redbone

2 The Beatles

3 Pink Floyd

4 Steely Dan

 

So... Can a guitar have a preference to specific music? What about the guitars that want to play classical music but are forced to play country?

 

Do guitars actually have feelings?

[RusRob]

@ mountainpicker,

 

Oh, don't get me started on quantum physics... I have no interest in math but love to read and think about that stuff.

 

Now, Maybe what we are actually seeing is the particles being tuned in to each other through micro vibrations in which all the particles that make up a guitar are becoming entangled. That would explain why some guitars have a preference to specific music....

 

 

Yea... Don't get me started.

[ParlourMan]

Surely we're not going to get into my guitar likes the Beatles, or my guitar is a stones fan. Come on people.

 

A guitar is a man-made structure from natural raw resources which resonates in a sonically pleasing way, to the extent that it is now considered a traditional instrument. There's really not much else to it.

 

Wouldn't musicians be better served demystifying the instrument rather than propagating incredibly nonsensical myths?

[RusRob]

Lighten up ParlourMan, It was a joke.... Surely someone of your intelligence can see that.

 

Or maybe you don't have a sense of humor and never have any fun with ideas?

 

But I swear my guitars all love Leon Redbone....... And if I try to play country on any of them the strings hurt my fingers....

[ParlourMan]

Lighten up ParlourMan, It was a joke.... Surely someone of your intelligence can see that.

 

Or maybe you don't have a sense of humor and never have any fun with ideas?

 

But I swear my guitars all love Leon Redbone....... And if I try to play country on any of them the strings hurt my fingers....

 

Maybe I haven't used enough smilies rus, I'm thoroughly amused by the concept.

[RusRob]

Maybe I haven't used enough smilies rus, I'm thoroughly amused by the concept.

 

 

I am glad it amuses you. I wouldn't want to make anyone mad at me. I often think outside the box.

[JockStrat]

Considering that we know that the more the instrument is played, the better it sounds. Also that the timber is alive, why not play music to it. I never thought of this before but I will be leaving the radio on all day when I go to work and see what happens. It can only be good for it, and can do no harm. I'm isold on the idea.

[Mike.J.Faulkner]

What an interesting thread.

 

Just going to put my 7 month old J45 next to my floor standers while i listen to Jim Morrison's American Prayer.

[jedzep]

Based on these musings, it would be best to use bass guitar music ( if there is such a thing ) of course, not without a subwoofer. Then dial up the marriage counselor or divorce lawyer of choice.

[ParlourMan]

Based on these musings, it would be best to use bass guitar music ( if there is such a thing ) of course, not without a subwoofer. Then dial up the marriage counselor or divorce lawyer of choice.

 

For the purposes of maximum vibrations? Surely a direct application such tonerite and the like would be a bigger contributor to vibrations on the actual guitar despite it being unpopular. I do think there's a certain image to these things, relics and tonerite are a no, buying unknown mojo of a certain age are a universal yes. Playing music to a guitar as some sympathetic transfer of greatness sounds cool so it's a yes, buzzing the bejesus out of a guitar is contrived or whatever. Seems a bit confused. Far easier to buy a guitar you like the sound of already.

 

..although there may be a certain amount of devils advocacy in that.

[zurdo]

this reminds me of a time when I had my acoustic on a stand near a oscillating fan. When I went to sleep I could hear eerie sounds coming from the guitar and I thought it was a spirit trying to communicate. Exactly the opposite of what this thread is about. The guitar was singing at me.

 

Scienticif explanation: I think the fan was blowing through the strings and the sound hole at a certain angle which made the strings vibrate and "sing".

 

I liked the sounds so much that I went to sleep with the fan directed at the guitar. However, once I started to do it on purpose, it refused to sing anymore.

 

I concluded it was indeed not an accident of physics, but an actual spirit communicating through the guitar. I liken the sound to blowing softly through a bottle. Let me add the fact that at the time I lived next to a cemetery. Not to be spooky at all, just that strange things used to happen that I could not replicate.

 

 

 

[jedzep]

For the purposes of maximum vibrations? Surely a direct application such tonerite and the like would be a bigger contributor to vibrations on the actual guitar despite it being unpopular. I do think there's a certain image to these things, relics and tonerite are a no, buying unknown mojo of a certain age are a universal yes. Playing music to a guitar as some sympathetic transfer of greatness sounds cool so it's a yes, buzzing the bejesus out of a guitar is contrived or whatever. Seems a bit confused. Far easier to buy a guitar you like the sound of already.

 

..although there may be a certain amount of devils advocacy in that.

 

Yea...maybe a Jack Bruce instructional DVD would do it.

 

Since my only acoustics are waaay broken in I wouldn't normally have an experiential opinion here, except for the enjoyable little experiment I'm grateful to be running with this stiff little Santa Cruz OM/PW.