Does time change resonance of wood?

[schofnsteen]

I have owned many TAG's and have 5 in the stable now. The very first TAG I picked up several years ago is a Hollow Classic with a maple neck. It is the MOST RESONANT guitar I have EVER owned. When you strum it you can feel the vibration on your body if you are sitting with the guitar. I crrently own 2 other hollow guitars but they do not have the same characteristics. Will time and changes in the wood inrease this resonance that I experience with this guitar?

[mdrs]

I'm looking forward to Tom's answer to this!! You're on the spot, Tom!!

Just kidding, of course!!

Wood is alive. It changes. And, it will continue to change. I'm not sure you can say that resonance will increase over time??? I have seen discussions regarding nitrocellulose lacquer finished guitars, where people have theorized that the nitro continuously seeps into the wood, and that something about this improves the wood's tonal qualities. I think that there is little hard science here.

[killerburst]

Wood is alive?

[mdrs]

Well, it comes from a living creature....a tree!!

The individual cells aren't viable. But living tissues, like wood, will not be static, like metal or stone. So, I don't mean that you should plant your guitar out in the garden :D , but that a piece of wood will change over time.

[ConnemaraGuitar]

Acoustic guitars become more resonant with time, and more important, playing. I imagine the same is true for some hollow body electrics.

When an instrument is played, it "flexes" the fibers of the wood, making them more flexible (duh!), and hence, more resonant. It's amazing to play a brand new acoustic and hear its "voice" emerge. For sitka spruce tops the emergence is fairly rapid, for Adirondack, somewhat slower.

Tim McKnight has done some work on this...check out his site:

http://www.mcknightguitars.com/

and follow the links to "Special Projects." One discussion is about a gizmo that mechanically vibrates stringed instruments to improve their tone and volume:

http://www.tonerite.com/index.php

I don't know whether this dodad would work on a hollow body electric but theoretically, it should.

While time and finish material may have an effect, I suspect the greatest effect is how much use an instrument gets.

Tom? Your thoughts?

[tom]

this is a pretty deep subject with lots of speculation. does wood change over time? yes. is it always "good"? mostly yes. depends what you like. in the old days when i was younger and had a better memory, i could really remember particular guitars that i got to hear again after a year or so, and there was always a difference. some say the wood dries out which is in most cases not true. being in so cal, we can hold 6% moisture content here. where ever the guitar goes to live it will reach equilibrium there. that may be 12%. very few places will be drier, but new mexico comes to mind.
never heard the one about nitro seeping into the wood, hard to imagine hardened or mostly hardened finish seeping. the other myth is that only nitro "breathes. every finish i can think of will let water vapor pass through, thus letting the wood take on or release moisture.
i don't know what's really happening at a cellular level, but the wood is certainly changing with time. i have cedar topped acoustics that keep getting darker sounding. at some point they may not be "better" sounding to me.
this is one area where i don't need to get too far into the science since there's not much to be done differently because of it.

[bruce]

I loved reading what Tim McKnight had to say in all of his experiments. His experiments are under "special projects" on his page.

Thanks for that Tim!

[guitarzan]

This is an interesting conversation...
I have a Classic at my house right now that was built on Nov. 1st of 1996. It differs from my Classic in that it's a Hum - single and my own Classic is MMM. Mine has a vintage bridge and this one has a Floyd. Mine has 10's and this one is strung with 9's. But pickups aside, this Classic sounds so much more resonant and bright. I wonder if that is a function of the Floyd or if there's just something about an old guitar. Both guitars have alder bodies and maple necks, the older Classic has a chunkier neck (which I always assumed would make a guitar sound fatter).

Another interesting thing that I've never seen on an Anderson is that the finish has very slightly started to take on some of the shape of the grain lines, much like you'd see in an old nitro finished guitar. Of course, it's very subtle (unlike nitro), but you can see it fer sure.

Tom, does a Floyd vs. vintage bridge make that much difference in the unplugged resonant sound of a guitar? Or is it just that I'm hearing one guitar vs. another and this uniqueness is natural from one guitar to another?

[tom]

i do like the fact that he raises more questions than answers. the hardness test is using the product not as it was intended, so i'm not sure what the results really tell us. i don't think there are many guitar builders who count on glue to fill voids in a joint. wood glues are not meant for that purpose. it is an interesting question he raises about finishes. is a thin soft finish deadening the vibration? modern nitro's are way different than their '50s counterparts. like all the testing any of us do, we always have the variable of the wood itself to deal with. in the end we have to listen to lots of guitars and build what we like best.

[tom]

hate to through in another variable, but the floyd guitar is basswood. so here's the score card:
1.floyd, basswood, ,009's, vintage style neck joint, 12 years old
2. alder vintage trem, .010's, wedgie neck joint, new.
if they were both new i think it would be pretty easy to tell them apart, so i think it would be hard to pinpoint the "age" credit on these two.
it would be an interesting test to change strings so they both had .009's and relisten. your alder guitar would get brighter and with lower string tension you usually end up with more sustain but you can't hit the lighter strings as hard.
it's seldom apples to apples when people listen to compare.

[guitarzan]

on my way to Rockit to pick up some 9's... :)

[ConnemaraGuitar]

I agree that Tim's glue hardness tests, especially those that measure the rigidity of "blobs" of glue, are probably not very scientific. The true strength and rigidity of a joint is a function of wood and glue, not just glue.

On the other hand, he's doing something most folks don't do in asking the questions and creating experiments to try to answer them.

I've tried many glues and always come back to good 'ole Titebond. Maybe it's the fact that Martin uses this glue, although I've had some bad results from other glues. For example, I bought some Lee Valley Cabinetmaker's Glue 2002 GF and used it to glue braces on an East Indian Rosewood back. The glue failed, even though I thoroughly cleaned the rosewood with acetone beforehand. When I re-glued with Titebond, the braces stuck.

I'll try the LMI stuff just for yuks.

Anyway, Tim's put some time into refining his ideas and that's refreshing. Plus, he did come up with (or at least embellish upon) the idea of an acoustic guitar soundport.

[guitarzan]

hate to through in another variable, but the floyd guitar is basswood. so here's the score card:
1.floyd, basswood, ,009's, vintage style neck joint, 12 years old
2. alder vintage trem, .010's, wedgie neck joint, new.
if they were both new i think it would be pretty easy to tell them apart, so i think it would be hard to pinpoint the "age" credit on these two.
it would be an interesting test to change strings so they both had .009's and relisten. your alder guitar would get brighter and with lower string tension you usually end up with more sustain but you can't hit the lighter strings as hard.
it's seldom apples to apples when people listen to compare.

lighter strings completely changed my guitar. The strings on it were the originals and I think I actually had you set it up for .011's. The 9's are obviously more slinky and bright and gets the guitar quite a bit closer to my new friend, Floyd Basswood.

[bruce]

Proving that there are different glues for different situations. Frank ford covers this subject too.

[mdrs]

I agree that Tim's glue hardness tests, especially those that measure the rigidity of "blobs" of glue, are probably not very scientific. The true strength and rigidity of a joint is a function of wood and glue, not just glue.

On the other hand, he's doing something most folks don't do in asking the questions and creating experiments to try to answer them.

I've tried many glues and always come back to good 'ole Titebond. Maybe it's the fact that Martin uses this glue, although I've had some bad results from other glues. For example, I bought some Lee Valley Cabinetmaker's Glue 2002 GF and used it to glue braces on an East Indian Rosewood back. The glue failed, even though I thoroughly cleaned the rosewood with acetone beforehand. When I re-glued with Titebond, the braces stuck.

I'll try the LMI stuff just for yuks.

Anyway, Tim's put some time into refining his ideas and that's refreshing. Plus, he did come up with (or at least embellish upon) the idea of an acoustic guitar soundport.

Lofton..........do you build acoustic guitars???

[ConnemaraGuitar]

Yes, Don. Building acoustic instruments, including guitars, bouzoukis and tenor ukuleles is where I started, and probably where I belong. Hollow-body electrics seems to be a natural extension, which is is how I wound up on this forum.