Why do vintage guitars sound good

Turner goes on to explain that luthiers build guitars with the idea in mind that a guitar will sound much different 24, 48, 72 hours after construction is complete.

It will even sound a little different in three months. The number of hours logged is also thought to have an effect. It may sound disgusting, but human oils can play a part in the aging process of a guitar. As a guitar is subjected to the hands of a performing musician night after night, show after show, the areas of exposed wood on the neck and fretboard in particular will absorb the inevitable discharges of dead skin, sweat, spittle, and even the occasional tear.

While corrosive to guitar strings and other metal parts of a guitar, this can act as a sort of sealant for the wood thereby keeping unwanted moisture and dirt out of the wood grain. However, the natural absorption of sweat and subsequent evaporation after a few years on the road can be a good thing. The effect string vibration has on guitars has also been thought to alter its tone over time, mellowing out the guitar as it ages.

There have even been attempts to artificially age a guitar by way of simulating the effect of a guitar being strummed for hundreds of hours. I must confess that I do not believe this to be a factor in the aging process of the guitar.

In fact, a study PDF was done to determine whether or not vibration treatment actually changes the tonal quality of a guitar. Player evaluations revealed no discernible differences in tone. However, the study was not able to determine whether or not those changes were due to the passage of the three months it took to conduct the study, the season change from summer to autumn, or the amount of playing time received.

Something else worth considering is the fact that a scientific or academic experiment does not have the capacity to answer is whether or not any tonal changes in a guitar make for a subjectively better-sounding instrument. With an electric guitar, the player creates the vibrations similarly, but the pickups to the amplifier and speaker amplify them. The pickups in an electric guitar are made of magnets wrapped in thin wire.

Electric guitar strings are always metal to enable this process, while acoustic guitars are made with either nylon or steel strings. These also affect the sound; nylon strings usually make a mellower, warmer sound, such as in classical or folk music, while steel strings create a crisper, brighter sound found in country or bluegrass music.

Some essential factors related to their wood structures affect how guitars age. The aging of the wood, its density, and the quality all affect how well a guitar will age. Better quality wood was more readily available and more affordable in days gone by. Guitars are made with many different types of wood, most commonly spruce, mahogany, rosewood, and maple. Experts believe that different types of wood produce different playing tones in the finished product.

Mahogany and rosewood produce warmer, mellower tones, while ebony and maple produce brighter tones. As wood ages, it tends to dry out as the gaps in the structure of the wood collapse and become less able to hold moisture. This older wood becomes stiffer and lighter, resulting in a more resonant soundboard. More aged wood is also less affected by ambient changes in humidity and therefore produces a more consistent sound. Many serious guitar owners will use humidification systems to ensure optimal storage for their guitars.

Although electric guitars also contain wood, they produce sound by using pickups instead of the resonance of the wood. Their sound is, therefore, mostly unaffected by age, and most experts believe that new electric guitars tend to sound as good as old ones. Another factor in variations of sound is the density of the guitar wood.

Wood contains grains that hold sap. While I will make the case for using vintage guitars instead of newer models, my preference is ultimately subjective. I start every guitar review with the qualification that if you play it and it sounds good to you, that is all you need.

At the end of the day, the musician matters more than the instrument. Folk musicians Gillian Welch and David Rawlings perform a bit on stage to illustrate this very point. Guitar aficionados will argue endlessly about what kind of wood produces the best sound for a guitar. Different woods do produce different sounds. But the age of the instrument and how it aged is just as significant in how it sounds. Older wood sounds better because of how wood dries over time.

As wood air dries, the sound of a guitar improves. The moisture in the wood dissipates, the body becomes lighter, and the wood becomes stiffer. This all comes together to make a pleasantly resonant instrument. New freshly cut wood has the opposite qualities. Modern guitar companies are aware of the benefits of aging for wooden guitars. For that reason, they try to remove moisture from newer guitars by kindle-drying the wood. But must you have vintage wood and, by extension, vintage guitars to achieve authentic vintage tone?

And secondly, do electric guitars improve with age? Owning a real Burst is sheer fantasy for most of us, but a mids Goldtop is a couple of PAFs and maybe a bridge away from being essentially the same guitar. Countless Goldtops have been converted into faux Bursts in recent times and it certainly makes sense financially, but can the same be said from a playing perspective?

Unplugged, it was a different story — the conversion had a richer resonance and noticeably longer sustain. But as much as I appreciate the unplugged tone of a fine Les Paul, I think most guitarists will agree they sound better plugged in. We transferred the PAFs to the conversion and it came to life. This establishes two things. The wood itself cannot be disregarded entirely, but a recently manufactured Burst repro with a set of original PAFs and hardware can sound better than a genuine s Les Paul with reproduction pickups.

Consistent results lead to clear conclusions. Providing the wood is of the correct type and of a similar weight, newer electric guitars equipped with vintage pickups and hardware can often sound almost indistinguishable from all-original vintage models. They can also sound superior to vintage guitars that have lost their original pickups and hardware. On rare occasions, we encounter vintage guitars that are undeniably mind-blowing. Even less attention is given to alder and when tonewoods are discussed in relation to Fenders, weight is considered to be more important than age.

Lightweight ash and alder body blanks are still widely available, so vintage Fender enthusiasts tend to focus their attention on pickups and, to a lesser extent, hardware.