Do guitars "free up" with age?

[darkandrew]

I have 3 ESP Eclipses that were made between 2009 and 2014. Although they all have the same woods and construction (but there is a noticeable variation in neck thickness with the oldest being the thinnest, followed by the most recent in the middle and the middle one being thickest) there certainly appears to be a correlation between the age and their acoustic resonance, with the oldest being most resonant and the newest least resonant. I wondered what this could be down to. Could it be the fibres in the wood loosening up, the polyurethane varnish loosening up, an effect of "they don't make 'em like they used to" (ie constant search for ways of cutting costs) or just pure coincidence? What are your observations and what do you think?

[Dave Sloven]

Are the bridges, nuts, and body thickness the same?

It might be the case that the finish has varied in thickness over the years.  If anything was going to loosen up it would be the neck socket.  Not sure that would help.  Is there a correlation with sustain?

[darkbluemurder]

Most of the time I don't notice a difference even for guitars I have owned for a long time. The good guitars stayed good and the not so good guitars stayed not so good. I do remember one particular guitar (which I no longer have) that seemed to deteriorate with age. It was a Gold Top Les Paul which almost lost all of its sustain after a few years. Since I found a Les Paul carcass cheap at that time I gutted the Gold Top and put the hardware on the new Les Paul - sounded much better.

My current favorite guitar on the other hand seems to improve. It just acquired a singing tone that I did not notice earlier.

Cheers Stephan

[Dave Sloven]

A friend of mine has a Yamaha five-string bass that has lost its sustain to the point where he doesn't play it any more.

I straight away said 'neck joint?' and he was like, yeah, probably, it hasn't been the same since the band's vocalist and a couple of audience members piled on top of him when he was on the floor one time with his bass.

Never liked the look of the neck joint on that bass though.  Seems flimsy. The other way to lose sustain I would think to be the bridge and tailpiece stud inserts coming loose in the body.

[darkandrew]

http://www.yamaha.co.jp/english/product/guitar/sg/features/woods.html

DIgging around I came across this, it seems that Yamaha appear to think that guitars need to be played-in and actually try to recreate that effect through a process they call "Initial Response Acceleration".

[FELINEGUITARS]

Timbers do change as they get used to being a part of a guitar .
Some timbers will do this faster than others.
It's the stresses that were present in the timber when it was part of a tree releasing & relaxing
It's one of the reasons that a guitar will improve in leaps and bounds as soon as it's played for a while.
Then the process will continue albeit more slowly

Playing the guitar more or havingvibrations running through it will speed up the process
Even putting a guitar in front of HiFi speakers if you play loud music can help

Whilst not exactly the same as Yamaha's system I developed a similar technique for forcing vibrations through a guitar to accelerate the process, that involves using one of sustainiacs old style feedback systems repurposed to do this task.

[fdesalvo]

...it hasn't been the same since the band's vocalist and a couple of audience members piled on top of him when he was on the floor one time with his bass.

lol!