Ukuleles sound better with age ? Myth or True

tangimango

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you may have heard from many players that if you play your insturment alot and as time goes by , the instrument will open up and sound better. what do you guys think? any old timers here that experienced this?

i have heard some old timers say the old martins which was built like a tank (some models) that survived the 50 years sound incredible.
 
I've got spruce tops that matured and yellowed and sounds alot better...but the better the quality to start, it only gets better....
 
I'm not sure...

I've owned a lot of stringed instruments and yes, they do sound better as the years pass but that might be because I've improved as a player and I have gotten to know how to make the instrument sound its best.

One thing is certain, the better quality you start with the better it will sound. Now and in the future.
 
Wine tastes better with age. Beer gets skunky and tastes worse.

Ukes are somewhere in between.
 
The question is almost unanswerable. There are experts that say an instrument will open up over some period of time and others who say a player simply develops the skills to make that instrument sound better over that initial period of time. Is there a way to test this phenomenon? Probably not one that would really answer the question. I tend to agree with the latter. I've bought used ukuleles that seemed to open up as I played them. But I knew it was either imaginary or I was getting better sound through practice with that instrument.

One thing's for sure. At some point wood begins to deteriorate. Once it's old, dried out, and cracked up, it's old, dried out, and cracked up.
 
I want to make sound samples of my two ukuleles and want to come back in a few years and see if I can discern any change in tone. Simple, slow chord progressions and nothing technical. Of course, even a string change can make a big difference, so not a very controlled test.

As a wind player, I've never heard this discussed much in the clarinet world. The best clarinets, with that sweet tone, are said to always have that sweet tone. Some people believe the older the better as far as "they just don't make'em like they used to" and some folks have told me that after 10 years, you need to chuck your clarinet and start over. I have a 40+ year old clarinet and am not giving it up any time soon.
 
I've heard it takes a good 20 years or so for the wood to open up. I don't think there's any scientific research on the matter. Who knows? I dunno...
 
Definitely true, but with solid wood instruments only.
 
I think individual instruments can sound different at different times, due to humidity, fingernail length, string condition, mood. I think there may be a period of the various bonds and parts of a brand new instrument settling in, or even of a long unplayed instrument readjusting to the mechanics of string tension, etc, but I think tone wood "opening up" is faith based.
I have read that vibration changes the structure of the wood on a molecular level. As a former student of organic chemistry, I don't buy that at all.
If it were true, there would be lots more of these things around: http://tonerite.com/ukulele/vmchk
If there is some real proof of the phenomenon, beyond people believing in it, I would love to see it.
 
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It especially gets better in the first months, but it's also the strings that settle. Not every uke I own developed nicely. My Wixom didn't really open up for example, but it's quite a heavy uke compared to the others.
 
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