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Hey guys .....I know that a guitar will sound better and better with age...But is there a seasoning period after final setup....Seems to me that a guitar takes a little while to come into its sound,,so to speak.....Is this the case or is it just me getting familiar to its sound.?...Larry

Referred to as opening up This takes weeks to months depending on several factors and even then is an ongoing process till the guitar stabilizes some what under tension.

Yup, it always amazes me the improvement, even overnight, leaving a new guitar strung up.

still, I'm amazed that there's any sound at all when I put the strings onto a new build!!

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How long do you wait before you finish the setup? It seems like I should leave the strings under tension for a while before I finish the frets and the saddle.

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When I complete a guitar I try to play that one all I can until I complete the next one. During this initial period I hear some changes or opening up and I note any issues that I have with the set-up.

If I were doing this for a living I would give them a couple weeks of playing and then tweak the final set-up since things like neck relief will set in.

I also find that Adi topped guitars take far longer to open up but when they do it is very worth the wait.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

I leave it a week to 10 days...

As for the wood "opening up", I noticed a marked tonal change in the Sitka spruce topped guitar I built after a year of playing it. If I played it more often, I guess it would have opened up sooner.

Interestiing note here:

I have always figured that as the spanking new guitar settled in under tension that there would be a significant change in intonation. in particular I expected GDAE to go a bit flat as the guitar opened up. However, though I have noticed a bit of change in the intonation on a few of the guitars I have built, I have no had much if any perceivable change in the vast majority of them. The tone always seems to gain complexity but rarely have I had to re-intonate after break in. don't know if I have just been lucky or what

My experience so far is one guitar, so I'm probably over-thinking the problem. I was thinking the same thing, that the string tension would pull the top and bridge resulting in the intonation going flat by some small amount. I have a lot to learn.

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