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Torrified tops


Phil O'Keefe

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"What is the long term effect - I'll be dead in five or ten years, what difference does it make"

Love that, Freeman!

Another advantage is not considering "lifetime guarantee" on new toys... can I get a discount if only a 1 year guarantee? Then second handers, don't even consider warranty.

Problem with some sort of scientifical study is that as guitar ages, so does your hearing ability. Maybe sounds more mellow because you can't hear it as well? I always thought it was something of a cosmic joke that by the time you can afford a really good hifi setup, you can't hear it all that well.....

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Those magic days of reel to reel.

Sometimes I really miss them.

I mean, having a gazillion tracks instead of 4, uncountable generations instead of, well four, and CTRL-Z as a bonus, yes, digital has it's advantages, but damn, I still miss my Revox 88.....

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Building guitars and repairing them a bit myself, I must admit that there's something about old wood that lends itself to sound more. An old piece of spruce feels lighter in your hand...and if you drop it on the floor it makes a "ping" sound instead of a thud. Drying out wood doesn't have the same effect...whether it's by kiln drying or cooking.

 

The explanation I've heard is that when wood ages, water trapped within the cell walls of the wood finally escapes....leaving behind a meshwork of honeycomb scaffolding of cellulose, lignin and whatever. When you kiln dry wood, you pull out EXTRACELLULAR water...but the water inside the cells remains. When you torrify the wood, you carmelize and destroy the matrix. Both techniques lighten the wood...but it's not the same as natural aging.

 

 

This property is REALLY pronounced to me building violins. A cheap, Czech-made antique violin is so much easier to make sound loud and full than working with new materials. No matter how much attention you paid to building. The wood just had magic.

 

 

There's lots of other factors to building, of course. But I'm of the opinion that torrifying is not the same as natural aging of wood.

 

 

 

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3M used to make magnetic recording tape too - 996 was my favorite of their formulations. Low noise and you could slam the heck out of it without it breaking up. The smell tape gives off is just a bonus, and one that even many engineers today are unfamiliar with... but when you first put a reel on and "exercised it" by running it through the transport fast both ways (which gets rid of any lose oxide that would otherwise shed, taking part of your recording with it), it gives off a really interesting smell... it's just one of those olfactory-triggered memory things for me I guess.

 

In '76 when I bought a Tandberg Model 3500X R-R I'd "exercise" the tape as you describe, also 3M, and it just stank to me. I would put an electric fan across it aimed to push the smell out the window of the barracks room I lived in. That was a time when I recorded myself and the R-R was the only high-end method. Old memories. As a GI the new retail cost of that unit was 1/4th my annual income. I got it through the US military Exchange Service at a steep discount and a loan through my credit union. It cost me $800.00. Normal price retail was above $1,200.00 at the time. I (barely) used it for a year and sold it for $1,100.00 to a studio. Still, the tape stank. I still remember the cautious use of that unit and the determined maintenance to prevent scratching the recording heads. I was always worried about it.

 

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Freeman - You couldn't be more real. If I could sit and think of a method to bring The Tones to an acoustic guitar I'd be more rewarded for just having the thought.

 

 

DeepEnd - Tory-fied. Hideous but otherwise a good'n. Reminds me to research the reason behind the patterning of the British Union Jack.

 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Flags_of_the_Union_Jack.png

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Slightly different genre I think and the electric bass would sit better on a rock stage than the acoustic in a cafe.

True, although an American flag guitar would be right at home in Country:

 

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Perhaps there's some genre/venue where a Union Jack acoustic would fit but I can't think of one.

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It's really those national flags that determine how good the sound of your top is. They're toryfied for sure. I haven't tried a torrified guitar yet but know takamine, ibanez and taylor are doing it. It might help the sound but how do you quantify the sound of an aged guitar vs one that isn't. That is all subjective. Aging changes a woods color and changes the properties of it somewhat. I don't know if that can really be duplicated artificially. You can't accelerate time. What we might have here is another thing to argue over such as bridge pins:D or saddle materials. Are we aging wood for the sake of aging it, or is it the sound (which is not quantifiable) of the guitar that matters?

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