Some people think a guitar that’s been “broken in” sounds quite different from a new one. The accumulated vibrations affect the wood & glue themselves, making the guitar sound “more open”, warmer, brighter, louder, or just plain better.
I didn’t know how true this is, but wanted to find out. I didn’t want to wait months or years, so I built a tool to break-in my guitar while I’m asleep or not home. You can try it here too.
Free Guitar Vibrator Tool
The way this works is pretty simple: put your guitar close to a good speaker that’s playing one of these sound files, wait several days, and see if it makes your guitar sound better. All for zero dollars. Easy!
To just get started, do this:
- Find the Guitar Vibrator album where it’s most convenient:
- Guitar Vibrator on Spotify
- Guitar Vibrator on Apple Music
- Guitar Vibrator on iTunes
- Guitar Vibrator on Bandcamp
- Choose your track. For help choosing, go HERE or just start with the album’s first track, “Guitar Break-in, Open Strings”
- Set the player to repeat the track continuously.
- For Spotify, make a playlist with only 1 track on it, then list to your playlist on continuous repetitions.
- For Apple Music, make a playlist with only 1 track on it, then list to your playlist on continuous repetitions.
- For iTunes, you’ll need to buy the album first. This is not free, but perhaps it is convenient.
- For Bandcamp, you’ll need to buy the album first. This is not free, but perhaps it is convenient.
Every playing platform has its quirks. To see a sample 1-track playlist, this one in Spotify works great:
Spotify & Apple Music tip: continuous repeat works better on playlists than the whole album. Put whichever tracks you want into a playlist (just 1 track, or a few different tracks if you want a mix of harmonics), then look for an icon like this in the playlist player to enable endless repeats:
That’s it!
The theory is that your guitar’s strings will resonate with the Guitar Vibrator sounds. These string vibrations will then spread throughout the instrument, mimicking the physical effect of actually playing the instrument. The wood and glue will subtly change over time, allowing the guitar to resonate more easily, sounding “played in”, but without you having to personally play it for those first few hundred hours. Let the Guitar Vibrator run long enough and you’ll get a mature-sounding guitar in a week or two instead of several months. That’s the theory!
To very quickly see this in action, put your mouth close to your guitar and sing straight into one of the sound holes. Pick an E or any open string pitch. Make a big sound, hear your guitar ring, and watch your strings start to vibrate. Guitar Vibrator does the same thing, but works 24/7 and without you needing to sing into a hole non-stop.
If you’re trying this for the first time and you’ve got more than one guitar to choose from, definitely start with an acoustic or hollow/semi-hollow electric. If you like the result, try a solid electric and see if you can detect the effect there too.
For best effect, place your guitar in front of a speaker with decent bass (a low E string vibrates at 82Hz, lower than most phone or laptop speakers but easily within the range of most bookshelf speakers). Ideally the guitar should be free to vibrate, hung from the headstock or otherwise propped up for free resonance. The ideal volume for vibrating your guitar is probably more limited by your domestic situation than anything based on acoustic theory. The louder the sound source, the faster the break-in should be.
You’ll notice there’s no cost to trying this. If it doesn’t do anything, no problem. If it does work, great! Tell other players and soon we’ll make every guitar on Earth sound 2% better. Or maybe just 30 years older 🙂
To learn more about how this can possibly work, go to: How to Break-in a Guitar
The Guitar Vibrator Sound Source
To get started, just use “Guitar Break-in, Open Strings” within a playlist. Or, for more usage tips see this list of frequently asked questions.
If you’re curious and want more sound options, see Acoustic Vibrations for an explanation of how “Balanced Tone”, “Bright Tone”, and “Pure Tone” might be a better option for you. In a nutshell, I made a bunch of extra sound sources with varied waveforms and that’s where they’re explained. I’m not sure which of these are the best ideas, but perhaps we’ll find out after vibrating 1000s of guitars.
Try It!
Hopefully you find this easy enough to use. If it magically transforms your guitar into a better version of itself, hooray! And, you’re welcome! Â