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Guitars are often said to sound better with age. How much of it is due to worse-sounding guitars being discarded before they reach vintage age?

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It is possible that some guitars just never live long enough to become "vintage", because they never sounded good in the first place. And a bad sounding guitar is not going to improve much with age. In the case of a laminate top cheap mass produced guitar, no amount of aging is ever going to make it sound like a new solid wood guitar.

Acoustic guitars have proven to the ears of many players - to sound better as they age. The theory that best explains this is - that as the wood in the body ages, it becomes lighter and more responsive and more resonant.

In an acoustic guitar, the sound comes from the vibration of the top - also known as the sound board. The vibration of the strings alone produces very little sound. The vibration of the strings is transferred to the top through the bridge and saddle. The vibration of the soundboard (top) is what produces the audible sound we hear from an acoustic guitar.

To prove this, take a tuning fork and strike it to set it into vibration. It makes very little sound on its own. But if you touch the end of the vibrating tuning fork to the top of an acoustic guitar, the note created by the tuning fork rings loud and clear.

Some folks believe that the more an acoustic guitar is played, the better it sounds because the vibration of the top loosens up the wood and leads to greater responsiveness. I have heard that some guitar owners will set their guitars in front of their speakers and turn up the volume on their home stereo believing that the vibrations will help loosen up the top and make it sound better. But I think this vibration theory is more like speculation and difficult to prove.

Yamaha is convinced that aged wood has superior tone producing qualities so they developed an accelerated aging process knows as Acoustic Resonance Enhancement Technology (A.R.E.). They started using it on violins and have recently began using this process on some of their acoustic guitars. You can read all about it and watch a video here on the Yamaha Website Acoustic Resonance Technology by Yamaha

Another reason "vintage" guitars may sound good is that the wood available decades ago may have been a better quality wood than what is available today. It's also possible that older guitars from reputable makers were more meticulously crafted with more of the work done by hand and more time devoted to finding the best sounding wood for the soundboard and more time tweaking the building process to get the best sounding guitar possible.

Mass produced guitars -- even by well respected companies such as Martin, Gibson and Taylor -- don't get the same amount of individual attention as they did in the "old days".

Most of the foregoing relates to acoustic guitars sounding better with age. Electric guitars, which rely more on their electronics to produce sound, are less likely to show any dramatic improvement in tone through the aging process.

The factors discussed above all offer plausible reasons why 'vintage" guitars seem to sound better than newer guitars. And certainly a really good sounding new guitar is more likely to live to become vintage due to receiving better care.

But I believe that tone woods used to make acoustic guitars do improve their sound-producing quality as they age. Different tone woods have been shown to improve at different rates -- characteristic of the particular type of wood (spruce, cedar, maple, rosewood, koa etc. will all age at different rates).

And I am convinced that a given well made guitar that sounds good when new, will (if well cared for) sound better as it ages.

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    FWIW most of this answer applies to the orchestral strings as well, tho in recent years a lot of progress on varnishes and wood selection has allowed new instruments to 'break in' rather quickly.
    – Carl Witthoft
    Mar 2, 2015 at 15:47
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    @CarlWitthoft you are so right. Yamaha started using their Acoustic Resonance Enhancement Technology on orchestral strings before they began trying it on acoustic guitars.
    – Rockin Cowboy
    Mar 2, 2015 at 17:57
  • I'm pretty much with you all the way on this one - I just wanted to add, anecdotally, that I have never heard/felt anything so good as the 64 strat I used to own. Weighed half what a modern one does, sang twice as clear, even unplugged; which i've always felt to be an acid test for an e guit anyway.
    – Tetsujin
    Mar 2, 2015 at 20:19
  • @Tetsujin Used to own? Sorry you had to part with it.
    – Rockin Cowboy
    Mar 2, 2015 at 20:58
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    I am convinced that there's a survivor bias too: old bad sounding guitars were thrown away. Thre's also the interaction and aging of varnish and wood: older aged paint has different properties compared to new paint.
    – Michele L'Intenditore
    Jun 3, 2019 at 10:29
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In some circumstances the vintage instruments sound better due to changes in the manufacturer's specs. For instance, the Fender P-Bass is a very highly desired instrument from certain specific years (can't remember which years off hand). Fender changed their specs and many have argued not for the better. In this particular case, I think there are two factors. The obvious one, the change in sound due to manufacturing specs. The other consideration is that of the history of the instrument. Many great artists used these classic P-Basses on their recordings that have become standards in the modern repertoire. One could argue that due to their consistent use, the sound of that particular series is considered the P-Bass sound, so if you want to emulate the sound of your favorite Fusion bass players, then you are going to want a P-Bass from those years.

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The cellular makeup of most wood used in guitar building is such that the wood is full of microscopic voids called capillaries. These capillaries or micro cavities in the wood start out as hollow (full of water), and they become consolidated or filed-in over time by the surrounding wood, as the wood dries and ages. Basically the wood becomes more solid as the capillaries are reduced in size and eventually disappear. Vibration of the wood promotes this effect creating a settling effect and collapsing the capillaries. The wood therefore becomes more dense/solid over time and the resulting sonic effects are: 1)expanded range; fuller tone with boomming bass and sparkling trebles; better clarity; larger volume; and increased sustain.

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Electric guitars cannot be made like they were in the 60s. Even though Fender reissues many iconic guitars, you simply cannot produce electronics to an exact 60s specification.

Copper wire was pretty impure in the old days. Today copper wire is pure copper in the old days copper wire had a certain amount of impurities to them. This leads to a certain character in pickups that is hard to fake.

Also there are certain things guitar producers could do in the manufacturing process in the 60s that they cannot anymore because of environmental concerns.

Although old wood does have certain resonance that is pretty groovy. You should also realise that guitar design has come a long way in 60 years.

The old guitars often are very temperamental. You struggle to keep them in tune. They are often quite soft for humidity and temperature changes.

The worst part is that they are so completely over-priced for the small improvement they give in tone.

They are only really an option for established musos who have everything else about there tone dialed-in and want to try and go for that last 2 percent.

I must admit though that blackguard Telly sounds superb.

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In the case of acoustics, age improves sound as the wood becomes drier. As for as electric guitars, age has little to do with it. A well made new instrument can sound just as good, provided it is made with quality tone woods. There could be some argument that older electric guitars were made from old growth wood that is simply no longer available.

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    Wood doesn't dry out with age; the moisture content reaches equilibrium with its environment. Kiln-dried wood typically starts out with a lower moisture content than air-dried, but both reach the same level after a short time. Wet wood sawn from a tree and air-dried takes about 1 year per inch of thickness to reach equilibrium. Seasonal variations in local humidity lead to seasonal variations in moisture content, so my acoustics sound better when air is dry in winter than they do when air is humid in summer. There may be other structural changes that occur in the wood as it ages, though.
    – user39614
    Sep 29, 2018 at 10:53
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I think something to consider, is the the wood might have more slight imperfections over time, due to constant environmental changes (temperature, moisture, etc...) and that these imperfections create a fuller more resonant tone. I agree with most that a guitar that never sounded very good... won't sound better over time, but a great solid wood guitar, will sound better over time .

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There is one theory that states that the wood’s cell walls slowly break down over time, and the wood becomes lighter, and as a result more resonant. This article goes into more detail.

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