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Thread: Adi top break in

  1. #1

    Default Adi top break in

    I've been playing my Arches kit for about three months now. It was loud and bright from the get go, but now has developed a rounder tone over time. First noticed it on the D string, and now working its way into the G. The E and A continue to be bright. It's a nice cutting bluegrass machine. The few guys that are in bands who have played it have appreciated its ability to be heard.

    Do Adi tops mature evenly over time, or does the change lesson. I've heard Adi tops take a year. Just wondering if after six months are they halfway there, or more like three quarters, or is there a randomness from top to top. Anyway, it's a rewarding experience to have the mandolin sound richer over time with no volume drop, just more of a good thing.
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  2. #2
    Mandolin user MontanaMatt's Avatar
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    Default Re: Adi top break in

    I’m at 1.5 yrs on my Adi topped Ratliff, and I still hear change, though it seems more gradual now. My Port Orford cedar Weber took 5 yrs to settle and open, though I played less intensely a decade ago(both in amplitude and amount, as I was primarily a fiddler back then)
    30 yrs ago I had a master fiddle mentor who told me that the aging of instruments was a function of vibrating as well as the inner surface of the instrument having cellular changes from the changing of the seasons. Something along the lines of inner wood cells bursting and releasing there organelles.
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    Default Re: Adi top break in

    I kinda thought my adi topped Pava got louder/fuller sounding after 6 monthes of heavy playing. Who's to say really..

    If you look at yourself every day in the mirror it's hard to notice that you've gained a pound or two over a years time.

    Playing a new mandolin everyday I find it just as hard to tell if my ear is adapting to it or it's changed some. I do notice that a new pick will sound different to me after I've gotten used to it.

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    Registered User Eric Hanson's Avatar
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    Default Re: Adi top break in

    FWIW
    I have a 2009 Collings MT2 with an Adi top. I only have had it for about 6 months. The reason I bought it due not only to its beauty, but due to the remarkable tone. It has developed into a powerful instrument with plenty of head room. It has though such a beautiful, rich, warm, complex, tone. This does not mean that the A and E strings are lost. By no means. They also hold their own. It is a wonderful pleasure to play at any time of the day. Most often at the end of the day when all of my other responsibilities have been cared for.

    After initially bringing it home, when I played it while sitting with my wife on the couch, her comment was, "Wow. I can even sit right next to you and the sound doesn't bother me. I like it.". She is not in favor of an overly bright toned mandolin.
    I love and appreciate this woman. She is the one who agreed to the substantial upgrade of this instrument.

    When I contacted Collings to find out more about the build specs of the mandolin I was later called and asked how I liked it. I mentioned its warm tone. He made the comment , "It sounds like it has matured very well.".
    It has a warm tone that is just wonderful. It plays soft when carefully played. And drives hard when you dig in. I think I will be VERY hard pressed to part with this one. I come to love it more each time I play it.
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  7. #5

    Default Re: Adi top break in

    I hear you on the day to day thing, but I remember first stringing it up. Both the G and D string had some of the twangy tone I was trying not to have. The D warmed up after a month, and the G is to the point I have no doubt it will fatten up too. It's 80% there now. Never had an adi top instrument before. It's getting two hours plus per day.
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    Default Re: Adi top break in

    I have a Pava I bought used a few years ago. It was still really new and green when I got my hands on it. I noticed then it took a good half hour or more of steady playing to really “wake up”. After waking up it sound more full, with a sound that seemed to fill the room. It just seems thinner and weaker when first played. After several years and hundreds of hours on it the red spruce seems to have deepened in tone and the “waking up time” is nonexistent if I’m playing it steadily.

  9. #7

    Default Re: Adi top break in

    Wood is very interesting. I have a thirty year old M36 Martin guitar that needs to wake up if I don't play it for a while.
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    Registered User Tom Wright's Avatar
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    Default Re: Adi top break in

    The perennial discussion about breaking in. I posit these two facts: 1) 300-year-old violins play fine (mostly), which suggests wood does not change very much, if at all. 2) We are very talented at fooling ourselves, so real data alwas requires multiple observers and measuring devices.

    Now consider that for most players, a few minutes to an hour of warm-up playing can make a big difference in tone. It always takes me a few tunes to find the sweet tone at a gig, and often the second set is much better. The mandolin doesn’t care — it’s me. It might take on a lot of humidity, or get very dry, but the way it sounds depends on whether I’ve been practicing or warming up. Because I now know the tricks and techniques for this mandolin, I get to the good sound faster. This effect is what makes people think their instrument is improving with playing.

    When you think your new mandolin is improving, give yourself the credit you deserve for learnng where the tone is, what stroke, where on the fingerboard. The body and brain are plastic, always learning. Wood is not alive but you are.

    I guess it is a losing battle questioning belief.
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    Registered User William Smith's Avatar
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    Default Re: Adi top break in

    After any new instrument is "broke in" after a good year or so of solid playing I still believe they will go to sleep a bit after sitting for awhile or years! I have a new to me old 24 F-5 Gibson and have had it a month or so and now its really showing what it can do tonally, this 5 was sleeping for a long time! Now its awake and thunderous!
    I know some don't believe in the sleep thing with instruments but I'm a firm believer as I've had new to break in and used that needs a bit of a wakeup call!
    Even after you do bridge work on a mandolin it'll take her a bit to ring on in again IMHO anyway!

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    Mando-Accumulator Jim Garber's Avatar
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    Default Re: Adi top break in

    Adi top break in: That is a good name for a mystery movie.
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  16. #11

    Default Re: Adi top break in

    So many variables;too many.

  17. #12

    Default Re: Adi top break in

    Probably twenty years ago, my daughter's cello had an accident, and cracked the top down the center. Our luthier was very skeptical it would ever sound good after the repair, so we decided to carve a new top. When we got it back we were very disappointed. He had said to give it six months and boy was he ever right. It developed into a fine instrument. Wood changes to varying degrees when new. Adi it seems more than most.

    I've arrived at this after decades of skepticism. Experience has won out. But I also am a believer in what Frank Ford told me years ago. Don't buy an instrument for what you believe it can be. But it for what it is.
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  18. #13
    Mandolin user MontanaMatt's Avatar
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    Default Re: Adi top break in

    Quote Originally Posted by Tom Wright View Post
    The perennial discussion about breaking in. I posit these two facts: 1) 300-year-old violins play fine (mostly), which suggests wood does not change very much, if at all. 2) We are very talented at fooling ourselves, so real data alwas requires multiple observers and measuring devices.

    Now consider that for most players, a few minutes to an hour of warm-up playing can make a big difference in tone. It always takes me a few tunes to find the sweet tone at a gig, and often the second set is much better. The mandolin doesn’t care — it’s me. It might take on a lot of humidity, or get very dry, but the way it sounds depends on whether I’ve been practicing or warming up. Because I now know the tricks and techniques for this mandolin, I get to the good sound faster. This effect is what makes people think their instrument is improving with playing.

    When you think your new mandolin is improving, give yourself the credit you deserve for learnng where the tone is, what stroke, where on the fingerboard. The body and brain are plastic, always learning. Wood is not alive but you are.

    I guess it is a losing battle questioning belief.
    Thomas, it appears that you play a flat topped and electric mandolin...have you had a carved top instrument, from new, to experience break in and opening up not occurring?
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  20. #14
    Registered User Tom Wright's Avatar
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    Default Re: Adi top break in

    Quote Originally Posted by MontanaMatt View Post
    Thomas, it appears that you play a flat topped and electric mandolin...have you had a carved top instrument, from new, to experience break in and opening up not occurring?
    Yes, a new Weber Special Edition and several new professional violas.

    I don’t think it helps the case to maintain flattops are different from archtops. If wood improves because of the vibration it would apply to any piece of wood. I don’t think those vibrating devices exclude flattops.

    I’ve been playing professional violins and violas for my entire life, and have plenty of experiences to support my argument. When I would take a quality instrument home to try for a week, after returning it my main instrument would always sound strange for a while, like a day or so. Eventually my brain remembers the sound and becomes normal. My viola did not change in one week.

    Improvement always occurs — my argument is that the improvement is the player, who is obviously and provably changeable, not the wood, which is inert. Of course wood can degrade, and it probably changes a bit as it ages, but qualty instruments are made from aged wood, sometimes decades’ worth.

    Professional violin soloists will tell about how it took them a year or two to discover the best ways of creating good tone from a big-name antique instrument, like a Strad or Guarneri. It is not a sensible proposition that a 300-year-old violin will “improve” over those two years. My main viola sounded odd but interesting when I first played it, when it was very new. It sounded great and felt good in a few days, after my ears adapted.

    The belief in breaking-in is prevalent in the violin world but lacks support from data, only self-reported impressions, in which it is like religion. There are other beliefs, such as the ideal amount of string behind the bridge, or swapping the C and G strings on the pegs in the scroll, which also have no data or viable theory to support them.

    The belief in breaking-in does not easily explain how I am still finding better tone from my solid body electric, or why I find improved tone coming from my undersaddle piezo pickup on my acoustic.
    Last edited by Tom Wright; Dec-17-2018 at 3:36pm.
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  22. #15
    Mando-Accumulator Jim Garber's Avatar
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    Default Re: Adi top break in

    I remember playing a 1923 or 1924 Loar F-5 at RetroFret a number of years ago. I had played a few others over time but one was at a friend's house and he was very nervous about it and the other was at Mandolin Brothers and Stan was hovering over me. Not that he wanted me to stop playing but he felt nervous that I would not run out of the store with it. But at RetroFret I had about a half an hour to play that mandolin. At first it sounded like other Gibsons—like my 23 snakehead, for instance—but after about 10 minutes I started to hear some of the subtler sounds that those mandolins are capable of. I think that Tim does have a point and while there is some truth that wood does change over time and therefore so does the sound, i do believe that the change in already aged wood is more subjective.

    I remember reading a few years ago on a guitar site some folks talking about an $8,000 boutique workshop guitar, exquisitely crafted, hide glue and the like, that the new owner was crowing about that he couldn't wait for a few years when it was really broken in. I commented i couldn't imagine that a guitar in that price range would not sound amazing already and if you had to wait for it to improve something was wrong. Just my humble opinion.
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    Default Re: Adi top break in

    Quote Originally Posted by Br1ck View Post
    Probably twenty years ago, my daughter's cello had an accident, and cracked the top down the center. Our luthier was very skeptical it would ever sound good after the repair, so we decided to carve a new top. When we got it back we were very disappointed. He had said to give it six months and boy was he ever right. It developed into a fine instrument. Wood changes to varying degrees when new. Adi it seems more than most.

    I've arrived at this after decades of skepticism. Experience has won out. But I also am a believer in what Frank Ford told me years ago. Don't buy an instrument for what you believe it can be. But it for what it is.
    I would have glued it first and if it failed made an new top. I repaired a cello that had a saxophone in a case fall on it from 6 feet. Multiple breaks in the top. That was maybe 20 years ago and as far as I know it is still playing.
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    Registered User seankeegan's Avatar
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    Default Re: Adi top break in

    Quote Originally Posted by Victor Daniel View Post
    I have a Pava I bought used a few years ago. It was still really new and green when I got my hands on it. I noticed then it took a good half hour or more of steady playing to really “wake up”. After waking up it sound more full, with a sound that seemed to fill the room. It just seems thinner and weaker when first played. After several years and hundreds of hours on it the red spruce seems to have deepened in tone and the “waking up time” is nonexistent if I’m playing it steadily.
    That's really interesting. I've a 2016 Ellis A4 I bought in September this year and what you described with your pava is exactly the same as I'm experiencing now with my Ellis. After about 20 mins or so of hard playing it really comes to life. Prior to that it can sound a little thin compared to when it's fully awake. I'm hoping a couple more years of whacking it daily will reduce down the wakeup time like with your pava.

  26. #18

    Default Re: Adi top break in

    Quote Originally Posted by pops1 View Post
    I would have glued it first and if it failed made an new top. I repaired a cello that had a saxophone in a case fall on it from 6 feet. Multiple breaks in the top. That was maybe 20 years ago and as far as I know it is still playing.
    It was an insurance job, it was a sound post crack, and the luthier had two pieces of wood he had been saving for twenty years. When my daughter was at concervatory, her cello was the cheapest in the section. Once a year, they did a blind test and this modest $12,000 instrument placed in the top three of twenty every year she was there. Median cost of the cellos was $25,000. Never had a regret regarding the new top.

    And least we think our mandolins are costly, these were serious student instruments. Pro instruments start at $40,000, with things getting real good at $60k up.
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  27. #19

    Default Re: Adi top break in

    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Garber View Post
    Adi top break in: That is a good name for a mystery movie.
    Next on Masterpiece Theater.......
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  29. #20

    Default Re: Adi top break in

    With the murder rate what it is in small English villages, it's a wonder anyone lives in the English countryside. On the surface so placid, but then the body count starts climbing.I get my info from the reliable PBS.
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  30. #21
    Registered User sblock's Avatar
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    Default Re: Adi top break in

    Quote Originally Posted by seankeegan View Post
    That's really interesting. I've a 2016 Ellis A4 I bought in September this year and what you described with your pava is exactly the same as I'm experiencing now with my Ellis. After about 20 mins or so of hard playing it really comes to life. Prior to that it can sound a little thin compared to when it's fully awake. I'm hoping a couple more years of whacking it daily will reduce down the wakeup time like with your pava.

    This whole "going to sleep" notion strains my credulity. You really should do a proper, controlled experiment to test it. It should be fairly easy. Enlist several mandolin-playing friends and set aside a period (multiple days) for testing.

    THE EXPERIMENT: Instead of warming up your instrument yourself, have one of your mandolin-playing friends first take the instrument well out view and out of earshot from you. Have him (or her) flip a coin and write down the result of the coin toss on a secret list (List #1). If the coin comes up heads, he (or she) tunes and then plays your instrument for 20 min. If it comes up tails, he (or she) simply holds the instrument against their body, in a playing position, for 20 min (to gently warm it). At the end of the 20 min warm-up session, your friend tunes your mandolin (regardless of whether it was played or not) and returns it to you, and places the secret List #1 inside a closed envelope that he gives back to you, then walks away. With your friend gone from the room, you now play your mandolin for 5 min or less and decide if the instrument was "awake" or "asleep" when you received it. You write down your decision on another secret list (List #2). You only get to look at List #2. No peeking at List #1: only your mandolin-playing friends only get to see List #1 for now. No information is shared at this stage -- that's important. Your friends do not get to see or hear you test it, and you do not get to see or hear whether they play your instrument.

    You repeat this process many times on separate days (allowing your instrument to go to "sleep" at night), building up secret Lists #1 and #2 until they each have from 20 to 30 entries. The more trials, the better, but you'll probably need at least 20 entries in each list to have any reasonable statistical power. Then, it's time to terminate the testing and analyse the data. Open the envelopes and compare secret List #1 (played/not played) with secret List #2 ("awake"/"asleep"). See how many times, in the total number of trials, you associated a pre-played mandolin with one that you thought was "awake."

    Post your raw data (that is, Lists #1 and #2) on the Mandolin Cafe. I (or others here) will be happy to carry out the math/statistics part of this experiment for you, which will determine the numerical chances that Lists #1 and #2 might be correlated in some way. (As a skeptic, my money is on this association being no better than random, on average.) Any significant correlation would suggest that you can actually determine, to some extent, whether your own mandolin is "awake" or "asleep," and it's not just the player (that is, you) who's doing the actual waking/warming up!

    I am sure folks on the Mandolin Cafe will be VERY interested in the results, if you are careful to stick to this protocol. To my knowledge, no one has done a decent job of "sleep/awake" testing with mandolins. But it should be perfectly possible to do that! By the way, for those who care about these technical things: the protocol above describes a a forced-choice, binary, double-blinded experiment, with Bernoulli trials. It is an example of a controlled experimental design.

    NOTE ON DESIGN: This protocol cannot determine decisively if some sleep/awake phenomenon exists in general, but it CAN determine if you -- or anyone else tested -- are able to hear a difference! In other words, a negative result (no correlation) would mean that you are unable to hear any difference, and suggest that the "sleep/awake" phenomenon does not work for you, specifically. A positive result would indicate that you can actually hear a difference, and that either the "sleep/awake" notion is quite real, or that there's a loophole/flaw somewhere in the experimental design, and that you are cueing instead on something else that we had not anticipated.
    Last edited by sblock; Dec-22-2018 at 12:36pm.

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  32. #22

    Default Re: Adi top break in

    There is also a whole grey area of technique,nowhere you can fret a note and make a sound, but make a much cleaner sound if your finger placement is spot on. I know my brain tells my fingers to adjust as I warm up.

    But if you consider wood fibers as if they were muscles, it is not inconceivable to me they would loosen up.
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  33. #23

    Default Re: Adi top break in

    Quote Originally Posted by Br1ck View Post
    With the murder rate what it is in small English villages, it's a wonder anyone lives in the English countryside. On the surface so placid, but then the body count starts climbing.I get my info from the reliable PBS.
    The documentary on that crime-solving priest was a real eye opener.
    Gunga......Gunga.....Gu-Lunga

  34. #24

    Default Re: Adi top break in

    And who would ever go to Midsomer?
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  35. #25

    Default Re: Adi top break in

    Quote Originally Posted by Br1ck View Post
    And who would ever go to Midsomer?
    Vacationing murderers.
    Gunga......Gunga.....Gu-Lunga

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