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PostPosted: Fri Feb 27, 2015 10:07 am 
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Woah, be careful with that joke, it's and antique.

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PostPosted: Fri Feb 27, 2015 10:22 am 
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You should give the 21:1 a try, bliss


gaah :D Wes buddy I have the 21 : 1 on one of my guitars and hate them..... Especially if you like alternate tunning these things will give you carpel bicep..... :D


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2015 3:04 pm 
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Barry Daniels wrote:
The key to the process may be the amount of torrefication used. Commercially torrefied lumber may too crisp for good tone wood. The guys at Martin seem to understand this.


Exactly correct.

My understanding is that Martin is using torrefaction to target (age) the tops to a specific vintage. So, if they are trying to duplicate a guitar built in 1940, they microscopically analyze the amount of crystallization present today in a 1940 top, then tailor the torrefaction process to age the new top wood so that the crystallization matches the 1940 top.

A top built in 1910, for example, would have a higher degree of crystallization and a top built in 1950 would have less.

As you point out, there are two commercial, non-musical uses for torrefaction. The first is for bio-fuel. The other is to weather-proof wood for external uses. Both are unsuitable for musical instruments.


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2015 3:15 pm 
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kencierp wrote:
I guess we'll be able to make guitars as good as Yamaha? They have been using torification for years and at least five years on guitars maybe more

http://www.yamaha.com/about_yamaha/research/are/


If you're so inclined, you can read about the A.R.E. process used by Yamaha in their patent.

They give times, temps, pressures, etc., which would allow anyone with an autoclave that's big enough for tone wood to make their own torrefied tone wood.

See Yamaha's US Patent 6,667,429 (Method for manufacturing modified wood): http://www.google.com/patents/US6667429

They're torrefying guitars, violins, pianos, even stage floors.


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2015 4:21 pm 
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DanSavage wrote:
Barry Daniels wrote:
The key to the process may be the amount of torrefication used. Commercially torrefied lumber may too crisp for good tone wood. The guys at Martin seem to understand this.


Exactly correct.

My understanding is that Martin is using torrefaction to target (age) the tops to a specific vintage. So, if they are trying to duplicate a guitar built in 1940, they microscopically analyze the amount of crystallization present today in a 1940 top, then tailor the torrefaction process to age the new top wood so that the crystallization matches the 1940 top.

A top built in 1910, for example, would have a higher degree of crystallization and a top built in 1950 would have less.

As you point out, there are two commercial, non-musical uses for torrefaction. The first is for bio-fuel. The other is to weather-proof wood for external uses. Both are unsuitable for musical instruments.


Does this mean, then, that there won't be any further "aging" of a torrefied top, in that the sound you get will not open up further, as most non-torrefied tops do, with time? I guess it wouldn't be a bad thing if you really liked the initial sound.

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2015 4:59 pm 
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Hesh wrote:
weslewis wrote:
You should give the 21:1 a try, bliss


gaah :D Wes buddy I have the 21 : 1 on one of my guitars and hate them..... Especially if you like alternate tunning these things will give you carpel bicep..... :D


wow7-eyes They are a pain and I can see from a repair point of view how much trouble they could be!!! kind of an Eat Drink acquired taste, like lite beer!!

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2015 5:41 pm 
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Alex Kleon wrote:

Does this mean, then, that there won't be any further "aging" of a torrefied top, in that the sound you get will not open up further, as most non-torrefied tops do, with time? I guess it wouldn't be a bad thing if you really liked the initial sound.

Alex


I wouldn't think the torrification process would stop the wood from further aging. I would think it would continue to crystallize after the process but at what rate? Who knows. . .

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2015 7:53 pm 
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Alex Kleon wrote:
Does this mean, then, that there won't be any further "aging" of a torrefied top, in that the sound you get will not open up further, as most non-torrefied tops do, with time? I guess it wouldn't be a bad thing if you really liked the initial sound.

Alex


I wouldn't think so. The process used by Martin attempts to duplicate the cellular structure of the wood of a top of the same vintage. Once processed, the cellular structure of the top would continue to age normally.

Torrefaction just speeds up the aging. Or, at least that's what I gather from reading the Yamaha patent.


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2015 8:17 pm 
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DanSavage wrote:
Barry Daniels wrote:
The key to the process may be the amount of torrefication used. Commercially torrefied lumber may too crisp for good tone wood. The guys at Martin seem to understand this.


Exactly correct.

My understanding is that Martin is using torrefaction to target (age) the tops to a specific vintage. So, if they are trying to duplicate a guitar built in 1940, they microscopically analyze the amount of crystallization present today in a 1940 top, then tailor the torrefaction process to age the new top wood so that the crystallization matches the 1940 top.

A top built in 1910, for example, would have a higher degree of crystallization and a top built in 1950 would have less.


I remain highly skeptical of this rationale for using torrefaction because it is riddled with assumptions, particularly the "time machine" aspect of it. Such as:
- It assumes that the amount of crystallization is the only characteristic of the wood that matters for the desired vintage tone.
- It assumes that the rate of crystallization is the same or very similar for all guitars regardless of what conditions each of them was exposed to over the past seventy five years. I find that hard to believe given that what the tops of the various guitars from 1940 have experienced in the time since they were built is all over the map and none of it (hopefully!) is even remotely like what happens to a piece of wood put in an autoclave at high temperature and pressure and no oxygen.
- It assumes that all the great sounding guitars made in a given year have the same degree of crystallization. Any evidence for that? How many of the not so great sounding guitars from that same year actually have the same degree of crystallization as the great sounding ones?

I would like to play some guitars built with torrefied wood to see how they sound. Maybe this processing method does do something really good for tone. I would have more respect for the people marketing this stuff if they would just say they have developed a new process that imparts beneficial properties to the wood such as increased stiffness, nice coloring, increased stability, and good tone. Those are all desirable features. Where they cross the line into marketing bullstuff is when they claim or imply that torrefaction replicates the natural aging process which people happen to associate so closely with highly desirable vintage tone. I don't believe that the evidence needed to to support that claim exists so the obvious reason to make that claim is that they know many guitar players are willing to part with their hard earned money in an effort to get that desired tone especially if they are led to believe that torrefaction replicates natural aging and, because of that, they can get the sound of a 1940 guitar by buying a brand new one today. Maybe torrefaction does allow you to beat the system and get a guitar that sounds like it was built in 1940, but the manufacturers should not stoop to marketing based on unsubstantiated claims or fantasies of time machines. There's already enough myth associated with instruments. No need to generate even more.

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2015 8:39 pm 
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If they could mimic vintage sound by doing stuff to topwood, then what's the point of wine/spirit makers aging their products for decades to achieve desired flavors?

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 1:22 am 
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J De Rocher wrote:
I would like to play some guitars built with torrefied wood to see how they sound.


Me, too.

I have been wanting to discover for myself about torrefaction, so after searching for a long to for a supplier of torrefied tone wood I finally found one and bought some so that I could do my own first-hand comparison.

In the meantime, here's a side-by-side comparison John Hall did between two brand-new guitars he built. One with a torrefied top and one with a normal top.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gow0SP1KBHc

There's no question that torrefaction alters the cellular structure of the wood. The only real question is whether this alteration results in an improved tone. I do know that the torrefied top wood I bought does have a different tap tone than the non-torrefied wood I've got. It's definitely a lot more resonant and I'm really looking forward to hearing how it sounds when it's on the guitar I'm restoring and in comparison to the guitar I restored using non-torrefied wood.



These users thanked the author DanSavage for the post: wrstew (Thu Mar 05, 2015 4:13 pm)
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 11:13 am 
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The only way to own a vintage guitar and all it intrinsic value is to actually purchase or perhaps inherit an authentic original old instrument. Conversions, clones, copies are nothing more than conversion, clones or copies no matter what materials are used or who made them. When it comes to laying out 5 or 6 grand I bet if you check with the folks at Elderly, generally speaking a new instrument in that price range is far more likely to get purchased by a "player" than an old guitar.

So when the sales guy pulls out the Blue Book and shows a potential buyer a ratty looking 1937 "000" or "D" with an asking price of $60000 -- the new $5000 "timed tuned" is supposed to appear to be an unbelievable bargain -- and its my view that unbelievable is the operative word. And I'll go back to my posts regarding Yamaha --- this is not new technology -- it is just new marketing.

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 12:55 pm 
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Torrefying tone wood isn't about recreating an older guitar. It's about recreating the sound of an older guitar.

Whereas Yamaha's A.R.E. process modifies the wood to achieve the best overall sound, Martin's process is about modifying the wood to achieve the overall sound of a specific vintage guitar.


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 2:33 pm 
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I agree with Jay. I can see possible benefits to the torrefaction process, but marketing hype is obscuring the discussion. The idea that one can "modify" the torrefaction process to target the tonal characteristics of a specific guitar is very difficult for me to believe.

What I can readily accept is that one of Martin's biggest competitors is the strong, active market for their own used instruments. Another is the strong, active market for custom guitars built to the specifications that they themselves abandoned long ago. Expanding their offerings to include custom instruments and developing proprietary methodologies like the VTS system are clearly efforts intended to combat these issues.

As has been noted, torrefaction is not new. The only recent development to this story is that it has supposedly now been refined in a manner that offers Martin (and others) new marketing opportunities.

Hmm... follow the money.

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 3:04 pm 
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Another thing is, proprietary systems make repair very difficult if not impossible. Like what happens if something goes wrong with Taylor's pickup system? Usually it has to be replaced because nobody knows how it's fixed...

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 3:38 pm 
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DanSavage wrote:

If you're so inclined, you can read about the A.R.E. process used by Yamaha in their patent.

They give times, temps, pressures, etc., which would allow anyone with an autoclave that's big enough for tone wood to make their own torrefied tone wood.

See Yamaha's US Patent 6,667,429 (Method for manufacturing modified wood): http://www.google.com/patents/US6667429

They're torrefying guitars, violins, pianos, even stage floors.


Maybe it is time I start paying attention to which labs around here are renovating or upgrading. Scoring an autoclave is not out of the realm of possibility. Then I could serialize all my plane irons too. . .

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 4:07 pm 
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Bryan Bear wrote:
Maybe it is time I start paying attention to which labs around here are renovating or upgrading. Scoring an autoclave is not out of the realm of possibility. Then I could serialize all my plane irons too. . .


I seriously considered going down this route so I could torrefy my own wood, but at the time I didn't have the scratch to buy an autoclave large enough to hold the wood, nor a place to put it.

Then, I looked around for shops small enough to be willing to work with me that had an autoclave large enough to do the job. I actually did find one in a 3D printing company, but by the time I was ready, they'd moved out of state.


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 4:13 pm 
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The other question is, what benefit does torrifying really have? I mean it's like spending a million dollars to save 2 cents if you know what I mean.

It is better to focus on voicing the top than to spend all this effort on all cool sounding (but expensive) technology to get a good sounding guitar. I do know anytime someone tries to replicate aged wine they have always failed.

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 4:16 pm 
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George L wrote:
The idea that one can "modify" the torrefaction process to target the tonal characteristics of a specific guitar is very difficult for me to believe.


It's simply a matter of trial and error. All the engineers would have to do is look at a cross-section or slice of a sample of the vintage wood under the microscope, or some other methodology of analysis, then torrefy new wood samples adjusting the the time/temp/pressure until they came up with the right combination that matches what they see in the older wood.

This is exactly what Yamaha says they did in their patent:

US 6667429 B2 wrote:
BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

An object of the present invention is to obtain a method for manufacturing modified wood, which is preferably used as a material for musical instruments, in which the treatment steps are simple, chemicals are not used, and the wood after treatment has good acoustic properties.

To solve the above problems, an aspect of the present invention is to provide a method for manufacturing modified wood comprising a step of retaining wood for 1 to 60 minutes under high pressure steam of 0.2 to 1.6 MPa at 120 to 200° C.

The optimum conditions for the high pressure steam treatment are determined by the desired degree of the treatment, the kind of wood, the dimensions of wood, and the like.

Furthermore, another aspect of the present invention is to provide a musical instrument made from the modified wood obtained by the above method as a soundboard or other parts.

According to the method of the present invention, since chemicals such as formaldehyde are never used, there is no effect on the environment or the human body. Furthermore, since treatment steps are simple and require a short time to complete, production costs are decreased.

Furthermore, since cellulose chains in the wood are partially hydrolyzed and rearranged, residual strain in the wood is resolved and the degree of crystallinity increases. Therefore, a modified wood having a superior dynamic modulus of elasticity (E) and oscillation properties such as damping factor of oscillation (tan δ) can be obtained. The above change is similar to the change in wood which occurs with the passage of time of some hundred years, therefore, it can be said that the modified wood of the present invention is antiquated in the above treatment.


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 5:20 pm 
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 5:27 pm 
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One thing I would give credit to the writers of the Yamaha patent for is that they don't claim the process replicates natural aging. The closest they come is that line "it can be said that the modified wood of the present invention is antiquated in the above treatment". Instead, they focused their claims on improvements to the physical properties of the treated wood that would be beneficial to instruments.

The idea of looking at wood sections through a microscope and adjusting treatment conditions until what they see looks like what they see in naturally aged wood suffers from the same problem of assuming that whatever they are looking at is a direct indicator of tonal quality and no other physical factors of the wood play a part in it. Maybe yes, maybe no.

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 5:45 pm 
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Like everyone else here, when I pick up two top plates and tap them I hear a difference. Like snowflakes, no two tops are exactly the same. If I expose those two top plates to the same torrefaction process they are still going to be different. So, does one then sound like 1937 and the other 1938?

As we all know, there are great variabilities at play here. Too many for me to accept the claims of specificity being used to market torrefaction.

Will the guitars sound "better" than they would have had the tops not been torrefied? Maybe.

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 7:54 pm 
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J De Rocher wrote:
The idea of looking at wood sections through a microscope and adjusting treatment conditions until what they see looks like what they see in naturally aged wood suffers from the same problem of assuming that whatever they are looking at is a direct indicator of tonal quality and no other physical factors of the wood play a part in it. Maybe yes, maybe no.


The microscope example I gave was based upon the videos on Yamaha's A.R.E. web page that describes the changes that take place to the wood fibers at a cellular level. I really don't know how Martin is measuring the wood to determine how closely it duplicates the vintage wood.

In Yamaha's patent, they provide the details and formulas of one test that measures the dynamic modulus of elasticity. Their diagrams, which are not present in Google's patent page, shows the changes of these properties after treatment. As near as I can tell, they didn't torrefy one piece of wood, then try to compare it to another piece of non-torrefied wood. They tested a piece of wood, torrefied it, then tested it again to note the difference the process made on that specific piece of wood. Doing it any other way would be useless because as has been pointed out, no two pieces of wood sound the same, even when cut from the same log.

In another video they show diagrams of spectral analysis of a piece of wood before and after treatment.

Finally, they had musicians and listeners evaluate the sound of treated wood after it was made into musical instruments as compared to instruments made without treated wood.

US 6667429 B2 wrote:
Change in Sound

By using the modified wood of the present invention as a material for musical instruments, the sound was changed as follows.

(a) Violin

Three violins were prepared using the modified wood (spruce and maple) according to the present invention as the soundboard and other members. Each violin was played by ten famous Japanese or non-Japanese violinists. As a result, each violin was highly evaluated with respect to volume, sound, and expression. In particular, the sound of the violins according to the present invention was similar to that of the old masters violins made in 1500s to 1700s extremely highly evaluated.

(b) Piano

Two pianos were prepared using the modified wood (spruce) according to the present invention as a soundboard. The pianos were compared with a piano prepared using untreated wood. Each piano was played by two famous players and was evaluated by 20 listeners. As a result, each piano using the modified wood was highly evaluated with respect to volume, sound, and expression. Furthermore, bridges prepared using the modified wood were incorporated in the above pianos, and each piano was evaluated similarly. As a result, each piano was highly evaluated with respect to volume, sound, and expression.


WRT Martin's process, I was talking to George Sabolick about their VTS. He was invited by Martin to play 5 guitars and rate each one and say which he thought sounded the best. He said that he wasn't told anything about the guitars beforehand, so it was, essentially, a blind test. Afterward, he was told he picked the one with the torrefied top as the one that he thought sounded the best.

I'm not trying to sell anyone on torrefaction. I'm only providing this information for the sake of discussion.


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 8:16 pm 
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DanSavage wrote:

I'm not trying to sell anyone on torrefaction. I'm only providing this information for the sake of discussion.


I for one, haven't thought you were trying to sell it. All good information on an interesting subject.

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