We all know that guitars, like fine wine, age with time. A big part of why old "vintage" guitars tend to sound more resonant and lively is because the woods have gotten more seasoned and more played-in with time. There have been stories of people placing their guitars in front of their monitor speakers and putting them at full blast in order to "season" them. Many companies like Tonerite and Primevibe have jumped on the bandwagon to offer a product that allows the average home user to "season" their guitar. Reviewed here is the Primevibe, a curious contraption with two speaker transducer that you place on your guitar.
Getting It to Work The Primevibe mainly works by resonating an input audio source (of your choice) through your guitar itself. The two transducers are placed on your guitar in various positions depending on the type of guitar. I used the Primevibe on a Timothy S10J test guitar fitted with Elixir strings. I stuck my mp3 players output into the input jack of the Primevibe, turned on the power and was surprised to hear only a soft sound coming out of the transducers. I then placed the transducers on the guitar and viola! My guitar was instantly transformed into a speaker. The music seemed to be resonating from within the guitar and a quick touch of the guitar confirmed that the guitar body and strings seemed to be vibrating due to the output from the transducers.
Your Guitar is Your Hi-Fi I concluded that the best way to use the Primevibe is to set it up as you would set up your home stereo, allowing you to listen to music and season your guitar at the same time. Of course, the volume would have to depend on the quality of your guitar and its construction. Such a setup would also allow the Primevibe to act as a conversation starter as the device no doubt will have guests asking about it.
Enough said, does it really work? I recorded the Timothy S10J before and after 3 full days of seasoning it with the Primevibe, and recorded are the results. Overall, I felt that there were slightly more overtones and resonance from the guitar after the Primevibe was done with it. Here are the clips so that you can listen for yourself.
Before Primevibe (Some fingerstyle followed by strumming)
We all know that guitars, like fine wine, age with time. A big part of why old "vintage" guitars tend to sound more resonant and lively is because the woods have gotten more seasoned and more played-in with time. There have been stories of people placing their guitars in front of their monitor speakers and putting them at full blast in order to "season" them. Many companies like Tonerite and Primevibe have jumped on the bandwagon to offer a product that allows the average home user to "season" their guitar. Reviewed here is the Primevibe, a curious contraption with two speaker transducer that you place on your guitar.