About a month ago, we got our hands on a new product called the Guitar Hummer. In the form of a guitar stand, its purpose it to ‘play in’ your
acoustic guitar by the means of motorized vibrations. Its goal is to simulate the guitar being played, in order to produce a better sounding instrument in a shorter amount of time.
This may sound confusing. To simplify, playing your guitar vibrates the entire instrument. These vibrations condition the guitar to sound better. So essentially, the more you play it, the better the instrument will sound.
The Guitar Hummer works in a way to speed up this process, as it does take years of playing to really notice a difference in tone. Their ideas is to keep the guitar on their stand 24/7 when not playing and have it vibrate constantly. We decided to take the challenge of using the Guitar Hummer for one month to see if we could notice any difference in tone.
The test subject, my 40 year old classical guitar. I bought it used about a year ago, and it was virtually unplayed. Whenever I wasn’t playing it, it was left on the Guitar Hummer.
One thing I noticed right away was that when it was on the stand, you could hear a bit of a hum, hence the name of the company. Since I leave the stand out in the living room, this wasn’t an issue. The Guitar Hummer does have an intensity control to adjust the vibrations. So if it is too loud, you can dim it down and still get it vibrating.
The Result: After a month, we did notice a change in tone, although it was small. Still, it was impressive that in a months time that we could notice a change. What we noticed exactly was that the sustain improved a bit and the overall sound of the instrument was more musical.
While the result wasn’t much, this was only from a one month test. Since there was a difference, I’m very curious to see what a year with the Guitar Hummer would yield.
The Guitar Hummer is not cheap, retailing at $150 US. But its designed for high-end acoustic guitars that want to have the luxury of being a played-in instrument in a much quicker timeframe. So if you want your acoustic guitar to sound its best, and you don’t want to wait many years, then the Guitar Hummer is for you. In the end, it really is a truly innovative product in the acoustic guitar world. Would be very interesting if they expanded to other acoustic instruments such as violins. Until then, good vibrations.