.jpg)
Your shopping cart is currently empty. .
Tone Rite
It is best used primarily to help break-in a newer instrument, or to keep an older guitar from going "to sleep". Or to "wake" a guitar up, if it hasn't been played in a while.
A single 72-hour session with the device is insufficient. Many people have discovered that several sessions are necessary before true, audible results can be noted.
The device does nothing but introduce vibrations into the instrument, with a switch to control the intensity.
Does it work as advertised? Well, your results may vary. But I have not yet seen anyone who used one who thought that it did nothing at all, whether they paid for it, or just borrowed it for a while.
An older instrument will probably not really benefit from using the ToneRite. Age and playing time will have already created the same kind of changes that the ToneRite purports to introduce.
A younger guitar, however (say one to ten years) ... that's a horse of a different color. In these kind of situations, the device can help accelerate the aging process to a certain degree, just as if you had spent several hundred additional hours playing the guitar. And so, in other words, it is more-or-less just a shortcut.
It's been hypothesized that vibrating the wood raises the temperature of the cells, which might help the resins dry out faster. It may also relieve some of the inherent stresses within the joints and bracing.
If you really want to get into depth about this, the Collings Forum has a couple of very long threads on the subject, including a chart with over a hundred guitars listed and the user results.
If you want some kind of proof that the device works, I'd advise making before and after recordings, with the recording environment kept with as few changes between the two recordings as possible. Otherwise, this will be based entirely on memory, and that is far too subjective to be a reliable factor, if you like the scientific method.
However, I honestly believe that the device works. I bought a used guitar earlier this year, in very good condition, with excellent tone. But after about 360 hours of time spent with the ToneRite (at night, while I'm sleeping), the guitar seems to me to have greater volume, depth, and woodiness. All the tonal characteristics that first attracted me to the guitar have increased exponentially, as if the guitar has aged ten years or more. I've also noticed the the playability is better, as if the top is not quite as stiff, which allows me to be more dynamic, with less effort. And that goes for both hands. It frets easier, and there is a greater response to volume changes in the right hand ... it is simply more responsive to a lighter touch.
The treatments also appear to have a permanent effect, which is something people have wondered about a time or two.
If you want to know more, go peruse the Collings threads. I'm aware that everything mentioned in those threads is based entirely on the ears of the players, and perhaps once the device is purchased, people hope for change, and as a result, hear something different whether it has actually happened or not. But there are some really good, experienced players on that forum, who have been playing all their lives. And if they consistently hear improvements, I'd have to think that there is something to the use of the product.
Myself, I've been playing over 40 years, and I tend to think that my ear is fairly good. My guitar is even better than it was when I bought it, and it was impressive from the start."
My two cents ...
... JT