While My Guitar Gently Breathes
Believe it or not, guitars breathe, and they do need to breathe if they are to sound good. Take out a guitar that has been kept in its case for ages, especially an acoustic guitar, and pluck the strings. It will sound muffled and stifled. The ringing sustain with clear overtones that you expect from a good guitar will be absent. But leave the guitar outside its case for a few days, in a place that's not so humid, and there will be a difference in the sound. Good wines breathe, and so do guitars. The type of finish (paint) used on a guitar is a very important factor in its ability to breathe. Many vintage guitars sound great because they do not have thick coats of paint but were au naturel, or had only a thin coat of paint followed by a top coat of nitrocellulose lacquer. The ban on nitrocellulose lacquers (for health or environmental reasons I think) and the fashion for guitars to have custom colors like Shell Pink, Pacific Blue, Candy Apple Red, etc resulted in guitars that could...