Is it possible that wood has special properties that are triggered by vibration that nobody in human history has yet proven? Sure. Anything's possible I guess. It's possible that an invisible and undetectable Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe with a touch of His noodly appendage.
The website in question uses a lot of hocus pocus in an attempt to sell their product:
The play-in process can be accelerated and you should see moderate to large gains in tone, balance, resonance, and playability. A lot of older instruments really score well in increasing the ‘playability,’ or how easy a note is to pull from your instrument. A lighter touch, more dynamic range, etc.
Damn. Here I was thinking that my old guitars are less playable because of worn frets, shrinking/warped wood, and the need for a new setup. Turns out the answer all along was to vibrate the strings more rather than get them setup properly and the frets recrowned/replaced. Weird that the many years of playing/vibrating the strings has just worn them rather than turned these instruments into super playable ultra guitars.
The play-in process is the scientific phenomenon in which the quality and volume of sound from an instrument increases with constant stimulation.
Ah good. We're using science. Uh . . . so why is there no actual research on the website. Especially under the tab marked "research". Or . . . you know, even simple graphs? Measured results from experiments? Evidence of experiments?
In a general sense, the ToneRite® works by releasing the inherent stress in the instrument by de-dampening. Fine instruments are crafted from many pieces of wood and material glued and bound together. This system naturally has tension built into it. Over time, the tension naturally gets worse due to entropy.
???
Entropy . . .
1. a thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system's thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in the system.
"the second law of thermodynamics says that entropy always increases with time" - nope
2. lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder.
"a marketplace where entropy reigns supreme" - I guess this is what the writer is going for??
3. (in information theory) a logarithmic measure of the rate of transfer of information in a particular message or language. - nope
So, tell me how entropy is supposed to increase tension in an instrument? And explain to me why an instrument that isn't played for a long time doesn't just explode from all the tension that's building up over the years . . .
The secret behind the ToneRite® is a small high-g vibration that can silently excite the body of an instrument for long periods at a time.
When you say high-g . . . you mean it's playing a high-g note? Or is this just a fancy way of someone saying something is fast (like high g acceleration)?
The Play-In process involves the individual components of an instrument learning to resonate as a whole instead of against one another destructively. This process occurs due to vibrational energy that effectively transfers into the instrument to de-dampen it. The result of this process is added volume, resonance, dynamic range, playability, etc.
'Vibrational energy' is a meaningless phrase. Kinetic energy can be transferred into an object by vibrating the object though. The only thing is, the instrument would lose all of this kinetic energy via heat and noise. Remember how you were talking about entropy earlier? That's basically what entropy is all about.
What is all this about an instrument learning to resonate? Which part of the wood is learning? Can we test the instrument on how much it has learned? Jesus, this is poorly written.
. . . . All of this for a 150$ vibrator?