A state-switched device is a device that can instantaneously change one or more of its dynamic properties. A vibration absorber that can switch between discrete stiffenesses is termed a state-switched absorber. Using a maximum work extraction switching rule, the state-switched absorber has been shown to increase performance in lumped mass systems as compared to a classical tuned vibration absorber. Because the state-switched absorber can retune its resonance frequency during the response of the system, the bandwidth which the state-switched absorber is effective is larger than that of classical passive devices. The work at hand considers the effectiveness of vibration control using state-switched absorber attached to a continuous system subjected to a multifrequency excitation. The switching rule, tuning frequencies, and location of attachment on the continuous system are optimized for the state-switched absorber to achieve the lowest kinetic energy in the insolated system. Tuning and location optimization is also done for a classical tuned vibration absorber. The optimized performance of the state-switched absorber is compared to the optimized performance of the tuned vibration absorber for a number of different forcing cases.