Tagged As: Vintage Guitar Amplifiers
Question:
Maybe someone can explain this to me. I was just browsing around Ebay and was noticing people selling vintage Fenders for THOUSANDS of dollars. They are is piss-poor condition. What makes them worth so much? People are buying them without even playing them. Is the idea of owning a guitar that old worth the risk of getting one that sounds like crap? Don't tell me they all sound like the voice of an angel. Even Fender makes a clunker now and then. I just paid about $700US for a '99 Tele and I'm damn happy with the sound it makes. What would possess me to spend another $3000 to get an old one? Is it the investment value, the status? While were at it, why would someone pay big bucks for a guitar that some rock star signed? Big frickin' deal. Joe guitarist signed this guitar and now it's supposed to be worth more money?
Answer:
The vintage guitar craze is a fad based on myths and misconceptions, fueled by collectors with more money than common sense. There are far more crappy old guitars than good ones. Despite what many people have been led to believe lately, quality standards were far more lax in the '50s and '60s than they are now. Fender has always been in the business of making as many guitars as possible, as cheaply and efficiently as possible. The difference is, there is now far more knowledge about how the components of a guitar work together, what to look for in wood that will make the instrument sound good etc. When pickups were hand wound, it was hit and miss as to whether your pickup would be average, overwound, or underwound. Now every pickup of a specific model has an exact number of windings, insuring constant quality. Overall, the quality of the modern made Fender far surpasses that of the average Fender from the '50s or '60s. Manual laborers of varying skill levels have largely been replaced by machines which produce consistently high quality. The closest thing to an original early '60s strat you can now buy, is the Mexican made standard strat. (You will have to settle for far better, more consistent pickups than the average vintage strat though... such is the curse of progress.) An early surge of vintage guitar mania started when CBS bought Fender. People heard lots of stories about how the big bad corporate meanie was throwing all of Fender's quality out the window, in the name of mega greed. Poor Leo's legacy was now ashes in the wind. These stories originated with some less than stellar solid state amplifiers that Fender began to produce. CBS was actually trying to make better, more modern amps, based on principles of hi-fi amplifiers. Unfortunately they failed to realize that the signal coloration by tube guitar amplifiers was part of the desired sound. The flat response of hi-fi amps sounded harsh and unmusical when used to amplify guitars. Unfortunately, a few grains of truths about poor sounding amps became mountains of stories about Fender's abandonment of quality under the crushing grip of CBS. Stories abounded about the money CBS was saving by using one less screw to hold the stratocaster's neck to it's body. Poor Leo must be crying himself to sleep over the terrible things the ruthless new management was doing to his baby. Truth was, Leo designed the 3 bolt neck joint, and just never got around to applying it until CBS took over. Many people who sing the praises of pre-CBS strats, seem to have forgotten about a somewhat popular guitarist named James Marshall Hendrix who played mainly shiny new CBS made strats, once he could afford them. Of course now, the term vintage has become so popular, those once scorned CBS era strats are now being termed vintage as well and are increasing in price quite quickly. Hell, anything made before 1990 is now being advertised as vintage, no matter how crappy the guitar was when it was made or how beat it is now. Many factors are driving the current desire for vintage guitars, from nostalgia, to images of Stevie Ray Vaughan's beat up old mongrel strat, to guitar publications constantly comparing every new piece of guitar gear with it's closest vintage predecessor. Even the guitar companies have jumped on the vintage bandwagon, with overpriced reissues, relics, classics, retro models etc. Guitar companies have always been in business to make money. The only difference is, you now get a far higher quality instrument for your money than ever before
What's the deal with vintage guitars!?!
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Comment #1 (Posted by geneautreysbigtoe
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It's an ego thing fueled by chuckleheads with deep pockets. My guitar's older than yours, nah-nah-nah! Or : My collection's bigger than yours, etc., ad nauseum. I own several "vintage" US guitars myself and I've managed to avoid the brain damage that seems to overcome people when they come in close contact with these old instruments. I even still play my guitars - a shocking revelation to any dedicated vintage buff. I was playing in a coffeehouse with a friend of mine - we had an acoustic guitar duo - and during a break, some guy came up to me and asked about my guitar, a '57 Gibson J50. He wanted to buy it and I told him it wasn't for sale. He kept pestering me, upping the price in the thousand dollar range and I finally told him to f*** off (politely) but he wouldn't quit. He was annoyed that I had changed the tuners but still wanted to buy it. When he finally realized I wasn't giving in, he became nasty, telling me I shouldn't be allowed to own an vintage instrument if I was going to "ruin" it by constantly playing it and altering it (the tuners) from it's original state. What an idiot. My father bought that guitar back in the early '60s and eventually gave it to me. Now this dumbass is telling me I don't deserve to own it?!?? This kind of thing happened to me a few more times over the years and lead me to believe that most, if not all, of these vintage freaks are egotistical, narrow minded jerks. Whatever happens in the vintage guitar market does not surprise me a bit. As long as these nitwits have the financial means, the lunacy will continue unchecked. No matter though, I just bought a China-made acoustic that's a dead-ringer for a Martin D28V - from construction to sound, it's a beauty and no collector would even come within 20 feet of it because it's an *gasp* CHINESE-made guitar!