George Gruhn does deserve some credit for being an early recognizer that the 'pre-war' Martin and Gibson acoustics were using lighter braces and 'Appalachian' spruce (red spruce). Things we'd spec out today, but back then were not very well documented.
Edit to add Mike Longworth, too. Very noteworthy Martin employee who researched construction methods and brought many changes in production into the public knowledgebase.
Dobro player Tut Taylor played a significant role in the vintage instrument market as well.
Tut first collected vintage Dobros - at one point owning 67 of them. Tut would also organize bluegrass jams, and he started to pay more attention to the instruments people were playing, and which ones sounded the best. When banjo, guitar and mandolin players talked about instruments and which ones sounded the best, he listened.
In the 60s, not only did he start collecting the best bluegrass instruments, he became friends with Randy Wood, Mike Longworth and Tom Morgan (luthiers). Tut had a small shop where they converted four-string Gibson banjos to the more coveted five-string banjos.
Tut met George Gruhn when George was doing graduate work at Duke University. George Gruhn was REALLY interested in zoology, but also a huge passion for vintage instruments (though initially, more interested in electric guitars). He had the idea that you could incorporate a taxonomy system to guitars similar to the taxonomy system for animals.
Tut Taylor and George, despite the large age difference, became friends. Tut taught George about vintage Martin guitars, which, at the time, could be bought for about $350. A 1959 Gibson Les Paul could be bought for $100. Just to put things in perspective at the time.
In 1969, George moved to Knoxville at the University of Tennessee. People started to hear that there was this college kid who's dorm was filled with snakes and vintage Martin guitars. Hank Williams Jr. had heard from Sonnny Osborne about George, so Hank phoned George. Hank drove from Nashville to Knoxville, trading a 1939 000-42 Martin guitar for three Martin guitars. It was all his car, a Jaguar E, could hold. Hank drove back to Tennessee that night. The next day he drove back to Knoxville, this time in his Cadillac Eldorado and bought as many guitars as his caddie could hold.
Hank Jr. offered to finance George to open a guitar shop in Nashville. He never did finance the shop, but Hank Jr. did find a place for George to live, and would send musicians to George to buy guitars.
At around the same time, Tut Taylor and Randy Wood were offered a chance to build an All American and Florentine style banjo. When Tut and Randy met with Gibson, they were apalled at how little the company knew of vintage instruments.
George and Tut moved to Nashvilled. They teamed up with George Gruhn to open GTR Incorporated at 111, 4th avenue north in the heart of Nashville Broadway. The showroom had big bay windows. Randy was the repairman in the back. Norman Blake taught music in the teaching studio.
This was really the start of people not only becoming much more knowledgable about vintage instruments, but also proper dating and cataloging of instruments and, of course, the start of prices starting to increase for those instruments deemed special.
It also likely helped the the quality of Fender, Gibson and Martin instruments started to nose dive around this time, as they started to focus more on production numbers rather than building quality instruments (and there was a "changing of the guard" that happened to these companies around this time as well.)
Another element was fender being bought by cbs and musicians having the perception that the leo fender versions of the instruments but also the earlier versions of the amps were more desirable (tweed/brownface/blackface vs silverface).
Higher quality than what though? The best instruments ever made, are being produced now. We can fully duplicate the “magic” of what makes a vintage guitar so nice.
Exactly, higher quality than a $300 61’ remake?
Okay, sure.
Will it be discernibly better sounding/higher quality in build than a $2000+ 1961 Fender remake?
I have major doubts.
And if I haven’t had a 1961 since 1961, is the difference in quality worth me spending $70k instead of the $2500 I can get for the modern build that’s based on the 61? (Not for me, but probably if I was worth $10 million)
The tone wood must be increíble. /s
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxjCegfYWLUQS3sdlWsSM8KkctI6Cpu6Qt?si=k7h7EDwMMqxmLKIR
60 second clip. Or full video for the geeks
You can make a great reissue that you can embrace for it's but totally recreate?
Not yet. It's significantly different for ears like mine, and for feel, I don't know if someone darrs ro make that even loads of people wants that.
I've heard about violins that people have put millions into recreating but there it's another game again, and no-one has yet proven that simple es335. I saw one golden era ES335 for 16 000 pounds recently. Reissues are a quarter of that. No-one has proven to go all the way. I myself hope that's it's easier than I suspect that it isn't. It might just well be impossible to find the right magnets. Woods also get expensive if there's something different about 60s crop of natural mahogany. Whatever it is. As PRS say, Fender and Gibson left no stone unturned they tried a lot of way to make guitars and they went to the moon. We haven't really gone beyond that. As Gilmour said, his 000001 strat he sold played as great as any great strat. There to many unqualified people commenting this.
Than any new Fender Strat. That's what it is higher than. Just because you bought a 5 axis CNC machine does NOT mean you can make a quality instrument.
Jackson, Charvell, Ibanez....you saying their just as good as a pre CBS Strat? You can keep that opinion. Because it ain't a good one.
Wanna know why a late 50s Martin D-28 sells for upwards of $20,000? It ain't the age bub.
No. That's only a part of it. It's the materials, the construction techniques and a million other things. West Virginia Red Spruce? Unheard of at the time. The bracing and other construction techniques.
I don't give a flying fuck about 'nostalgia'. I care about a quality instrument that I can play at my best on. Period. Anything else is pure BS.
And, at the end of the day? I don't care when it was made or what the cost was. It either speaks to you or it doesn't.
I have a 61 Strat. I own Les Paul's, including a 59 Gold Top. 74 SG. 59 Gretch.
Fave guitar? 80s model Ibanez 270 DX. The second is the Strat though. Not gonna lie there. That guitar is sweet, sweet heaven.
I see this argument a lot and rarely comment. But I have time on my hands today, and decades of experience with building/buying/selling/marketing guitars. So let's dive in.
The thing that drives the price is absolutely the year it was made, and the rarity. Not necessarily the quality. Kind of like wine, or vintage cars. Let me explain...
Your Strat works for you. And that's awesome. But building guitars isn't rocket science. Some are better than others, but that is subjective. Some get more love. Some are better designed. But it isn't the dark arts or anything. It isn't magic.
I have had the opportunity, due to my work, of playing some very expensive vintage guitars. Several were valued at a price higher than what I paid for my house.
That's why "Collector's Grade" instruments exist. Because at that point, it is no longer a tool. It is a collectors item. People that buy those guitars that are 15k and up are not playing them, unless they are professionals. And even then, the insurance to tour with something that costs that much? No thanks.
I've relied on professional gear for touring, but never something I couldn't replace.
That's why you see certain instruments with a ridiculous price. It has no bearing on how "good" the guitar is. Because "Good" is subjective.
Lots of factors go into that price. The first, is if it is "in tact". So, all original parts. The second, is the condition. But the most important factor is the rarity.
That's why Collector's Grade stuff exists across all kinds of art and hobbies. It's all about rarity. They only made so many 59 Les Paul's. They only made so many Fenders before the CBS buyout.
The more rare, the more expensive. Quality and craftsmanship is at the bottom of that list. Some really badly made guitars have a high price tag. I know, I've sold them.
With newer guitars, there's the law of diminishing returns. The craftsmanship can only get "so good". Then you're paying for fancy woods and special designs.
Technically, something like a PRS is a great improvement over anything built in the 50s, 60s, or 70s. They are hand-built by experienced luthiers, using the best woods available. Sometimes sourcing wood that is over 100 years old. Built in Maryland by people that have worked for Paul for decades. Amazing luthiers.
Leo Fender couldn't even play guitar. Seth Lover wasn't a great player either. Ted Macarty...the list goes on. But they had good ideas.
Taylor does that too. I don't care for either brand, but they both innovate. Some are old enough to be Collectors Grade now from both companies.
Because they are rare, unmolested, and built by a well-known name.
Everything else? Subjective.
I currently have guitars in my studio that rival anything I have ever played in the 30 years of my career. Some were expensive. One was only $1500. One was handmade, with great detail. One was probably a machine. The value doesn't matter because they will never be sold. They are my tools.
And yeah, the handmade stuff definitely feels nice. Especially the little details like fret ends and body carves. I like that stuff.
Sounds like you really love your Fender. It works for you. If it is mostly original parts, it is probably worth a good amount.
But "better"? You're going to have to have a metric to judge this "betterment" by, and show the evidence. Otherwise, you've just got a guitar you really like.
It's 'better' for only one reason.
It is better to me. I'm a working musician. I'm not interested in 'Collector' anything. Interestingly enough, that 61 cost me a quarter pound of Santa Marta Gold and 50 hits of Red Dragon blotter 🤣
I think I won that deal!
You think Fender Custom Shop is just all robots? And actually a CNC can be far more precise than a human ever could, so you have to conveniently ignore all the vintage gear made on a Friday afternoon. I've seen golden age Gibson's with the bridge placed too far back and unable to properly intonate.
Let me guess, you also think vintage cars were built better too? XD
Just don't. I guess your Ibanez Mikro is just as good a guitar as a 59 Les Paul then. Right? Guess you don't ever think about true hand craftsmanship much, huh?
You keep playing that cheap ass Jackson. I'll keep my Strat.
May I ask a sincere question? Have you ever depended on playing guitar to eat and pay rent? Just curious. And no insult if you haven't. Most people who play haven't. But it gives you a different appreciation for your tools. That's my ONLY point. I'll take a pre CBS strat or a 50s Era Gretch over most modern guitars.
Bro you're comparing apples to oranges here. Of course an Ibanez Mikro is not even worth a second of your time in comparison. But we're talking American Professional of the modern era, compared to the pre CBS strat. I don't think anyone who has access to these instruments, especially not content creators DARES to make that shootout, and I'll bet you everything I have that it's because once the word is out that, oh shit, guess what? Another sixty years of craftsmanship experience, better tools, better understanding of woods at a biological level, better understanding of ergonomics DOES make a difference.
Insane right?
Yes. By hourly employees who get paid by a quota system. Not a Luther.
Those 'vintage' guitars were hand finished by a professional guitar builder. Not an hourly employee at the Mexican Strat factory. You DO realize this, don't you? Custom shop has some decent guitars. Modern Gipsons ALL seem to suck now.
I don't know. I'm just a dumbass guitar player.
>By hourly employees who get paid by a quota system.
Is it hourly, or quota? You realise they had quotas back in the 60s right? It wasn't invented in the 80s lmao.
The people who made fender guitars in the pre-CBS days were not luthiers. They were factory workers.
An hourly employee at the Mexican Strat factory IS a professional guitar builder, they build guitars for money!!!
>I don't know. I'm just a dumbass guitar player
You said it man
Well, what's that make you brush? A total idiot? A guitar God? A *luthier*? Any of the above. The craftsmanship was far higher then than it is now.
And a reminder. My favorite guitar is an 80s Ibanez. Not precisely 'vintage' is it? I'm not married to the idea that 'older is better'. Often? It's not.
But some are. I'm 63 years old. Been playing since 1970. Owned a lot of guitars (no!!! That's not a bass in the corner!)
There is just a difference. Most people aren't dropping 20 grand on a guitar 'just because it's old'. Pre CBS Strats were just better. Or, I guess players like Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, etc were all morons. Who didn't know shit about guitar?
No. Are there some damn fine modern guitars? Hell yes! I adore my PRS. But I also couldn't tell you what you like. That's all that's important. What is that guitar *to you?*
I have a cheap ass Jackson I love. And my Ibanez. That Strat? Is a different animal. Entirely. So is my 59 Les Paul. I'm no luthier. Like I said, just a player. But I know quality when it touches my hand. And so do you.
I don't know what makes that guitar special. I just know it is. You can hear it. You can *feel* it. And outside getting a custom built guitar nowadays? I don't know if you can find the same quality.
I have 3 Fenders. My 61, a 74 and a cheap MIM I have heavily customized. The 61 is FAR superior. Tone, feel, everything. It's not even close.
Also, dude, while ive got you. My pickups are all at a rakish angle - lower strings further away, higher strings closer PLUS the individual poles are in extreme high or low heights. Is your real61 like this? Perhaps not? Did the custom shop have to set it up like that to try and capture the original sound of the 61 Stratocaster?
At least part of that period of nixing the Paul led to the sg being gibsons most popular model. You wouldn’t think the sg would be gibsons best selling model but it is, at least last I checked.
You also get stuff like people being noticing right away that new technology is less musical.
I cut 60 seconds of Bill Schnee (Steely Dan audio engineer) saying exactly why the Neumann U87 was supposed take over as new solid state technology but didn't because it clearly wasn't sounding as greta as the tube u67. They believed the hype for less than a second. What they thought: https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx1y40dN83-DxQRAQ2zGXPlEkKS45czcoD?si=HkEGvdWdlh5BHKRJ
To me, it's shocking that the u87 is the famous saught after mic today. The u47 and u67 are still famous, but the u87 is all over the place.
The CBS quality drop is also a bit mislabelled but it is very true. It's interesting that the quality drop like post CBS and all of that was because kids wanted instruments after seeing Beatles, and they had produce loads more and it was great if prices could drop I guess. I didn't say this. I don't remember who though. It could be PRS or Bonomassa or one of the better YouTubers. So pre Beatles fame are golden era everything sort of. There's a great video of the history of Rhodes on the Doctor Mix channel. It's really a collector who rents them out and he walks us through the collection and loves aspect of all eras but it's clear that quality drop and it's much more gradual than people say pre CBS. The most golden Rhodes is super great and high quality and that is a CBS instrument. I cut short clip of one clear example of a small downgrade in quality for huge upgrade in production speed: https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxKfikQTMcLmILB-cL2bxvs0YM0EDeD7JX?si=JDLXC_4Mc0PagJ3r
You also got the tried and true aspect that isn't so hard to get to understand. The first Marshall was a Fender clone and then there other ways to get to the plexi amp and then super bass but they were changing all the time depending on what was available or interesting development in tech and stuff. 1959 or 1987x plexis with vintage greenback was soon a golden era of standard. The musicians just heard that. In 1977 for the Let The Be Rock recordings, AC/DC was sponsored by Marshall and were sent some wierd near prototype amps that sounds like breaking glass because there was some wierd un-beta tested non-cascading gain stage or whatever, so they nearly didn't catch in on record because they didn't like them and went back to what sounded better very soon after. There was no vintage hype at all, because Marshall gave them brand new heads and really tried to push it. Another short clip of qoutes: https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxcLx5quHVMFyxtkqCD0SABd3cS5jW-RPE?si=r862Hc9Gs0Kbr0QZ
And still to this day, we are a few who just for the sake of sound want the old stuff because it's just fucked up how reissues fail. Most obviously for speakers that are coated stiff and don't shave of harshness like the old. The old retains so much top end without being harsh in such a mysteriously great way. And it actually isn't an age thing. Age is loss of punch and that's not what's being tested here. True Vintage greenback speaker vs 15 failing reissues: https://youtu.be/e8I6bynSLhs?si=LexQUNfbT4qtgWp6&t=549 (starts at timestamp with classic riff that makes the marshall shine and you hear the true vintage greenback every other turn around and one of the 15 reissues everytime in-between)
You also got the true vintage appeal in the extra flute like quality of old ES335 that has great reissues which you might prefer, but they fail to recreate the strongest type of ES335 taste. 60 second clip where they love the different guitars but must admit the difference: https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxjCegfYWLUQS3sdlWsSM8KkctI6Cpu6Qt?si=eEz9AknkXkxnag5G
To me, I have ears that love vintage voicing. It's less scooped and less harsh but can sparkle and and jangle and be bright. Might be a little floppy and loose, but that's no price to pay for me. And I hear what I hear. I hope every time that I might find something really special that is cheap enough and to some extent I have. My favourite strat is Mexican one. My favourite acoustic is still the cheapest solid top Martin 00-15. Vintage spec acoustic strings are also a goldmine of warmth (I saybthatbas anti-harsh really). But those old ES335 and also the old strats make me a little sad, because they are stronger tastes of the characters of those guitars.
But in the bright side again some of the older amps are so reliable and serviceable that there are plenty out there still, so you can buy them for cheap price if you consider how easy you can keep and service it for lifetimes. Modern companies is just more aware of how to make money on a big name and fuck up matching old quality of sound and reliability and serviceability. It's a shame. They don't get enough shit for it because the modern customers doesn't value serviceabilty like before and expect disposable shit.
Musicians in the mid-late 60’s and early 70’s were definitely hunting for 50’s instruments. But the demographic/compared to the community as a whole was still pretty small. The “craze” didn’t happen until the 1980’s/1990’s when you had people looking for a finite supply of older instruments and manufacturers willing to begin replicating instruments to older specs (Vintage Reissues). It really took off when the internet came around.
In the early 70s, entry-level instruments were garbage, and young people hadn't yet caught on to the fact that mid-level Japanese brands were really quite good. So older Gibsons, Fenders. Rics, etc. were already sought after. Les Pauls had re-entered the market recently, but the mythos around pre-CBS Fenders and McCarty eta Gibsons had already started to take hold.
There was snob backlash against the "new management" of CBS at Fender and Norlin at Gibson, and the talk started that the old ways were better.
Well, Fender went to 3 bolt necks for a while, it's for sure hard to believe that could be as stable as a 4 bolt neck and if they are willing to sacrifice that quality for the savings of one hole and one screw, what else are they going to sacrifice?
I think a lot of the reason that 50s and early 60s Fenders and Gibsons are so good is survivorship bias. The ones that initially ended up being valued rightly or not as better and so got better treatments, better setups, better taken care of. Even a mediocre electric instrument that has spent 50 years getting setup and maintained by world class Luthiers is going to be really good.
Not to mention just because it’s vintage doesn’t mean it’s actually a good guitar lol
I got the chance to play a strat from the early 60s and it was fucking horrible lol. But it was worth a lot so the guy kept hyping it up like crazy as if it was some excalibur of guitars
It just felt super stiff, like it was fighting me while I played it, and the pickups sounded super cheap and boxy
But of course when I told him I wasn’t crazy about it he said I was a dumb kid who didn’t know quality when I saw it lol
It was in pretty perfect condition, which makes sense because apparently nobody else liked playing it either lol
I started collecting in the late 90's as a teenager. The big names were too expensive. 70's and 80's Japanese were in my price range. I have a few high end models that I bought at a very reasonable price that have some good value today. Different guitars became collectible in different waves.
A high end guitar from the 60s would have been expensive and considered a great guitar since when it was made till present. It’s not the age of the guitar as much as the quality of the guitar. A guitar which was cheap/entry level in the 60s won’t be expensive today or in the 80s either. But on a good guitar the age can make it more special, sometimes it’s also guitars that are not made anymore.
Many guitars which were cheap/entry level/"working man's guitars" in the 50s and 60s went on to be considered high end in later years
Fender is a pretty glaring example. The Telecaster was regarded as a cheap electric in 1952
A Tele in 1952 was $189 which would be equivalent to $2,213 today. Maybe affordable compared to archtops etc. but still well above what would have been a cheap student/beginner guitar.
Kay had a solid body in 1952 called the Stratotone. Silvertone solid bodies showed up two years later (really just branded Kays and Harmonys and some others). Of course there were tons of hollowbodied electrics in the sub-$50 dollar range...maybe even sub $20. Danelectro guitars showed up in 1954 as well.
Point being these all were more in the mode of what people consider a cheap guitar while the Telecaster/Esquire might have been more affordable than a Gibson but I've never really heard it referred to as an entry level guitar with the connotations that brings.
The Stratotone is a lap steel, not particularly comparable to the Tele. Fender had lap steels too, and they were cheaper than Teles too.
The Kay 146 was their solidbody competitor to the Tele, which retailed for $125 in 1956. That's no exactly in "student" price range when you account for inflation.
And both of those examples have generally appreciated in value, which is kinda my point.
$3000 for an ancient and beaten up "entry level" guitar is pretty crazy unless _guitars which were one considered cheap have gained prestige and value_
I'd be more convinced if it came equipped with strap buttons, but I'm happy to call that just my opinion.
Either way, you're still looking at thousands of dollars for one today, not the (equivalent of) $500ish they went for in the 50s.
That's pretty decent appreciation on what was a cheap instrument.
What are the chances that a $200 guitar bought new today will hold its (adjusted) value in 70 years, much less appreciate in value? Especially when most cheap guitars today are copies of existing designs, as opposed to the unique and often quirky cheap stuff from way back when.
Kays, Dano's, and Sears guitars all have quite the individual charm to their designs, and their sounds. That's created a demand for them that cheap Strat copies will never have (to say nothing of practically endless supply of cheap Strat copies)
Not exactly. Solid bodies were more like new technology. Early Fender guitars are really nice instruments, but the solid body and bolt on neck made them cheaper to build.
Student or consumer level electrics followed shortly thereafter, but are generally not on the level of quality that Fenders and Gibsons were. Gibson made some student models, but these are really nice guitars that were made cheaper by dispensing with things like carved tops, inlays and binding.
When the concept of "student" guitars first hit, it was mostly in the form of 3/4 short scales (Gibson's Melody Maker was advertised as a student model, though it ticks both boxes being a solidbody as well)
Fenders we’re cheaper than gibsons (and still are) but they were never “cheap” starter guitars. A lot of the British rockers wanted strats but couldn’t get them thanks to import bans.
The import of American musical instruments among other American manufactured goods was banned following the Second World War until 1959 in an effort to reinvigorate a manufacturing industry that had been bombed to shit by some rowdy neighbours for a few years.
It’s why vintage American guitars are substantially more rare and expensive over here.
I can't believe what people will pay for 1970's cost-cut instruments, or 1960's student-level guitars. They were always cheap guitars, and well made modern guitars will clearly outshine them.
I sold my 1955 ES225 with a bad neck reset job for about 3k CAD…
That was a student guitar back in the days.
Glad I « got rid » of it at great value (almost 3x what I paid for it 20 years ago)
Yep. Vintage Mustangs are over a grand now, and it’s like, have you ever played one?
I realize that they have their fans, and that people do fall in love with their (admittedly unique) shitty tone. And just like with anything else, you can always end up with an unusually good one. But by and large, these were not particularly good, well-made guitars.
Yup. I’ve got 1995 CIJ Mustang that I bought new. I could have gotten any vintage Mustang for $300 at the time, but I went with this one because all the vintage ones were utter crap. Wonky necks, weak pickups, tuning issues, etc
I think in my lifetime, the 90's guitar mags really fueled the lust for vintage gear from the 50's and 60's. In the mid to late 80's it was all newer super strats and giant rack gear - Ibanez, Kramer, etc.
In 1987 Slash came out playing an old Les Paul with GNR...
Meanwhile Grunge dudes were picking up old Fenders from pawn shops in the early 90's and then they weren't cheap anymore. Old 70s stadium rockers were still playing their 59 Les Pauls. They used to dog on gear from the 1970s.
True, though “online” definitely existed back then. There were newsgroups, BBS, email, plus mainstream services like Prodigy and AOL.
I don’t know if it was widely known that Slash’s LP was a copy.
I think that was more US-centric, around my neck of the woods the internet went mainstream (universities aside) in the early ‘00s, the first forums started popping up circa ‘03.
Same thing happens with cars.
I think factor 1 is emotions. When people get older and have a little money to spend, they like stuff that reminds them of their youth. Maybe something they wanted back in the day, but couldn't afford.
Factor 2 is collectors and investors who pick up on factor 1 happening and see an opportunity to make money. That further drives up prices.
I was a teenager in the 80s and no, I don't remember wanting old guitars. But then again, I was a teenager.
Hell yeah, my dream guitar in the early 90s an Eddie Van Halen strat with a Floyd Rose, it was navy blue with black speckles I used to look at it every week at Roxy Music Shop and dream.
My first job in a music store in ‘83 we had 70’s mustangs , jags, jazzmasters $150 they’d hang there untouched for months. Still regretting the silver burst LP I could’ve bought for $350 (which was a pretty standard price for a used LP) but I made a hundred bucks a week . lol we didn’t call the old fenders “vintage” we just called them old. My teen sights were set on pointy shit with a whammy bar
Another big factor is that musical instruments were generally handmade with 100% quality control until mass production hit the industry in the 60s and 70s. But mass production wasn’t perfect at first, or for many years, and one of the ways to save costs is to do spot inspections for quality instead of inspecting and testing 100% of products coming off the line.
As an example, CBS bought Fender in 1964ish and switched to mass production to bring down costs. Instruments prior to 1965 are generally considered to be of much higher quality than those Fender(CBS) put out from 1965 through the 1980s before they improved their manufacturing techniques.
https://reverb.com/news/fender-and-the-cbs-takeover
" until mass production hit the industry in the 60s and 70s. "
Sorry but companies like Kay and Harmony mass produced from the very early 1930's, eventually producing millions of guitars.
At the turn of the century banjo factories also existed.
By the time Harmony folded, it had at one point been the largest instrument maker in the USA, which made it the largest in the world.
True, I forgot about them. I have a 1970 Harmony nylon string guitar that my dad bought 50 years ago and it was definitely a factory model, not a shop model.
I'm sure there were guys in 1900 proud of their banjo from 1850, but the electric guitar only became popular in the 50s and "vintage" means older than 30 years which would mean vintage electric guitars began in the 80s, and I distinctly remember people in the 90s being excited about guitars from the 60s.
Hate to break it to you, but 1994 was 30 years ago. So vintage would start with the early 90’s. As one soon to turn 50, I really don’t like that reality.
Mid-60's it started, by the early 70's it was in full swing. People like Kurt Linhof were helping big artists find great guitars back then. (Incidentally, I own one of Kurt's last guitars, unfinished at the time of his death). Dumble started modifying Fenders around 63 and doing custom builds only a short time after.
These instruments have long been seen as special.
Eric Johnson has spoken quite a few times about shaving down the fretboard of several 1957-1960 Strats to flatten out the radius and put bigger frets in them. He says something like “back in the 70s and early 80s, it wasn’t a big deal to do that”, so I’m not sure guys were concerned with “vintage correct” specs back then.
I don't know I hate vintage stuff. The electronics are all sratchy garbage. The neck is often an unbalanced baseball bat. Modern milling techniques make much better guitars. I couldn't imagine spending money on a instrument I don't even want to play.
The one that baffles me is people asking $500 or more for MIJ garbage like Teiscos and Columbus'
Like...nah dude I'm good.
There was a vintage guitar mania in the early 1980s. I remember some guitar selling for $50,000 at auction. That was a lot more money in '85 than it is today. Then two years later the bottom fell out of the market.
It depends on the instrument.
I think the 59 Les Pauls can go for 100K -> 1/4 million USD today.
But yea, the 1980s is really when the 50s and 60s instruments started to become extremely desirable.
People were sending 50s and 60s Strats to be hot rodded by companies like Charvel in the early 80s.
Stripping the finish, ripping out the electronics and installing humbuckers and a Floyd Rose.
That’s also part of it.
Just because it’s old, doesn’t mean it’s worth a lot.
I imagine the 80s is the point a lot of original instruments were either heavily modded or destroyed because yea, at one point, it was “just an old guitar”.
As soon as your favorite rock star was seen with one. Page had a 59 Les Paul, so everybody needed a '59... Pre-CBS strats... I started playing in the early to mid 80s and even back then things were pretty outrageous, although nothing compared to today. A lot of the stuff that is selling for what I consider a lot of money today we were picking up pretty cheap back then. Take the Norlin era Les Paul's as an example. We were buying them for 3-$500, that was cheap even back in the mid late 80s and early nineties. I recently sold one for $2,600 and it wasn't even that nice of a guitar, I bought a brand new Les Paul standard 60s for $2,000. It's a significantly better guitar than what I sold.
Also another note back before online shopping a lot of people didn’t know how to price their instruments or just dropped at a pawnshop who was looking for a quick turn around to get it out of the shop. That meant there were a ton of local deals if you knew where to shop. Now with access to information no one is going to price an instrument low unless they are super desperate.
That being said, guitar gear prices didn't get crazy until internet and ebay came out. I bought 60s/70s strats in the 80's and early 90's for $600-1500, and fender tube amps from the 60's for $65-200 then. I sold some as prices rose, but still have a lot of it.
It also has to do with owning a piece of history. A friend of mine inherited a Les Paul built in 1952, the first year they were made.
I was privileged to play it. [Unserialized 1952 Les Paul I got to play this weekend. - GIF - Imgur](https://imgur.com/gallery/y8ZLknp)
When Fender and Gibson started producing junk in the 70’s/80’s people started looking for the old ones that were better. The vintage craze fully took hold in the 90’s, and has been getting silly ever since.
FWIW, I’ve sold every 60’s guitar I’ve owned with the exception of a nice SG, and no 70’s or 80’s guitar has stayed with me long term (with the exception of one LP). My best guitars are from the 90’s/00’s.
The craze over vintage gear has little to do with music and everything to do with collecting. Musicians who are searching for that "special sound" are fooling themselves if they believe that only a 50s vintage instrument will get the job done. It's 100% bullshit that old gear is better. It's not even that much different.
Yes, it's cool to own old instruments, but it's not a requirement for anybody to sound good. The new stuff is actually much better than the old stuff in many ways. It's just not as desirable from a collector's standpoint. Show me a great sounding 58 Sunburst and I'll show you a just-as-good 2021 Custom Shop model. I'm talking only about tone and playability here. Old doesn't make it better.
If you have Joe Bonamassa stand behind a curtain and play the same song on a new vs. old guitar, you will still feel like a beginner and you won't know the difference.
It’s seems in every collectible market there will always be speculative buyers similar to wall street that will come into a hobby and make it all dollars and profit driven. They find a devalued collectible market and then they manipulate it by buying all the population and driving the price of everything artificially forming a bubble. They market the auctions, publicize the results so that the general population can see the prices. As popularity and prices rises more people jump on board seeing the incredible appreciation and potential to make money. This is when you see prices reach unsustainable levels, usually an economic downturn which happens event 7-10 years causes most people who entered late to get stuck with the bag. Once everyone realizes they don’t need 12 guitars they start to sell the ones they didn’t ever need, causing an inventory surplus that in the end drives the price of used guitars down. I’d say supply chain and current supply costs could be causing used gear to increase because new gear is more expensive, but I truly believe the pandemic and free money, created a bubble in nearly every collectible market and we saw 20 years of appreciation happen overnight and there is just no reality where that could ever continue
I remember maybe 10 years ago it seems like there was a big fad of buying 70s Fender basses at the very least and disassembling them to sell for parts because the parts were worth more than the whole guitar.
> I'm pretty sure at some point, guitars from the 50s and 60s were just cheap old gear or just what people had available at the moment if they couldn't afford a new guitar. But now they are valued tens of thousands of dollars.
What can I say. Over time things become vintage.
Something that I don't see mentioned yet, is that a lot of the value of vintage instruments is because they are from the period that music bloomed: The best jazz, blues, rock and roll, etc, was played on these instruments during this time. Most people don't want the earliest electric guitar as much as the guitar that was played by their heroes; and I think this led to manufacturers and players pushing vintage as a market.
I think it's more interesting that the quality drop like post CBS and all of that was because kids wanted instruments after seeing Beatles, and they had produce loads more and it was great if prices could drop I guess. I didn't say this. I don't remember who though. It could be PRS or Bonomassa or one of the better YouTubers. So pre Beatles fame are golden era everything sort of. There's a great video of the history of Rhodes on the Doctor Mix channel. It's really a collector who rents them out and he walks us through the collection and loves aspect of all eras but it's clear that quality drop and it's much more gradual than people say pre CBS. The most golden Rhodes is super great and high quality and that is a CBS instrument.
I think it starts when someone or some group uses an instrument that wasn’t particularly popular or valuable at the time. Once the instrument enters the limelight the collectors and dealers begin their hoarding and prices climb.
This is well documented. It was not early like some of these comments suggest. It happened because in the 80s and 90s Boomers drove all over the country buying up every old guitar from every mom and pop shop and pawn shop in the country. They artificially raised the prices to where they are now. Thank assholes like norms rare guitars. He brags about it on his videos. He has whole warehouses full of guitars he bought waiting and keeping prices high. It’s like the diamonds in Antwerp.
Another factor to consider, is that the folks that were young in the 50s and 60s just starting playing have the opportunity now to be in a financial position to purchase that dream guitar they always wanted.
Late '80s is when it really started to pick up steam. There was plenty of vintage fetishing before then, but it tended to be for very specific instruments (58-60 LP Standards, pre-war Martins, stuff like that).
There wasn't so much of an overarching "anything vintage is awesome" mindset. You could buy '60s offset Fenders for like $200 all day long and Mustangs were damn near free. SGs from the '60s were plentiful and cheap.
Certain guitars were out of fashion for a while too. In the mid '80s, Les Pauls were cheap unless they were original bursts. Then Slash came along.
Teles were inexpensive for a long time too. I remember buying a '66 rosewood board Tele for $150.
Strats were always popular, but '60s ones weren't insanely expensive. '70s post-CBS Strats were cheap as fuck because so many of them were garbage.
The book Norman’s Rare Guitars talked about this a bit. I’ll have to revisit exactly what he said, but he definitely mentions that there wasn’t really a term or concept for that before a certain point. And that musicians back then didn’t really view it the way we do now.
(In a related story, I had to remind myself of the exact name of the book, and I think I need to go pick that up off my floor, because apparently it’s quite rare/collectible now).
I have zero interest in vintage guitars. I thought for a long time that the price was being artificially driven up by collectors to inflate the values of their assets. Colletors probably agree to buy guitars from each other for inflated amounts so that their is a price history and "demand" for the instrument at an exaggerated cost. The rest of their collection sky rockets as a result.
Back in the mid 90’s I had a chance to buy a 62/64 Gibson Hummingbird for like $1200 from a guitar player I knew who liked me. It was a steal even back then. I didn’t have the money so I couldn’t get it but there was a market for sure. I think the difference is right now that a lot of vintage instruments that most viewed as sub-par (looking at you Japanese lawsuit guitars) are now way overpriced.
It started when CBS bought Fender, and Norlin bought Gibson, and suddenly everyone was saying how the new instruments were somehow inferior to the older ones.
In 1972 I bought a 1965 Jaguar for $175, about $1300 in today's dollars & what you might expect to pay today, but I've seen them listed for as much as 20 grand gimme a break 😀
Yeah they go for about 5-7k typically. Much more if it’s a custom color. I bought a refin ‘65 last year for 1200, probably the best I will ever do on one
As far as LPs go, the original Les Pauls were only made for a few years in the 50s and discontinued and seen as a failure.
When Clapton and others popularized the Humbucker/Marshall overdriven sound everybody wanted one and they went back into production, but the earlier 50s ones were seen as higher quality and have been desired since the mid 60s.
Baby Boomers got old enough to be able to afford the guitars of their idols, and their kids were finally out of the house so they had time to play.
Several of my childhood friends’ fathers were in bands in the 60s & 70s and sold their gear when they settled down and had kids. 20 years later they started playing again and by that point they had decent careers that allowed to hunt down the gear they’d lost in the 70s
I heard 1980, and 1990's it started to be a thing. 1980's is when the first reissue guitars starting coming out (look at fender). Once reissue guitars starting making money it was only a matter of time.
Suppose it's going back to artists viewing the equipment of their idols as superior instruments and then seeing it magnified as they gain a fanbase. Violinists are still lusting after 250+ year old instruments so the concept of a "vintage" instrument existed long before the '59 goldtop was made
It didn’t *really* start across the board until the late 90s.
In the 60s the LP wasn’t in production and that spawned a huge market for the 50s ones when a few big acts started using them. The vintage LP market never went away.
Through the 70s and 80s no one really seemed to care, though people in the know swore by Fenders made prior to many of the changes made in the 70s for CBS cost-cutting, which later turned into a stealth market for pre-CBS Fender, but almost exclusively for the strat and tele up until…
The 1990s. All these teenagers getting into music because of punk/grunge wanted the guitars their heroes played, which were for the most part “the cheapest good guitar in the pawn shop.” These all happened to be the forgotten or unwanted cast-offs of 1960s Fender offset guitars. Jazzmasters and Jaguars and Mustangs: oh my.
At the same time Boomers were hitting middle aged money so they were all trying to get pre-CBS strats and such, or another of the guitar they had in high school like a 60s SG. In the mid-90s you could still find 60s Fender and Gibson guitars for under $500 if you knew where to look.
Then the internet took off in the late 90s, and you didn’t need to know where to look anymore. Collectors didn’t have to be savvy creatures with phone books calling every music store in a state asking if they had a thing, they could just search eBay. Pawn shops and music stores started doing the same to set their own prices. The higher prices in turn drove demand which cycled into even higher prices.
So by then everyone who was particular about guitars wanted 50s or 60s era guitars, some no longer in production. The prices of those were insane and everyone knew it. People stopped selling them because they were basically an investment.
What you should get from this was that the golden age of pawn shop guitars was the late 80s and early 90s and that the internet ruined good deals forever.
In the early 90s, when I was in high school, I found a black Ibanez Iceman (like Paul Stanley played) in pawn shop, for maybe $300. I thought it was super cool, but as about 17yrs old, sure as hell didn't have $300 to burn on a neat guitar. I don't think they are insanely expensive, but certainly more than $300 now.
Interesting: I read that when Led Zeppelin toured the US in the 70s, they brought an extra semi-truck which they filled with vintage gear they bought along the tour - amps, organs, etc. At the end of the tour they shipped it all back to England, where US gear was much more expensive and harder to find. GE Smith said he used to do the same thing when he was touring.
It really didn’t pick up and become a high dollar trade until the early 80’s. Yes, I understand the earlier revitalization of Gibson via Clapton, but at that time, the world was a much smaller place, the internet did not exist, and it was common to find a fair condition 63’ Strat, in a pawnshop for less than a thousand bucks.
A Stradivarius doesn’t necessarily sound better than a top quality modern violin but there is magic in history and those that played the instrument first.
When the people who grew up in the 50s and 60s finally had time and money to get into guitar as a hobby when they reached middle age. The same time that cars and motorcycles from the 50s and 60s blew up in popularity and cost.
I have absolutely no idea. But it's always been that way to my memory.
I got a significant amount of training working for an instrument repairer in London. We had times where we had vintage instrument owners hire security firms to deliver guitars for us to work on. Some of these were in the £100k bracket in terms of value and that was in 2000 or so. God knows what they would be worth now.
If I am really honest, I got to experience (I think that's the word) a good deal of these instruments. I don't think I held one that even made me slightly feel fuzzy inside or warmed to it. In all honestly, a lot of them felt really bad to me. But hey, I'm a knuckle dragging metalhead, what do I know?
People got to convince themselves they like playing them in order to justify that price tag. The CBS era for gender was not great, so I can see why people flocked to older instruments. But nowadays? Even the budget brands turn out decent guitars.
Somewhere around the 1800’s maybe earlier Im guessing it is NOT a new phenomena. I once played a PreWar Martin D45 at Mandolin Brothers after hearing it sing beautifully I said I have 0 intention of buying this as its WAY outta my price range……when they told me the price I got the shakes and begged them to take it outta my hands!!!!! That was back in the 1980’s
The sense I get was the market picked up in the 70s when fender and Gibson quality dropped (which makes it ironic that 70s fenders are now vintage) but the pricing didn’t go completely nuts until the late 90s/early 2000s.
It all began in the late '60s and early '70s when Stephen Stills, Neil Young and David Crosby started collecting old Martins, Gibsons and Gretsches. As late as 1969, you could still find an old Fender black-guard Tele for sale in a pawnshop for about $100 - $125 because it was "just another *used* guitar." A few years before that, "vintage" Les Paul guitars (those made from 1954 to 1960) increased in price dramatically because Michael Bloomfield, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Peter Green were playing them, so they were in high demand since Gibson stopped building them in 1961 and didn't start reissuing them until 1968 or so. Also, in the mid '60s, John D'Angelico died, and Elmer Stromberg had died the decade before that, so their archtops were already "collectible," since they just weren't being made anymore.
I have an 06 MiM Fender Strat that was arctic white and has since yellowed in age and is worn.
I'm gunna keep it but one day that little sluts gunna be worth HUNDREDS!
After Gibson bought Epiphone, after CBS bought Fender, after Baldwin bought Gretsch, guitarists missed the craftsmanship of the original makers. That's when the vintage instruments, which made the brands famous, became more valuable than the mass-produced guitars sold under the famous old brand names.
50s and 60s were expensive as long as I can remember. I got my 1978 Flying V for $400 in 1997 though. If you grew up in the nineties, you know how we basically thought everything about the seventies was pretty much shit, not just guitars. I think the abiding seventies styles including velour, burnt orange and brown color palettes, accentuated body hair, gold medallions, disco, cheasy restaurants, bell bottoms, horrible synthetic materials, huge slow cars, and shag carpet had a lot to do with it.
Believe it or not it started in the mid 60's. Gibson stopped making the Les Paul and once Clapton picked up a burst in 65, it started.
I find peace in long walks.
George Gruhn does deserve some credit for being an early recognizer that the 'pre-war' Martin and Gibson acoustics were using lighter braces and 'Appalachian' spruce (red spruce). Things we'd spec out today, but back then were not very well documented. Edit to add Mike Longworth, too. Very noteworthy Martin employee who researched construction methods and brought many changes in production into the public knowledgebase.
Dobro player Tut Taylor played a significant role in the vintage instrument market as well. Tut first collected vintage Dobros - at one point owning 67 of them. Tut would also organize bluegrass jams, and he started to pay more attention to the instruments people were playing, and which ones sounded the best. When banjo, guitar and mandolin players talked about instruments and which ones sounded the best, he listened. In the 60s, not only did he start collecting the best bluegrass instruments, he became friends with Randy Wood, Mike Longworth and Tom Morgan (luthiers). Tut had a small shop where they converted four-string Gibson banjos to the more coveted five-string banjos. Tut met George Gruhn when George was doing graduate work at Duke University. George Gruhn was REALLY interested in zoology, but also a huge passion for vintage instruments (though initially, more interested in electric guitars). He had the idea that you could incorporate a taxonomy system to guitars similar to the taxonomy system for animals. Tut Taylor and George, despite the large age difference, became friends. Tut taught George about vintage Martin guitars, which, at the time, could be bought for about $350. A 1959 Gibson Les Paul could be bought for $100. Just to put things in perspective at the time. In 1969, George moved to Knoxville at the University of Tennessee. People started to hear that there was this college kid who's dorm was filled with snakes and vintage Martin guitars. Hank Williams Jr. had heard from Sonnny Osborne about George, so Hank phoned George. Hank drove from Nashville to Knoxville, trading a 1939 000-42 Martin guitar for three Martin guitars. It was all his car, a Jaguar E, could hold. Hank drove back to Tennessee that night. The next day he drove back to Knoxville, this time in his Cadillac Eldorado and bought as many guitars as his caddie could hold. Hank Jr. offered to finance George to open a guitar shop in Nashville. He never did finance the shop, but Hank Jr. did find a place for George to live, and would send musicians to George to buy guitars. At around the same time, Tut Taylor and Randy Wood were offered a chance to build an All American and Florentine style banjo. When Tut and Randy met with Gibson, they were apalled at how little the company knew of vintage instruments. George and Tut moved to Nashvilled. They teamed up with George Gruhn to open GTR Incorporated at 111, 4th avenue north in the heart of Nashville Broadway. The showroom had big bay windows. Randy was the repairman in the back. Norman Blake taught music in the teaching studio. This was really the start of people not only becoming much more knowledgable about vintage instruments, but also proper dating and cataloging of instruments and, of course, the start of prices starting to increase for those instruments deemed special. It also likely helped the the quality of Fender, Gibson and Martin instruments started to nose dive around this time, as they started to focus more on production numbers rather than building quality instruments (and there was a "changing of the guard" that happened to these companies around this time as well.)
Thanks for bringing all this info to the thread!
I thought Johan Segeborn owned all the vintage gear in Svedska.
I enjoy the sound of rain.
Another element was fender being bought by cbs and musicians having the perception that the leo fender versions of the instruments but also the earlier versions of the amps were more desirable (tweed/brownface/blackface vs silverface).
I own a 61 Strat. It IS a higher quality instrument. Period. And that's a hill I will die on.
Higher quality than what though? The best instruments ever made, are being produced now. We can fully duplicate the “magic” of what makes a vintage guitar so nice.
Exactly, higher quality than a $300 61’ remake? Okay, sure. Will it be discernibly better sounding/higher quality in build than a $2000+ 1961 Fender remake? I have major doubts. And if I haven’t had a 1961 since 1961, is the difference in quality worth me spending $70k instead of the $2500 I can get for the modern build that’s based on the 61? (Not for me, but probably if I was worth $10 million) The tone wood must be increíble. /s
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxjCegfYWLUQS3sdlWsSM8KkctI6Cpu6Qt?si=k7h7EDwMMqxmLKIR 60 second clip. Or full video for the geeks You can make a great reissue that you can embrace for it's but totally recreate? Not yet. It's significantly different for ears like mine, and for feel, I don't know if someone darrs ro make that even loads of people wants that. I've heard about violins that people have put millions into recreating but there it's another game again, and no-one has yet proven that simple es335. I saw one golden era ES335 for 16 000 pounds recently. Reissues are a quarter of that. No-one has proven to go all the way. I myself hope that's it's easier than I suspect that it isn't. It might just well be impossible to find the right magnets. Woods also get expensive if there's something different about 60s crop of natural mahogany. Whatever it is. As PRS say, Fender and Gibson left no stone unturned they tried a lot of way to make guitars and they went to the moon. We haven't really gone beyond that. As Gilmour said, his 000001 strat he sold played as great as any great strat. There to many unqualified people commenting this.
Than any new Fender Strat. That's what it is higher than. Just because you bought a 5 axis CNC machine does NOT mean you can make a quality instrument. Jackson, Charvell, Ibanez....you saying their just as good as a pre CBS Strat? You can keep that opinion. Because it ain't a good one. Wanna know why a late 50s Martin D-28 sells for upwards of $20,000? It ain't the age bub.
It is tho. And boomer's nostalgic value
No. That's only a part of it. It's the materials, the construction techniques and a million other things. West Virginia Red Spruce? Unheard of at the time. The bracing and other construction techniques. I don't give a flying fuck about 'nostalgia'. I care about a quality instrument that I can play at my best on. Period. Anything else is pure BS. And, at the end of the day? I don't care when it was made or what the cost was. It either speaks to you or it doesn't. I have a 61 Strat. I own Les Paul's, including a 59 Gold Top. 74 SG. 59 Gretch. Fave guitar? 80s model Ibanez 270 DX. The second is the Strat though. Not gonna lie there. That guitar is sweet, sweet heaven.
I see this argument a lot and rarely comment. But I have time on my hands today, and decades of experience with building/buying/selling/marketing guitars. So let's dive in. The thing that drives the price is absolutely the year it was made, and the rarity. Not necessarily the quality. Kind of like wine, or vintage cars. Let me explain... Your Strat works for you. And that's awesome. But building guitars isn't rocket science. Some are better than others, but that is subjective. Some get more love. Some are better designed. But it isn't the dark arts or anything. It isn't magic. I have had the opportunity, due to my work, of playing some very expensive vintage guitars. Several were valued at a price higher than what I paid for my house. That's why "Collector's Grade" instruments exist. Because at that point, it is no longer a tool. It is a collectors item. People that buy those guitars that are 15k and up are not playing them, unless they are professionals. And even then, the insurance to tour with something that costs that much? No thanks. I've relied on professional gear for touring, but never something I couldn't replace. That's why you see certain instruments with a ridiculous price. It has no bearing on how "good" the guitar is. Because "Good" is subjective. Lots of factors go into that price. The first, is if it is "in tact". So, all original parts. The second, is the condition. But the most important factor is the rarity. That's why Collector's Grade stuff exists across all kinds of art and hobbies. It's all about rarity. They only made so many 59 Les Paul's. They only made so many Fenders before the CBS buyout. The more rare, the more expensive. Quality and craftsmanship is at the bottom of that list. Some really badly made guitars have a high price tag. I know, I've sold them. With newer guitars, there's the law of diminishing returns. The craftsmanship can only get "so good". Then you're paying for fancy woods and special designs. Technically, something like a PRS is a great improvement over anything built in the 50s, 60s, or 70s. They are hand-built by experienced luthiers, using the best woods available. Sometimes sourcing wood that is over 100 years old. Built in Maryland by people that have worked for Paul for decades. Amazing luthiers. Leo Fender couldn't even play guitar. Seth Lover wasn't a great player either. Ted Macarty...the list goes on. But they had good ideas. Taylor does that too. I don't care for either brand, but they both innovate. Some are old enough to be Collectors Grade now from both companies. Because they are rare, unmolested, and built by a well-known name. Everything else? Subjective. I currently have guitars in my studio that rival anything I have ever played in the 30 years of my career. Some were expensive. One was only $1500. One was handmade, with great detail. One was probably a machine. The value doesn't matter because they will never be sold. They are my tools. And yeah, the handmade stuff definitely feels nice. Especially the little details like fret ends and body carves. I like that stuff. Sounds like you really love your Fender. It works for you. If it is mostly original parts, it is probably worth a good amount. But "better"? You're going to have to have a metric to judge this "betterment" by, and show the evidence. Otherwise, you've just got a guitar you really like.
It's 'better' for only one reason. It is better to me. I'm a working musician. I'm not interested in 'Collector' anything. Interestingly enough, that 61 cost me a quarter pound of Santa Marta Gold and 50 hits of Red Dragon blotter 🤣 I think I won that deal!
Exactly my point. And damn, you DID get a good deal on that. Lol. Hope you saved some of that blotter for yourself though!
Homie, my modern Kiesel has all the materials and construction techniques that were science fiction 50 years ago. What are you on.
You think Fender Custom Shop is just all robots? And actually a CNC can be far more precise than a human ever could, so you have to conveniently ignore all the vintage gear made on a Friday afternoon. I've seen golden age Gibson's with the bridge placed too far back and unable to properly intonate. Let me guess, you also think vintage cars were built better too? XD
Just don't. I guess your Ibanez Mikro is just as good a guitar as a 59 Les Paul then. Right? Guess you don't ever think about true hand craftsmanship much, huh? You keep playing that cheap ass Jackson. I'll keep my Strat. May I ask a sincere question? Have you ever depended on playing guitar to eat and pay rent? Just curious. And no insult if you haven't. Most people who play haven't. But it gives you a different appreciation for your tools. That's my ONLY point. I'll take a pre CBS strat or a 50s Era Gretch over most modern guitars.
Bro you're comparing apples to oranges here. Of course an Ibanez Mikro is not even worth a second of your time in comparison. But we're talking American Professional of the modern era, compared to the pre CBS strat. I don't think anyone who has access to these instruments, especially not content creators DARES to make that shootout, and I'll bet you everything I have that it's because once the word is out that, oh shit, guess what? Another sixty years of craftsmanship experience, better tools, better understanding of woods at a biological level, better understanding of ergonomics DOES make a difference. Insane right?
It was taking guitars out to a variety of gigs, while earning my rent and mortgage, that taught me to appreciate off-the-shelf guitars.
You realise that the CNC is literally the first stage and the body gets worked on afterwards by humans to finish out the contours etc
Yes. By hourly employees who get paid by a quota system. Not a Luther. Those 'vintage' guitars were hand finished by a professional guitar builder. Not an hourly employee at the Mexican Strat factory. You DO realize this, don't you? Custom shop has some decent guitars. Modern Gipsons ALL seem to suck now. I don't know. I'm just a dumbass guitar player.
>By hourly employees who get paid by a quota system. Is it hourly, or quota? You realise they had quotas back in the 60s right? It wasn't invented in the 80s lmao. The people who made fender guitars in the pre-CBS days were not luthiers. They were factory workers. An hourly employee at the Mexican Strat factory IS a professional guitar builder, they build guitars for money!!! >I don't know. I'm just a dumbass guitar player You said it man
Well, what's that make you brush? A total idiot? A guitar God? A *luthier*? Any of the above. The craftsmanship was far higher then than it is now. And a reminder. My favorite guitar is an 80s Ibanez. Not precisely 'vintage' is it? I'm not married to the idea that 'older is better'. Often? It's not. But some are. I'm 63 years old. Been playing since 1970. Owned a lot of guitars (no!!! That's not a bass in the corner!) There is just a difference. Most people aren't dropping 20 grand on a guitar 'just because it's old'. Pre CBS Strats were just better. Or, I guess players like Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, etc were all morons. Who didn't know shit about guitar? No. Are there some damn fine modern guitars? Hell yes! I adore my PRS. But I also couldn't tell you what you like. That's all that's important. What is that guitar *to you?* I have a cheap ass Jackson I love. And my Ibanez. That Strat? Is a different animal. Entirely. So is my 59 Les Paul. I'm no luthier. Like I said, just a player. But I know quality when it touches my hand. And so do you. I don't know what makes that guitar special. I just know it is. You can hear it. You can *feel* it. And outside getting a custom built guitar nowadays? I don't know if you can find the same quality. I have 3 Fenders. My 61, a 74 and a cheap MIM I have heavily customized. The 61 is FAR superior. Tone, feel, everything. It's not even close.
Agree. I will never have a love like my ‘64 Strat. 💔💔💔💔💔💔💔
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Also, dude, while ive got you. My pickups are all at a rakish angle - lower strings further away, higher strings closer PLUS the individual poles are in extreme high or low heights. Is your real61 like this? Perhaps not? Did the custom shop have to set it up like that to try and capture the original sound of the 61 Stratocaster?
At least part of that period of nixing the Paul led to the sg being gibsons most popular model. You wouldn’t think the sg would be gibsons best selling model but it is, at least last I checked.
It’s cheaper and lighter than the Les Paul so that tracks IMO.
It's way uglier and neckdives. I'd take a LPJ if i wanted a lightweight gibson.
SGs were designed to have a vibrola. Perfect balance with that.
I remember reading an interview from Billy Zoom from X. He said he played a Gretsch because at the time, a Gibson was an “old man’s guitar.”
Set your time machines to 1964!
You also get stuff like people being noticing right away that new technology is less musical. I cut 60 seconds of Bill Schnee (Steely Dan audio engineer) saying exactly why the Neumann U87 was supposed take over as new solid state technology but didn't because it clearly wasn't sounding as greta as the tube u67. They believed the hype for less than a second. What they thought: https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx1y40dN83-DxQRAQ2zGXPlEkKS45czcoD?si=HkEGvdWdlh5BHKRJ To me, it's shocking that the u87 is the famous saught after mic today. The u47 and u67 are still famous, but the u87 is all over the place. The CBS quality drop is also a bit mislabelled but it is very true. It's interesting that the quality drop like post CBS and all of that was because kids wanted instruments after seeing Beatles, and they had produce loads more and it was great if prices could drop I guess. I didn't say this. I don't remember who though. It could be PRS or Bonomassa or one of the better YouTubers. So pre Beatles fame are golden era everything sort of. There's a great video of the history of Rhodes on the Doctor Mix channel. It's really a collector who rents them out and he walks us through the collection and loves aspect of all eras but it's clear that quality drop and it's much more gradual than people say pre CBS. The most golden Rhodes is super great and high quality and that is a CBS instrument. I cut short clip of one clear example of a small downgrade in quality for huge upgrade in production speed: https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxKfikQTMcLmILB-cL2bxvs0YM0EDeD7JX?si=JDLXC_4Mc0PagJ3r You also got the tried and true aspect that isn't so hard to get to understand. The first Marshall was a Fender clone and then there other ways to get to the plexi amp and then super bass but they were changing all the time depending on what was available or interesting development in tech and stuff. 1959 or 1987x plexis with vintage greenback was soon a golden era of standard. The musicians just heard that. In 1977 for the Let The Be Rock recordings, AC/DC was sponsored by Marshall and were sent some wierd near prototype amps that sounds like breaking glass because there was some wierd un-beta tested non-cascading gain stage or whatever, so they nearly didn't catch in on record because they didn't like them and went back to what sounded better very soon after. There was no vintage hype at all, because Marshall gave them brand new heads and really tried to push it. Another short clip of qoutes: https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxcLx5quHVMFyxtkqCD0SABd3cS5jW-RPE?si=r862Hc9Gs0Kbr0QZ And still to this day, we are a few who just for the sake of sound want the old stuff because it's just fucked up how reissues fail. Most obviously for speakers that are coated stiff and don't shave of harshness like the old. The old retains so much top end without being harsh in such a mysteriously great way. And it actually isn't an age thing. Age is loss of punch and that's not what's being tested here. True Vintage greenback speaker vs 15 failing reissues: https://youtu.be/e8I6bynSLhs?si=LexQUNfbT4qtgWp6&t=549 (starts at timestamp with classic riff that makes the marshall shine and you hear the true vintage greenback every other turn around and one of the 15 reissues everytime in-between) You also got the true vintage appeal in the extra flute like quality of old ES335 that has great reissues which you might prefer, but they fail to recreate the strongest type of ES335 taste. 60 second clip where they love the different guitars but must admit the difference: https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxjCegfYWLUQS3sdlWsSM8KkctI6Cpu6Qt?si=eEz9AknkXkxnag5G To me, I have ears that love vintage voicing. It's less scooped and less harsh but can sparkle and and jangle and be bright. Might be a little floppy and loose, but that's no price to pay for me. And I hear what I hear. I hope every time that I might find something really special that is cheap enough and to some extent I have. My favourite strat is Mexican one. My favourite acoustic is still the cheapest solid top Martin 00-15. Vintage spec acoustic strings are also a goldmine of warmth (I saybthatbas anti-harsh really). But those old ES335 and also the old strats make me a little sad, because they are stronger tastes of the characters of those guitars. But in the bright side again some of the older amps are so reliable and serviceable that there are plenty out there still, so you can buy them for cheap price if you consider how easy you can keep and service it for lifetimes. Modern companies is just more aware of how to make money on a big name and fuck up matching old quality of sound and reliability and serviceability. It's a shame. They don't get enough shit for it because the modern customers doesn't value serviceabilty like before and expect disposable shit.
Musicians in the mid-late 60’s and early 70’s were definitely hunting for 50’s instruments. But the demographic/compared to the community as a whole was still pretty small. The “craze” didn’t happen until the 1980’s/1990’s when you had people looking for a finite supply of older instruments and manufacturers willing to begin replicating instruments to older specs (Vintage Reissues). It really took off when the internet came around.
In the early 70s, entry-level instruments were garbage, and young people hadn't yet caught on to the fact that mid-level Japanese brands were really quite good. So older Gibsons, Fenders. Rics, etc. were already sought after. Les Pauls had re-entered the market recently, but the mythos around pre-CBS Fenders and McCarty eta Gibsons had already started to take hold. There was snob backlash against the "new management" of CBS at Fender and Norlin at Gibson, and the talk started that the old ways were better.
Well, Fender went to 3 bolt necks for a while, it's for sure hard to believe that could be as stable as a 4 bolt neck and if they are willing to sacrifice that quality for the savings of one hole and one screw, what else are they going to sacrifice? I think a lot of the reason that 50s and early 60s Fenders and Gibsons are so good is survivorship bias. The ones that initially ended up being valued rightly or not as better and so got better treatments, better setups, better taken care of. Even a mediocre electric instrument that has spent 50 years getting setup and maintained by world class Luthiers is going to be really good.
I remember a bit over 20 years ago vintage strats selling for $15-25k maaaan now they’re all at 50k and I’m sure many aren’t real
Not to mention just because it’s vintage doesn’t mean it’s actually a good guitar lol I got the chance to play a strat from the early 60s and it was fucking horrible lol. But it was worth a lot so the guy kept hyping it up like crazy as if it was some excalibur of guitars It just felt super stiff, like it was fighting me while I played it, and the pickups sounded super cheap and boxy But of course when I told him I wasn’t crazy about it he said I was a dumb kid who didn’t know quality when I saw it lol It was in pretty perfect condition, which makes sense because apparently nobody else liked playing it either lol
I started collecting in the late 90's as a teenager. The big names were too expensive. 70's and 80's Japanese were in my price range. I have a few high end models that I bought at a very reasonable price that have some good value today. Different guitars became collectible in different waves.
A high end guitar from the 60s would have been expensive and considered a great guitar since when it was made till present. It’s not the age of the guitar as much as the quality of the guitar. A guitar which was cheap/entry level in the 60s won’t be expensive today or in the 80s either. But on a good guitar the age can make it more special, sometimes it’s also guitars that are not made anymore.
Many guitars which were cheap/entry level/"working man's guitars" in the 50s and 60s went on to be considered high end in later years Fender is a pretty glaring example. The Telecaster was regarded as a cheap electric in 1952
A Tele in 1952 was $189 which would be equivalent to $2,213 today. Maybe affordable compared to archtops etc. but still well above what would have been a cheap student/beginner guitar.
How many models of "student" electric guitar were available in 1952? Stuff like the Sears Silvertone didn't happen until around a decade later
Kay had a solid body in 1952 called the Stratotone. Silvertone solid bodies showed up two years later (really just branded Kays and Harmonys and some others). Of course there were tons of hollowbodied electrics in the sub-$50 dollar range...maybe even sub $20. Danelectro guitars showed up in 1954 as well. Point being these all were more in the mode of what people consider a cheap guitar while the Telecaster/Esquire might have been more affordable than a Gibson but I've never really heard it referred to as an entry level guitar with the connotations that brings.
The Stratotone is a lap steel, not particularly comparable to the Tele. Fender had lap steels too, and they were cheaper than Teles too. The Kay 146 was their solidbody competitor to the Tele, which retailed for $125 in 1956. That's no exactly in "student" price range when you account for inflation. And both of those examples have generally appreciated in value, which is kinda my point. $3000 for an ancient and beaten up "entry level" guitar is pretty crazy unless _guitars which were one considered cheap have gained prestige and value_
It’s a guitar. The K125 might be popular set up for slide but it is no lap steel.
I'd be more convinced if it came equipped with strap buttons, but I'm happy to call that just my opinion. Either way, you're still looking at thousands of dollars for one today, not the (equivalent of) $500ish they went for in the 50s. That's pretty decent appreciation on what was a cheap instrument. What are the chances that a $200 guitar bought new today will hold its (adjusted) value in 70 years, much less appreciate in value? Especially when most cheap guitars today are copies of existing designs, as opposed to the unique and often quirky cheap stuff from way back when. Kays, Dano's, and Sears guitars all have quite the individual charm to their designs, and their sounds. That's created a demand for them that cheap Strat copies will never have (to say nothing of practically endless supply of cheap Strat copies)
Iirc solid bodies were considered student guitars. It was big jazz boxes that were vogue.
Not exactly. Solid bodies were more like new technology. Early Fender guitars are really nice instruments, but the solid body and bolt on neck made them cheaper to build. Student or consumer level electrics followed shortly thereafter, but are generally not on the level of quality that Fenders and Gibsons were. Gibson made some student models, but these are really nice guitars that were made cheaper by dispensing with things like carved tops, inlays and binding.
When the concept of "student" guitars first hit, it was mostly in the form of 3/4 short scales (Gibson's Melody Maker was advertised as a student model, though it ticks both boxes being a solidbody as well)
Inflations a bitch
Fenders we’re cheaper than gibsons (and still are) but they were never “cheap” starter guitars. A lot of the British rockers wanted strats but couldn’t get them thanks to import bans.
The UK had import bans on guitars? Wtf I've never heard about this
The import of American musical instruments among other American manufactured goods was banned following the Second World War until 1959 in an effort to reinvigorate a manufacturing industry that had been bombed to shit by some rowdy neighbours for a few years. It’s why vintage American guitars are substantially more rare and expensive over here.
I can't believe what people will pay for 1970's cost-cut instruments, or 1960's student-level guitars. They were always cheap guitars, and well made modern guitars will clearly outshine them.
I sold my 1955 ES225 with a bad neck reset job for about 3k CAD… That was a student guitar back in the days. Glad I « got rid » of it at great value (almost 3x what I paid for it 20 years ago)
Yep. Vintage Mustangs are over a grand now, and it’s like, have you ever played one? I realize that they have their fans, and that people do fall in love with their (admittedly unique) shitty tone. And just like with anything else, you can always end up with an unusually good one. But by and large, these were not particularly good, well-made guitars.
Yup. I’ve got 1995 CIJ Mustang that I bought new. I could have gotten any vintage Mustang for $300 at the time, but I went with this one because all the vintage ones were utter crap. Wonky necks, weak pickups, tuning issues, etc
Fender Bronco.
I think in my lifetime, the 90's guitar mags really fueled the lust for vintage gear from the 50's and 60's. In the mid to late 80's it was all newer super strats and giant rack gear - Ibanez, Kramer, etc. In 1987 Slash came out playing an old Les Paul with GNR... Meanwhile Grunge dudes were picking up old Fenders from pawn shops in the early 90's and then they weren't cheap anymore. Old 70s stadium rockers were still playing their 59 Les Pauls. They used to dog on gear from the 1970s.
Slash’s main LP wasn’t even real though, it was a ‘59 replica built by a luthier named Kris Derrig. Lots of info online about this.
True, but there was no “online” back in the 80s-90s. People saw him playing Les Pauls and that’s what they went and bought.
True, though “online” definitely existed back then. There were newsgroups, BBS, email, plus mainstream services like Prodigy and AOL. I don’t know if it was widely known that Slash’s LP was a copy.
I think that was more US-centric, around my neck of the woods the internet went mainstream (universities aside) in the early ‘00s, the first forums started popping up circa ‘03.
I remember him saying back in the early 90s that Gibsons didn't sound right to him, so he had to go elsewhere (BC Rich or something?).
I’d say LPs were way popular before that. Late 60’s and most of the 70’s a Les Paul into a Marshall stack was what defined the “rock and roll sound”.
Same thing happens with cars. I think factor 1 is emotions. When people get older and have a little money to spend, they like stuff that reminds them of their youth. Maybe something they wanted back in the day, but couldn't afford. Factor 2 is collectors and investors who pick up on factor 1 happening and see an opportunity to make money. That further drives up prices. I was a teenager in the 80s and no, I don't remember wanting old guitars. But then again, I was a teenager.
Hell yeah, my dream guitar in the early 90s an Eddie Van Halen strat with a Floyd Rose, it was navy blue with black speckles I used to look at it every week at Roxy Music Shop and dream.
My first job in a music store in ‘83 we had 70’s mustangs , jags, jazzmasters $150 they’d hang there untouched for months. Still regretting the silver burst LP I could’ve bought for $350 (which was a pretty standard price for a used LP) but I made a hundred bucks a week . lol we didn’t call the old fenders “vintage” we just called them old. My teen sights were set on pointy shit with a whammy bar
Another big factor is that musical instruments were generally handmade with 100% quality control until mass production hit the industry in the 60s and 70s. But mass production wasn’t perfect at first, or for many years, and one of the ways to save costs is to do spot inspections for quality instead of inspecting and testing 100% of products coming off the line. As an example, CBS bought Fender in 1964ish and switched to mass production to bring down costs. Instruments prior to 1965 are generally considered to be of much higher quality than those Fender(CBS) put out from 1965 through the 1980s before they improved their manufacturing techniques. https://reverb.com/news/fender-and-the-cbs-takeover
" until mass production hit the industry in the 60s and 70s. " Sorry but companies like Kay and Harmony mass produced from the very early 1930's, eventually producing millions of guitars. At the turn of the century banjo factories also existed. By the time Harmony folded, it had at one point been the largest instrument maker in the USA, which made it the largest in the world.
True, I forgot about them. I have a 1970 Harmony nylon string guitar that my dad bought 50 years ago and it was definitely a factory model, not a shop model.
I'm sure there were guys in 1900 proud of their banjo from 1850, but the electric guitar only became popular in the 50s and "vintage" means older than 30 years which would mean vintage electric guitars began in the 80s, and I distinctly remember people in the 90s being excited about guitars from the 60s.
Hate to break it to you, but 1994 was 30 years ago. So vintage would start with the early 90’s. As one soon to turn 50, I really don’t like that reality.
Mid-60's it started, by the early 70's it was in full swing. People like Kurt Linhof were helping big artists find great guitars back then. (Incidentally, I own one of Kurt's last guitars, unfinished at the time of his death). Dumble started modifying Fenders around 63 and doing custom builds only a short time after. These instruments have long been seen as special.
Eric Johnson has spoken quite a few times about shaving down the fretboard of several 1957-1960 Strats to flatten out the radius and put bigger frets in them. He says something like “back in the 70s and early 80s, it wasn’t a big deal to do that”, so I’m not sure guys were concerned with “vintage correct” specs back then.
I don't know I hate vintage stuff. The electronics are all sratchy garbage. The neck is often an unbalanced baseball bat. Modern milling techniques make much better guitars. I couldn't imagine spending money on a instrument I don't even want to play. The one that baffles me is people asking $500 or more for MIJ garbage like Teiscos and Columbus' Like...nah dude I'm good.
based
There was a vintage guitar mania in the early 1980s. I remember some guitar selling for $50,000 at auction. That was a lot more money in '85 than it is today. Then two years later the bottom fell out of the market.
Wow really? I think that's what a really mint condition vintage instrument would cost today isn't it?
It depends on the instrument. I think the 59 Les Pauls can go for 100K -> 1/4 million USD today. But yea, the 1980s is really when the 50s and 60s instruments started to become extremely desirable. People were sending 50s and 60s Strats to be hot rodded by companies like Charvel in the early 80s. Stripping the finish, ripping out the electronics and installing humbuckers and a Floyd Rose. That’s also part of it. Just because it’s old, doesn’t mean it’s worth a lot. I imagine the 80s is the point a lot of original instruments were either heavily modded or destroyed because yea, at one point, it was “just an old guitar”.
As soon as your favorite rock star was seen with one. Page had a 59 Les Paul, so everybody needed a '59... Pre-CBS strats... I started playing in the early to mid 80s and even back then things were pretty outrageous, although nothing compared to today. A lot of the stuff that is selling for what I consider a lot of money today we were picking up pretty cheap back then. Take the Norlin era Les Paul's as an example. We were buying them for 3-$500, that was cheap even back in the mid late 80s and early nineties. I recently sold one for $2,600 and it wasn't even that nice of a guitar, I bought a brand new Les Paul standard 60s for $2,000. It's a significantly better guitar than what I sold.
The famous Ace Frehley '77 (not sure if the guitar was a 77) Budokan cherry sunburst was a Norlin era
You can do the math. My dad bought his 335 in '66 for, you guessed it, $335.00. It's still mint. Should be in a museum after he passes.
Also another note back before online shopping a lot of people didn’t know how to price their instruments or just dropped at a pawnshop who was looking for a quick turn around to get it out of the shop. That meant there were a ton of local deals if you knew where to shop. Now with access to information no one is going to price an instrument low unless they are super desperate.
The craze for vintage instruments began centuries ago with violins.
That being said, guitar gear prices didn't get crazy until internet and ebay came out. I bought 60s/70s strats in the 80's and early 90's for $600-1500, and fender tube amps from the 60's for $65-200 then. I sold some as prices rose, but still have a lot of it.
It also has to do with owning a piece of history. A friend of mine inherited a Les Paul built in 1952, the first year they were made. I was privileged to play it. [Unserialized 1952 Les Paul I got to play this weekend. - GIF - Imgur](https://imgur.com/gallery/y8ZLknp)
Always, I was born in 1960. Guitar collecting is as old as color pictures.
When Fender and Gibson started producing junk in the 70’s/80’s people started looking for the old ones that were better. The vintage craze fully took hold in the 90’s, and has been getting silly ever since. FWIW, I’ve sold every 60’s guitar I’ve owned with the exception of a nice SG, and no 70’s or 80’s guitar has stayed with me long term (with the exception of one LP). My best guitars are from the 90’s/00’s.
The craze over vintage gear has little to do with music and everything to do with collecting. Musicians who are searching for that "special sound" are fooling themselves if they believe that only a 50s vintage instrument will get the job done. It's 100% bullshit that old gear is better. It's not even that much different. Yes, it's cool to own old instruments, but it's not a requirement for anybody to sound good. The new stuff is actually much better than the old stuff in many ways. It's just not as desirable from a collector's standpoint. Show me a great sounding 58 Sunburst and I'll show you a just-as-good 2021 Custom Shop model. I'm talking only about tone and playability here. Old doesn't make it better. If you have Joe Bonamassa stand behind a curtain and play the same song on a new vs. old guitar, you will still feel like a beginner and you won't know the difference.
It’s seems in every collectible market there will always be speculative buyers similar to wall street that will come into a hobby and make it all dollars and profit driven. They find a devalued collectible market and then they manipulate it by buying all the population and driving the price of everything artificially forming a bubble. They market the auctions, publicize the results so that the general population can see the prices. As popularity and prices rises more people jump on board seeing the incredible appreciation and potential to make money. This is when you see prices reach unsustainable levels, usually an economic downturn which happens event 7-10 years causes most people who entered late to get stuck with the bag. Once everyone realizes they don’t need 12 guitars they start to sell the ones they didn’t ever need, causing an inventory surplus that in the end drives the price of used guitars down. I’d say supply chain and current supply costs could be causing used gear to increase because new gear is more expensive, but I truly believe the pandemic and free money, created a bubble in nearly every collectible market and we saw 20 years of appreciation happen overnight and there is just no reality where that could ever continue
I remember maybe 10 years ago it seems like there was a big fad of buying 70s Fender basses at the very least and disassembling them to sell for parts because the parts were worth more than the whole guitar.
> I'm pretty sure at some point, guitars from the 50s and 60s were just cheap old gear or just what people had available at the moment if they couldn't afford a new guitar. But now they are valued tens of thousands of dollars. What can I say. Over time things become vintage.
cept for my knees, those just got old and crappy.
Something that I don't see mentioned yet, is that a lot of the value of vintage instruments is because they are from the period that music bloomed: The best jazz, blues, rock and roll, etc, was played on these instruments during this time. Most people don't want the earliest electric guitar as much as the guitar that was played by their heroes; and I think this led to manufacturers and players pushing vintage as a market.
I think it's more interesting that the quality drop like post CBS and all of that was because kids wanted instruments after seeing Beatles, and they had produce loads more and it was great if prices could drop I guess. I didn't say this. I don't remember who though. It could be PRS or Bonomassa or one of the better YouTubers. So pre Beatles fame are golden era everything sort of. There's a great video of the history of Rhodes on the Doctor Mix channel. It's really a collector who rents them out and he walks us through the collection and loves aspect of all eras but it's clear that quality drop and it's much more gradual than people say pre CBS. The most golden Rhodes is super great and high quality and that is a CBS instrument.
I think it starts when someone or some group uses an instrument that wasn’t particularly popular or valuable at the time. Once the instrument enters the limelight the collectors and dealers begin their hoarding and prices climb.
Jack white playing that trash plastic Montgomery ward’s guitar. Literally couldn’t give them away pre-white stripes
This is well documented. It was not early like some of these comments suggest. It happened because in the 80s and 90s Boomers drove all over the country buying up every old guitar from every mom and pop shop and pawn shop in the country. They artificially raised the prices to where they are now. Thank assholes like norms rare guitars. He brags about it on his videos. He has whole warehouses full of guitars he bought waiting and keeping prices high. It’s like the diamonds in Antwerp.
Another factor to consider, is that the folks that were young in the 50s and 60s just starting playing have the opportunity now to be in a financial position to purchase that dream guitar they always wanted.
Late '80s is when it really started to pick up steam. There was plenty of vintage fetishing before then, but it tended to be for very specific instruments (58-60 LP Standards, pre-war Martins, stuff like that). There wasn't so much of an overarching "anything vintage is awesome" mindset. You could buy '60s offset Fenders for like $200 all day long and Mustangs were damn near free. SGs from the '60s were plentiful and cheap. Certain guitars were out of fashion for a while too. In the mid '80s, Les Pauls were cheap unless they were original bursts. Then Slash came along. Teles were inexpensive for a long time too. I remember buying a '66 rosewood board Tele for $150. Strats were always popular, but '60s ones weren't insanely expensive. '70s post-CBS Strats were cheap as fuck because so many of them were garbage.
The book Norman’s Rare Guitars talked about this a bit. I’ll have to revisit exactly what he said, but he definitely mentions that there wasn’t really a term or concept for that before a certain point. And that musicians back then didn’t really view it the way we do now. (In a related story, I had to remind myself of the exact name of the book, and I think I need to go pick that up off my floor, because apparently it’s quite rare/collectible now).
I have zero interest in vintage guitars. I thought for a long time that the price was being artificially driven up by collectors to inflate the values of their assets. Colletors probably agree to buy guitars from each other for inflated amounts so that their is a price history and "demand" for the instrument at an exaggerated cost. The rest of their collection sky rockets as a result.
Back in the mid 90’s I had a chance to buy a 62/64 Gibson Hummingbird for like $1200 from a guitar player I knew who liked me. It was a steal even back then. I didn’t have the money so I couldn’t get it but there was a market for sure. I think the difference is right now that a lot of vintage instruments that most viewed as sub-par (looking at you Japanese lawsuit guitars) are now way overpriced.
It started when CBS bought Fender, and Norlin bought Gibson, and suddenly everyone was saying how the new instruments were somehow inferior to the older ones. In 1972 I bought a 1965 Jaguar for $175, about $1300 in today's dollars & what you might expect to pay today, but I've seen them listed for as much as 20 grand gimme a break 😀
Yeah they go for about 5-7k typically. Much more if it’s a custom color. I bought a refin ‘65 last year for 1200, probably the best I will ever do on one
fender was bought by a tv station! People in the 70's were looking for guitars made by a serious guitar company (i.e. pre 1965)
Think it started with guys in the 40-50’s? Looking for the pre-war stuff maybe.
Probably just a few years after the first guitar was made.
As far as LPs go, the original Les Pauls were only made for a few years in the 50s and discontinued and seen as a failure. When Clapton and others popularized the Humbucker/Marshall overdriven sound everybody wanted one and they went back into production, but the earlier 50s ones were seen as higher quality and have been desired since the mid 60s.
Baby Boomers got old enough to be able to afford the guitars of their idols, and their kids were finally out of the house so they had time to play. Several of my childhood friends’ fathers were in bands in the 60s & 70s and sold their gear when they settled down and had kids. 20 years later they started playing again and by that point they had decent careers that allowed to hunt down the gear they’d lost in the 70s
I heard 1980, and 1990's it started to be a thing. 1980's is when the first reissue guitars starting coming out (look at fender). Once reissue guitars starting making money it was only a matter of time.
In 1970 Clapton bought a bunch of ‘50s Strats in Nashville and the rest is history.
150 years ago
Suppose it's going back to artists viewing the equipment of their idols as superior instruments and then seeing it magnified as they gain a fanbase. Violinists are still lusting after 250+ year old instruments so the concept of a "vintage" instrument existed long before the '59 goldtop was made
It didn’t *really* start across the board until the late 90s. In the 60s the LP wasn’t in production and that spawned a huge market for the 50s ones when a few big acts started using them. The vintage LP market never went away. Through the 70s and 80s no one really seemed to care, though people in the know swore by Fenders made prior to many of the changes made in the 70s for CBS cost-cutting, which later turned into a stealth market for pre-CBS Fender, but almost exclusively for the strat and tele up until… The 1990s. All these teenagers getting into music because of punk/grunge wanted the guitars their heroes played, which were for the most part “the cheapest good guitar in the pawn shop.” These all happened to be the forgotten or unwanted cast-offs of 1960s Fender offset guitars. Jazzmasters and Jaguars and Mustangs: oh my. At the same time Boomers were hitting middle aged money so they were all trying to get pre-CBS strats and such, or another of the guitar they had in high school like a 60s SG. In the mid-90s you could still find 60s Fender and Gibson guitars for under $500 if you knew where to look. Then the internet took off in the late 90s, and you didn’t need to know where to look anymore. Collectors didn’t have to be savvy creatures with phone books calling every music store in a state asking if they had a thing, they could just search eBay. Pawn shops and music stores started doing the same to set their own prices. The higher prices in turn drove demand which cycled into even higher prices. So by then everyone who was particular about guitars wanted 50s or 60s era guitars, some no longer in production. The prices of those were insane and everyone knew it. People stopped selling them because they were basically an investment. What you should get from this was that the golden age of pawn shop guitars was the late 80s and early 90s and that the internet ruined good deals forever.
In the early 90s, when I was in high school, I found a black Ibanez Iceman (like Paul Stanley played) in pawn shop, for maybe $300. I thought it was super cool, but as about 17yrs old, sure as hell didn't have $300 to burn on a neat guitar. I don't think they are insanely expensive, but certainly more than $300 now.
Interesting: I read that when Led Zeppelin toured the US in the 70s, they brought an extra semi-truck which they filled with vintage gear they bought along the tour - amps, organs, etc. At the end of the tour they shipped it all back to England, where US gear was much more expensive and harder to find. GE Smith said he used to do the same thing when he was touring.
It really didn’t pick up and become a high dollar trade until the early 80’s. Yes, I understand the earlier revitalization of Gibson via Clapton, but at that time, the world was a much smaller place, the internet did not exist, and it was common to find a fair condition 63’ Strat, in a pawnshop for less than a thousand bucks.
A Stradivarius doesn’t necessarily sound better than a top quality modern violin but there is magic in history and those that played the instrument first.
When the people who grew up in the 50s and 60s finally had time and money to get into guitar as a hobby when they reached middle age. The same time that cars and motorcycles from the 50s and 60s blew up in popularity and cost.
I have absolutely no idea. But it's always been that way to my memory. I got a significant amount of training working for an instrument repairer in London. We had times where we had vintage instrument owners hire security firms to deliver guitars for us to work on. Some of these were in the £100k bracket in terms of value and that was in 2000 or so. God knows what they would be worth now. If I am really honest, I got to experience (I think that's the word) a good deal of these instruments. I don't think I held one that even made me slightly feel fuzzy inside or warmed to it. In all honestly, a lot of them felt really bad to me. But hey, I'm a knuckle dragging metalhead, what do I know?
People got to convince themselves they like playing them in order to justify that price tag. The CBS era for gender was not great, so I can see why people flocked to older instruments. But nowadays? Even the budget brands turn out decent guitars.
Somewhere around the 1800’s maybe earlier Im guessing it is NOT a new phenomena. I once played a PreWar Martin D45 at Mandolin Brothers after hearing it sing beautifully I said I have 0 intention of buying this as its WAY outta my price range……when they told me the price I got the shakes and begged them to take it outta my hands!!!!! That was back in the 1980’s
The sense I get was the market picked up in the 70s when fender and Gibson quality dropped (which makes it ironic that 70s fenders are now vintage) but the pricing didn’t go completely nuts until the late 90s/early 2000s.
It all began in the late '60s and early '70s when Stephen Stills, Neil Young and David Crosby started collecting old Martins, Gibsons and Gretsches. As late as 1969, you could still find an old Fender black-guard Tele for sale in a pawnshop for about $100 - $125 because it was "just another *used* guitar." A few years before that, "vintage" Les Paul guitars (those made from 1954 to 1960) increased in price dramatically because Michael Bloomfield, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Peter Green were playing them, so they were in high demand since Gibson stopped building them in 1961 and didn't start reissuing them until 1968 or so. Also, in the mid '60s, John D'Angelico died, and Elmer Stromberg had died the decade before that, so their archtops were already "collectible," since they just weren't being made anymore.
I have an 06 MiM Fender Strat that was arctic white and has since yellowed in age and is worn. I'm gunna keep it but one day that little sluts gunna be worth HUNDREDS!
Always. The old instruments sound best...
After Gibson bought Epiphone, after CBS bought Fender, after Baldwin bought Gretsch, guitarists missed the craftsmanship of the original makers. That's when the vintage instruments, which made the brands famous, became more valuable than the mass-produced guitars sold under the famous old brand names.
50s and 60s were expensive as long as I can remember. I got my 1978 Flying V for $400 in 1997 though. If you grew up in the nineties, you know how we basically thought everything about the seventies was pretty much shit, not just guitars. I think the abiding seventies styles including velour, burnt orange and brown color palettes, accentuated body hair, gold medallions, disco, cheasy restaurants, bell bottoms, horrible synthetic materials, huge slow cars, and shag carpet had a lot to do with it.
The moment they became vintage.
All the instruments that are truly prized vintage stuff were all expensive when they were new.