The definition of vintage

[GhostPlayer]

Very excellent points gentlemen, love this discussion.

There is only one slight twist to the arguments though. What about the "matured wood" factor ?

[øøøøøøø]

Sure, but that's part of my problem. Guitar necks and playability change from year to year, but also from guitar to guitar, especially during the era we are talking about before CNC machines. How often do you see the advice that "vintage" guitars aren't necessarily better just because they are old, that there are good ones and bad ones?

But there ARE trends-- for example, Fender necks in 1957 have a V shape that's very appealing. Martin style 28s before 1968 have Brazilian rosewood. Gibson J-45s before 1950 have thinner, more carefully-shaved braces. Gibson Les Pauls from 1957-1960 had patent-applied-for pickups with larger magnets. Fender Telecasters in 1968 and 1968 had a slightly different magnet wire due to a mistake made in ordering that gives them a slightly brighter timbre.

Nobody's saying "all guitars from this era are good." Rather, it's "all guitars from this specific year will have a certain desirable combination of features."

THAT is valid. Again, not to predict that "every singly guitar from 1957 will be good," but rather "nearly every single guitar from 1957 will have a neck shape I like, and pickups I like."

[øøøøøøø]

Very excellent points gentlemen, love this discussion.

There is only one slight twist to the arguments though. What about the "matured wood" factor ?

There's some evidence that this is true, and there has been some empirical studies on it. On acoustic guitars, it's certainly at least a small factor in why certain older instruments tend to be more desirable in timbre.

On solidbody electric guitars, it's less clear.

[fuzzking]

Hmm... I like this definition as found in the Oxford dictionary:

"Denoting something from the past of high quality, especially something representing the best of its kind."

says it all for me.

[Larry Mal]

THAT is valid. Again, not to predict that "every singly guitar from 1957 will be good," but rather "nearly every single guitar from 1957 will have a neck shape I like, and pickups I like."

Fair point! I can see where you are coming from with that.

[zhivago]

Big +1

For me the instrument needs to be of a specific era.

So for Fenders, it is 1950 - 1965
For Gibson electrics, it is 1952 - 1965
For Gibson acoustics, it is 1930 - 1941 or so
For Martin guitars, it is late 20s - 1941 or so

Everything else for falls under the category of "old guitar"...like vintage instruments, some old guitars are better than others. But unless the fall in the above categories, I don't think they can be called vintage, really. the above time frames are widely accepted by actual collectors to be the "Golden Eras".


The "20 year rule" has been invented by sellers. And who cab blame them?

Well, for me I think the eras that are desirable are fluid.

For example, lots of people really like the Fender Telecaster Custom, Deluxe, and Thinline with the Wide-Range Humbucker pickups. That's a distinguishing era-specific thing, not available in other eras, that might make someone seek that guitar out. So for me, a 1972 Tele Thinline is absolutely "vintage."

For me, a 1987 Ibanez JEM 777 with the pyramid inlays and monkey grip is also "vintage" now. They're going up in value. It's worth more than a new JEM. People specifically want the ones from 1987-1989 or so, because they're distinguished by quality, sound, a unique aesthetic, and excellent craftsmanship. So they are absolutely "vintage guitars."

The reason things don't tend to get the "vintage" label until being 20 or so years old is that these things require a bit of hindsight. Generally we don't recognize we're in a "golden era" until we move into an era that's not as golden.

The Fenders with Wide Range hum buckers are actually a good example...I see your point here...but still the construction of a lot of these guitars wasn't up to par with a Blackguard Tele, for example...so although I see them a total classic designs, they still fall out of favour for me due to the construction.

Having said that, I wouldn't mind a birth year '78 Tele Custom with the two wide range hum buckers..I like the Brown ones the best!

The JEMs are an excellent example of why a guitar doesn't need a 20 year rule or anything of the sort...the models you are referring to are the best of that era of production for that company, so they are 100% vintage in my book. Same with some of the early brazilian PRS guitars.


For what it's worth I think today there are some excellent instruments being made...will they be vintage one day?

I am not sure, as they keep improving, becoming more and more accurate, and then small builders are getting even closer to the "Golden Era" designs...in a way there's too many guitars out there!


It really is the best time in the history of guitars to be a musician...the amount of choice out there is incredible, and we can pick from so many instruments...new, old, or vintage

I say rock on everybody!

[spacecadet]

For what it's worth I think today there are some excellent instruments being made...will they be vintage one day?

I am not sure, as they keep improving, becoming more and more accurate, and then small builders are getting even closer to the "Golden Era" designs...in a way there's too many guitars out there!

I don't know, I actually think we're in one of the down eras right now; an era that'll be remembered as something like the 1980's. Maybe not across the board, but definitely with stuff like Gibson's screwups over the past couple years (and now a lot of their new guitars don't come with cases), as well as Fender just putting random parts bin shit together to make "new" guitar designs while simultaneously gutting a lot of their regular lines, losing features, losing color options, etc. Not to mention gutting Fender Japan as well, outsourcing a lot of other production to Mexico, etc.

It's obviously possible to get excellent guitars right now, but even high end Fenders I often find something wrong with; you really have to go full custom shop and maybe even masterbuilt to get a guitar that's pretty much guaranteed to be "perfect". And then you're talking many thousands of dollars. (And you still won't have proper tort!)

I know not all vintage guitars are perfect either. But the one I have - a 1966 Mustang - just couldn't be built today like that at anything like its inflation-adjusted cost. Not with the brass shielding, the lacquer finish, etc. (Fender themselves have released custom shop reissues built like the originals... at about $3,000 a pop.) The Japanese reissues look good (and I want one) but they're all built like cheap guitars.

I'm starting to ramble a little, but my point is I guess I'm just a little more down on this era than you are. I think this is going to prove to be one of those eras like the 70's or 80's where people have to look for diamonds in the rough. It's going to be tough for someone just getting into playing to separate the wheat from the chaff if they decide to buy a used guitar from this era sometime in the future.

[zhivago]

For what it's worth I think today there are some excellent instruments being made...will they be vintage one day?

I am not sure, as they keep improving, becoming more and more accurate, and then small builders are getting even closer to the "Golden Era" designs...in a way there's too many guitars out there!

I don't know, I actually think we're in one of the down eras right now; an era that'll be remembered as something like the 1980's. Maybe not across the board, but definitely with stuff like Gibson's screwups over the past couple years (and now a lot of their new guitars don't come with cases), as well as Fender just putting random parts bin shit together to make "new" guitar designs while simultaneously gutting a lot of their regular lines, losing features, losing color options, etc. Not to mention gutting Fender Japan as well, outsourcing a lot of other production to Mexico, etc.

It's obviously possible to get excellent guitars right now, but even high end Fenders I often find something wrong with; you really have to go full custom shop and maybe even masterbuilt to get a guitar that's pretty much guaranteed to be "perfect". And then you're talking many thousands of dollars. (And you still won't have proper tort!)

I know not all vintage guitars are perfect either. But the one I have - a 1966 Mustang - just couldn't be built today like that at anything like its inflation-adjusted cost. Not with the brass shielding, the lacquer finish, etc. (Fender themselves have released custom shop reissues built like the originals... at about $3,000 a pop.) The Japanese reissues look good (and I want one) but they're all built like cheap guitars.

I'm starting to ramble a little, but my point is I guess I'm just a little more down on this era than you are. I think this is going to prove to be one of those eras like the 70's or 80's where people have to look for diamonds in the rough. It's going to be tough for someone just getting into playing to separate the wheat from the chaff if they decide to buy a used guitar from this era sometime in the future.

All fair points...to be honest with you, I was thinking more Gibson Custom Shop / Fender Masterbuilt / Danocaster etc.

Thing is that I am old enough to finally be able to afford those high-end instruments, so I don't really look at the normal production stuff, especially as I like vintage appointments.

I also hardly ever buy new, so I am not sure what the market is for the "normal stuff"

[spacecadet]

Thing is that I am old enough to finally be able to afford those high-end instruments, so I don't really look at the normal production stuff, especially as I like vintage appointments.

I also hardly ever buy new, so I am not sure what the market is for the "normal stuff"

Well I know, you seem to be able to afford your share of vintage instruments

Obviously you have to take inflation into account when talking prices of vintage vs. new instruments, and it's difficult to really judge a guitar that costs $300 now vs. a guitar that cost $300 in the 60's. But still, my opinion is that those $300 guitars of today are probably not going to be remembered as "vintage" guitars in 50 years. And that's probably the majority of guitars on the market and actually being purchased right now. When we speak of "vintage" guitars now, we don't qualify it by saying "well, *this* one is vintage, but this other one from the same year is *not*!" But that will almost definitely be the case when people look back on our current era 50 years from now.

I guess the closest equivalent would be the super-cheap early Asian guitars that were sold in the 60's and 70's at places like JC Penney and Sears. Some people call those "vintage", but it's still easy to separate those out from Fenders or Gibsons because, well, they're clearly from less-respected Asian brands of that time period, and the quality is not even close to the same. There's kind of a built-in wall around them that keeps them from being spoken of in the same breath as a 1963 Jazzmaster or a 1950's Strat.

But in 50 years, you're going to have a bunch of Strats, Jazzmasters and other "legit" Fenders that are made in different countries, have different finishes, different pickups and electronics, different materials for the nuts, pickguards, etc. and it's going to be a lot harder to figure out what's what unless you're someone who's really a historian when it comes to this stuff. I mean this is true across all manufacturers; good luck to anyone in the future who's trying to figure out what to buy. My guess is most people are just going to skip this era altogether just like a lot of people do of the 70's or 80's, because the signal to noise ratio is just too low. I'd argue it's even lower now than in those eras, unless you strictly look for custom shop/masterbuilt guitars.

[Despot]

Interesting points about what might be termed 'vintage' from our current era in years to come.

For me the difference is originality.

If you're buying a vintage Jazzmaster, or Tele or ES335, you're buying an original compared to facsimiles. That said, the ES335 has been in production since the start, as has the Tele, but both have gone through numerous changes - so will a 50 year old Norlin era Gibson from the 1970s command the same sort of prices as a 50 year old McCarthy era Gibson? Because while the guitars look broadly similar, they will sound an a hell of a lot different (and feel a hell of a lot different).

Same with Telecasters - and I'm not being a picky cork sniffer about this (I own a '78 Telecaster that I love), but having played '70s Teles and a few early '60s Teles, they're also different beasts.

Now ... to get back to the point.

Modern Fenders (let's just take Fenders for the sake of argument) come in all shapes and sizes as we know. Let's say we're comparing the vintage facsimile (AV65 series) and modern/updated series (say American Standard). Will 'vintage' enthusiasts go more for a really really good, really well made vintage facsimile in the '65 AV or will they prefer to have something that was unique to our era, like an American Standard with all the 'modern' appointments?

My own personal view is that the '65 AV series are so bloody good, these will age well and will easily 'feel' like what we now consider vintage jazzmasters by the time they've some years clocked up. They'll certainly look the part given how thin the lacquer is - and given how good the AV pickups sound, they won't be far off in sound too.

On the other hand a non-nitro finished modern appointments Telecaster will be 'unique' to our age - it won't sound like a vintage Tele, or look like a vintage Tele. It'll be a 2010s Tele (or 2000s). But maybe there'll be a nostaligia for this age the way there is in certain quarters for the 'golden' age of guitars.

Personally my love of 'golden' era vintage has nothing to do with sentiments around the people who played them in the '60s and a lot more to do with having tried everything and arrived at an informed view that I like them more. Why do I have an ES345 instead of an ES335 ("like Clapton!! OMFG!!") ... well ... in part because I don't want to have an ES335 ("Like Clapton!!") as I just prefer the aesthetics. Also, thanks to the bloody Clapton association ES335s from the same year as my ES345 are double the price. Luckily this means I get to have an almost identical guitar (let's overlook the phase in the middle position and varitone - which is actually a plus) with split parallelogram inlays. Nice.

Anyway. Long rant over. Apologies.

[shadowplay]

Thing is that I am old enough to finally be able to afford those high-end instruments, so I don't really look at the normal production stuff, especially as I like vintage appointments.

I also hardly ever buy new, so I am not sure what the market is for the "normal stuff"

I'm the same, well sort of...I keep saving the money for a pre-war Martin (D28) and then I find something more pressing or less selfish. Less selfish would be the Cabin and cars and instruments for the kids and more pressing would be taking the money I had saved the second time and putting it into a couple of old Maseratis. Simply put, they were going to be so unaffordable in the near future (basically now) that I had to jump or never have a chance at getting one. At the moment I don't have a lot of time to play anyway and I plan to live the good life in retirement which isn't that far off and I'll hopefully have my Martin then and sit looking at the Loch and serenade the Golden Eagles. I've started saving again but I'm under no illusions that something might just hoover it up again but it's generally a been a good thing to have the money ready, so I'm not complaining.

I had the same deal in 1989 when I bought my first home, I had a chance at a 58' White Falcon but for me I'd have been a right tool buying something as lavish as a White Falcon before I had my own home.

The Vintage thing bothers me quite a lot, I can't disagree with a lot of the definitions that have been stated about guitars but it is abused terribly, though not as much as it is with clothes and furniture. I'm not sure I'd even use vintage, I'd generally go with an 'original' or even 'old' prefix or just say what it is and leave it at that because the term is so devalued.

I think secondhand is a nice honest term or 'original' or classic. In fact the way that 'classic' gets applied willy nilly to lots of unremarkable common or garden old cars bloody annoys me no end. I think the German terms Oldtimer and Newtimer are quite good and clearer than using 'classic', though I guess that to a native speaker they might be just as abused.

D

[GhostPlayer]

And is it therefore a consensus that there are no decent vintage JM builds after 1975 then?

Mostly regarding JM's, 'cos I have a late 90's MIM '72 Telecaster Custom that is simply one of the best guitars I've played to date, fabulous tone, maple neck to die for, perfect balance. In my book, it's definitely vintage.

[fuzzking]

And is it therefore a consensus that there are no decent vintage JM builds after 1975 then?

Mostly regarding JM's, 'cos I have a late 90's MIM '72 Telecaster Custom that is simply one of the best guitars I've played to date, fabulous tone, maple neck to die for, perfect balance. In my book, it's definitely vintage.

Well, there are very nice CBS-era examples, but in general, 70s stuff is really not that desirable. Friend of mine had a late 70s strat which was just... crap. Another friend has a 70s JM which is every bit as nice as my 63 and 64. It's hit and miss, I guess.

[shadowplay]

Mostly regarding JM's, 'cos I have a late 90's MIM '72 Telecaster Custom that is simply one of the best guitars I've played to date, fabulous tone, maple neck to die for, perfect balance. In my book, it's definitely vintage.

So for you basically all decent guitars are 'vintage', no wonder there's such confusion and the word has lost a lot of credibility. I'm sure your Tele is a good guitar but calling it vintage is iconoclastic.

D

[Despot]

I'm certainly not saying that there aren't good guitars after '65 ... or '75 (again - my '78 Tele Custom is one of the nicest guitars I've ever played). What I'm saying is that they're different - Telecasters have been in constant production since day the 'golden era', but they've gone through quite a few changes (some good, some bad) in that time.

Take pickups for example. The '70s pickups varied from sounding pretty close to mid-60s pickups (early '70s) to quite a brighter sounding pickup. My '78 Tele has a very bright bridge pickup, but it still sounds full bodied and not thin/ice-pick-y. But it's bright. I've played '60s Teles that have the typical tele bright-ness, but they're not as bright as my '78. So to be even more specific, I'm basing this on three Teles - a '62, a '66 and my '78.

All three are fantastic guitars - light, resonant and every quality that we usually like and talk about on NGD posts. But all three sounded different - the biggest difference being between the '60s and the '78.

All three would be classed as 'vintage' (the '78 probably qualifies not on age, but on the fact that it's a vintage custom/WRHB guitar ... they're a particular thing and highly sought after in their own right, even though they're a '70s CBS Fender). Collectors would go for the '62 because it's a guitar from Leo's era. If I had a pick of any one of the three for free I'd have taken the '66 ... as it was just a stunning guitar in every way. I ended up trading for the '78 ... because that was what I wanted.

Point being - there are some great guitars made at any point in time, but whether or not they're vintage (or even desirable) depends on your point of view and what you want. I wanted a Tele Custom. I probably wouldn't have been as keen on the guitar if it had been a 'regular' Tele from '78 (and it probably would have been cheaper too). The reason for this is that a '78 Tele Custom is a different beast to a '78 Tele. To me a '78 Tele could be a good guitar, but a '60s Tele will probably end up sounding better (to my ear). But they didn't make Tele Customs with WRHBs in the '60s ... so that particular model stands alone (same with things like Starcasters or Thinline Teles) and competes on it's own merits as a '70s Fender.

Bear with me ... I'm getting to a point here.

So when we talk about Teles (again) ... consider a MIM Tele Custom from whatever year. Could this be a great guitar - sure, without a doubt. Never owned one, but I've played some that were great.

But a modern Tele custom won't have a WRHB (in the original sense). It's going to have a more regular humbucking type pickup. It'll also have a bridge pickup that's wound differently or designed differently than the original '70s type. So is it a great guitar - could be, yeah. Is it an original Tele Custom - not strictly. It's a facsimile - a great one, but a facsimile.

The issue is that there's a hang up on the use of these terms. It's almost as if something that's 'vintage' automatically is better than something that isn't. And let's be clear - vintage can suck...

I've had more than one 'vintage' guitar that's been a clunker. These guitars will still command vintage prices when sold ... but I've had vintage offsets that were nowhere near as good as an AV65 (for example). So the use of the term vintage doesn't denote 'awesome' - it denotes a particular period or time of production.