The definition of vintage

[andy_tchp]

There is a misconception that "vintage" comes from the french "vingt", meaning twenty, so objects that are 20 or more years old. This is not true, but becoming a sort of socially accepted unwritten law.

No, it isn't.

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.

Yes. '90s era anything being called 'vintage' is just plain ridiculous.

[Larry Mal]

I think predicting the future when it comes to "vintage" is a sucker's game. It assumes that the guitar remains popular in whatever forms of music come next, no guarantee. Should the guitar fall off the radar, we can look to the violin for a guess as to what could happen with the guitar. Granted, the violin has never been marketed the way the guitar was in terms of branding and name recognition certainly, but also violins look the same to the naked, untrained eye and electric guitars by design don't.

So with the violin, you look to the past for quality in terms of higher grades of wood, and hand crafting from a master builder. There's history there, and you have to do research. They look roughly the same, so you have to know something about how to evaluate the actual sound of it.

That same research is a dead end with the electric guitar, where the wood really isn't ever that good or important with electric guitars as it is with acoustic instruments, and there's no real hand-crafting after a certain point. I can't see getting all that excited about a CNC made instrument popped out by a faceless employee in a factory somewhere, no matter how good the CNC machine was programmed.

Of course, automobiles are very collectible, and they are hardly hand crafted, you know? However, automobile designs aren't repeated for long, and so cars of a certain era can instantly conjure up images of the time in which they were made. My 1970 GMC 1500 truck is much different from what GMC made in 1980, 1990 or 1960. But Stratocasters are made to be the same within certain parameters for most of that instrument's history.

But I'll still submit that there's just too many produced electric guitars for them all to be found collectible and valuable and "vintage" in the future. For anything to be considered valuable due to age, there has to be scarcity, that is a factor that absolutely can't change. And with people being happy to buy tons of cheap, mass made, mass assembled instruments in nations they've never been to by people they don't know anything about or want to, scarcity is something that will not come to most electric guitars being made today for a long, long time, if ever.

So don't bankroll your retirement on the Squier Kurt Cobain model, is what I'm saying.

[howdo3313]

I feel kinda vintage. Definitely Pre-1980.

[zhivago]

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

Oh my, a pre war D28 is a dream guitar! I hope you will be able to score one soon!!!!

I think next year I will try to stretch to a pre-war 00028...I will have to sell a couple of things to get me all the way, but I play more and more acoustic nowadays

[saxjag]

No, there will be no vintage guitars from the year 2015

That's easy for you to say, since nobody can contradict you for another 30 to 50 years!

[øøøøøøø]

No, there will be no vintage guitars from the year 2015

That's easy for you to say, since nobody can contradict you for another 30 to 50 years!

ha! touchè.

[GhostPlayer]

Yes. '90s era anything being called 'vintage' is just plain ridiculous.

There you go. That's what I'm ultimately trying to get at.

I'm not calling anything vintage, as I particularly don't care about that term. Just following the train of thought. Just opened this thread as I am in the market for a JM and gobbling as much info as I can.

I've owned a few dozen guitars over the years. The stranger the better, usually. All the way from Univox's Phase (I &II) to actual an '63 SG, MIJ Jags, to unnamed Tokai clones-of-clones, to just weird looking & branded 70's copy era guitars, that just looked too cool and I thought I could bring back to life... I know a good guitar from a bad one, believe me.

Back in the 90's I was low on funds and had a Highway One Telecaster, that was ok'ish. I read an article that Thom York was using the MIM '72 Custom as his guitar of choice the OK Computer tour... my jaw dropped. Never had played a Tele maple neck either up to then. I tried one and was immediately sold. For the price it blew my HW One out of the water. Sold the crappy HW One and bought the MIM that same week.

It's been more than 15 years since that trade in, I've played thousands of guitars worth 4x or 5x what I payed for this one. Not one guitar even comes close. That including all sorts of USA Teles, side-by-side recording sessions and touring. My stock MIM '72 Tele Custom is probably the most solid performer I've come across.

What am I supposed to do with this knowledge?

Not trying to rattle anything, especially on this forum, just genuinely speaking my mind. That's why I opened the thread, specifically regarding JM's, to get a general consensus.

On a side note, how long does it usually take for admin to grant access to the Guitar Shop section once you send the email in? I'm itching to do some JM business!

[mgeek]

Oh right, there are other guitars besides Fender, I keep forgetting

And if you're into collecting other stuff rather than Fender you start to realise what an insane bubble the vintage Fender guitar market is. There are thousands and thousands of those things out there and the people who want the are getting older. They will always be cool to some extent, but the 'thi' of wealthy lawyers etc buying old guitars cos Their hero Eric Clapton played one when they were a kid isn't gonna translate to future generations

[GhostPlayer]

Oh right, there are other guitars besides Fender, I keep forgetting

And if you're into collecting other stuff rather than Fender you start to realise what an insane bubble the vintage Fender guitar market is. There are thousands and thousands of those things out there and the people who want the are getting older. They will always be cool to some extent, but the 'thi' of wealthy lawyers etc buying old guitars cos Their hero Eric Clapton played one when they were a kid isn't gonna translate to future generations

Definitely. At one point like I explained in my previous post, I got the "indie" bug. I really wanted a seriously off-beat guitar. This was back when Ebay was tolerable, and you could ship goods from the US to Europe, mark them as a present to avoid paying import tax. I had a ball buying crazy guitars, trying them out and most of the time spending some considerable amount on my luthier to get the as perfect as possible... only to not feel any special connection and selling them.

I had some extremely beautiful guitars that were simply absolute and utter crap. I'll have to search my backup, gotta dig those pics up.

[mgeek]

I'd love to see them! Offbeat guitars are way more interesting to me.

In the search for pictures of several Fenton Weills I've never seen outside of catalogue pictures, I've pored over some of those 'photos of old bands' websites, and I don't think it's out of line to say that maybe, 40/50% of the pictues have at least one Fender in them, especially after say, 1964 or so.

[GhostPlayer]

I'd love to see them! Offbeat guitars are way more interesting to me.

In the search for pictures of several Fenton Weills I've never seen outside of catalogue pictures, I've pored over some of those 'photos of old bands' websites, and I don't think it's out of line to say that maybe, 40/50% of the pictues have at least one Fender in them, especially after say, 1964 or so.

Sure Fell madly in love at first sight... Went to my skilled luthier for a nice overall revision, gut inspection, cleaning, refretting and TOM bridge fitting - which was the only mod I did.



It's a Maya SG copy, exactly from the lawsuit era. I managed to date her to late 60's early 70's. By Japanese Kobe, a.k.a Rokkoman. There were actually two parallel assemblies ... one was "El Maya" which are known for being extremely high quality builds. And then there is just "Maya" that served as prototyping the higher end line, as well as non-copy originals.

Lawsuit "legitimacy" argument (lool, the paradox... ) notice how perfect the body and the Gibson signature headstock moustache shape.

Possibly the shittiest guitar I ever played in my life.

[Jaguar018]

wealthy lawyers etc buying old guitars cos Their hero Eric Clapton played one when they were a kid isn't gonna translate to future generations

Damn you blues lawyers! I knew you would show up again!!!

[shadowplay]

^^^

I'd like to buy or every 'vintage' guitar in the world, irradiate them like Goldfinger and give guitar forum man and woman an unequivocal hate figure.

D

[thedude99]

Back in the 90's I was low on funds and had a Highway One Telecaster, that was ok'ish. I read an article that Thom York was using the MIM '72 Custom as his guitar of choice the OK Computer tour... my jaw dropped. Never had played a Tele maple neck either up to then. I tried one and was immediately sold. For the price it blew my HW One out of the water. Sold the crappy HW One and bought the MIM that same week.

It's been more than 15 years since that trade in, I've played thousands of guitars worth 4x or 5x what I payed for this one. Not one guitar even comes close. That including all sorts of USA Teles, side-by-side recording sessions and touring. My stock MIM '72 Tele Custom is probably the most solid performer I've come across.

What am I supposed to do with this knowledge?

Not trying to rattle anything, especially on this forum, just genuinely speaking my mind. That's why I opened the thread, specifically regarding JM's, to get a general consensus.

Realize that vintage isn't the be all and end all, finding a guitar you love to play, regardless of the year of production or value is.

Step over to TGP and you will find a large group of players that don't like vintage guitars. They prefer modern instruments with modern touches. Nothing wrong with that. Different strokes for different folks.

Also, I can sort of relate. My main guitar has been a 97' CIJ Jazzmaster that I bought new (and have done the standard mods that folks do to them). I prefer it to pretty much anything else I play. It is a good quality, well built instrument, but there "better" options available that I don't like playing as much. But I'm also sure that a large part of that due to my attachment and familiarity to the guitar.

[thedude99]

I think predicting the future when it comes to "vintage" is a sucker's game. It assumes that the guitar remains popular in whatever forms of music come next, no guarantee. Should the guitar fall off the radar, we can look to the violin for a guess as to what could happen with the guitar. Granted, the violin has never been marketed the way the guitar was in terms of branding and name recognition certainly, but also violins look the same to the naked, untrained eye and electric guitars by design don't.

Well, I agree with the bolded bit if we are talking about a definition that ties vintage to popular/desirable and possibly valuable. But if it is purely tied to the quality of the instrument then I don't think it really matters.

Think of it this way. We've all heard the theories that the bottom is going to fall out of the vintage market when the aging boomers or their families flood the market with their vintage collections and the younger generations have no interest in them. If that happens (not looking to debate if it will here - who knows), supply and demand kicks in and we get to a point where pre-CBS Fenders become readily available at a reasonable price - do they cease to be Vintage at that point? If the answer is no, that means we don't tie the definition of vintage to popularity and value then it opens the door to guitars being made today being considered vintage. Probably not the mass produced guitars of today, but the higher quality luthier made guitars? We look at student guitars and amps of the past as vintage today, so who knows.