Interesting article in last weeks Montreal Gazette...

[Ontario_RIC_fan]

Interesting article in last weeks Montreal Gazette... He makes a few good points I think.


Putting a price on making music is tough


By RICK BLUE, FreelanceMarch 17, 2011



I grew up in the era of the guitar. In 1960, I paid $5 for my first one, a used Harmony Sovereign arch top. And I quickly learned how to pick out "Ghost Riders in the Sky."

Like most of my generation, I had been weaned on music that featured the electric guitar; from the stripped down chords of Buddy Holly to the bluesy riffs of Chuck Berry. But a new type of music was becoming more prominent. It was called "folk."

My roommate in boarding school played the banjo. He taught me chords to accompany him. Soon, we were performing folk songs for the school on the chapel stage.

The guitars that folkies coveted were large bodied acoustics; Martins, Gibsons and Guilds. They had a rich tone that could fill a room. But I couldn't afford one.

Then, everyone went electric. American pop featured Fender guitars and amplifiers, for the instrumental bands like The Ventures and the backing tracks to most of surf music. Rockabilly featured the deeper sound of hollow body Gretsch guitars, noted for their "twang."

The Beatles introduced us to Rickenbacker guitars and Vox amplifiers. Later, George Harrison brought in the distinctive Rickenbacker 12-string, which eventually peaked with the sound of The Byrds.

Paul McCartney became famous for his Hofner violin bass, but this was an anomaly. Most bass players stuck to the designer classic Fender "Precision." This became so ubiquitous that the first record producer I met referred to any electric bass as a "Fender bass."

When guitar hero bands arrived, certain emerged as iconic. The Fender Stratocaster became the ultimate blues guitar. It had a wide fretboard and a smooth action. And Jimmy Hendrix proved that it could do almost anything if you put it through a stack of Marshall amplifiers. Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin played a Gibson "Les Paul," and this soon became the default heavy-metal lead guitar. The Fender had brighter pickups, whereas the Gibson yielded darker sounds and more crunch. ZZ Topp's "Sharp Dressed Man" is a supreme example of those incredible overtones.

Guitars have been around me all my life. And they have meant more to me than almost anything else. I love their sound. But if I had been a smart investor, I should have bought them all.

Nowadays, it is very difficult to find a vintage guitar. Their price is high because they are coveted by collectors as cultural artifacts, as indeed they are. No museum of the future could give any idea of what it was to live in that era without displaying these items.

But consequently most working musicians cannot afford to buy them and have to make do with offshore replicas.

A few years ago, I flirted with the idea of buying a classic guitar for the stage. I knew a collector who lived in Westmount whose basement was filled with treasures. I was interested in a 1960 orange Gretsch hollow body electric. I thought I could lower the price by pointing out that in order to be playable, it would need a fret job and some new knobs. He looked at me in horror.

"Are you crazy?" he said. "Anything you do to replace the original components will drastically reduce its value!"

So that's what has happened. No matter how much it might be worth, how can I afford to buy a guitar that is too valuable to play?

Rick Blue is a resident of Beaconsfield and is half of the musical comedy duo of Bowser and Blue.

[jingle_jangle]

Some inaccuracies here; one of my pet topics, too.

Vintage guitars are not difficult to find. What's difficult, and will try your patience, is finding a good one at a fair price. And, as with most things of this nature, unless you're up on the jargon and the sub-culture, you're at a disadvantage as a potential buyer.

One conundrum, fostered by the vintage dealers' mantra of "don't change it or it will lose half its value", is whether to repair a vintage instrument in order to make or keep it playable.

This may help to clarify this a bit: Are you a collector or a player? What will your first use be? Are you buying this as an investment or to play? Does the instrument have any historic significance? Is this top dollar pricing?

It's still your guitar or bass, and if you want to play it and it needs a neck reset, get it done! Minor, reversible work (new knobs or pickguard, replace a pot, rewire a pickup) should be done, but keep the original parts.

Wait--your guitar was played by Jimi at one time, and you have documents proving this claim?

1. Don't play it.
2. Store it in a hermetically-sealed case.
3. Get lots of insurance.

BTW, I've got a set of strings from Brian Setzer's 6120, documented. They did not transfer any mojo that I'm aware of--my playing is still 4/10. Any offers?

[Ontario_RIC_fan]

I agree whole heartedly Paul... Well said!

[pag]

All this is very close to my heart.

I have owned and sold instruments in the past that are now too expensive to buy if they even became available or I had a win on the lottery which is unlikely.
Jimmy Page was mentioned above and if I am not mistaken he had a security guard close to his vintage guitars onstage in recent years although he may be using Gibson Custom Shop versions instead these days.
For those of us who want to go and jam,gig,record or whatever with our guitars and basses we have some great alternatives from companies making fairly close reproductions of their famous (and unreachable) vintage instruments as I just mentioned.
The Rickenbacker Vintage Re-issue "V" series and Signature series plus Fender and Gibson Custom Shop and so on have been great in providing players with viable and insureable vintage style gear to go out and enjoy with some of the simpler to produce models being very close to the originals.
I would love to see more of the original detail incorporated into any future? versions of the Rickenbacker "V" series to the point that we could own and play instruments that are spot on accurate copies of the ones that we all lust after from time to time.
I have mentioned this before but it can only be a matter of woodwork (the skills are there at the Ric factory) and bits of aluminium casting etc.(small engineering companies are crying out for work) to produce a brand new copy of an RM1999.It might be a bit pricey but nowhere near the mega bucks reqired to buy an original.

If we could see into the future from now I wonder how the historic rock instruments will fare in years to come?

[bitzerguy]

I fist met Rick Blue and George Bowser in a small club in Pointe Claire in 1986. They are good satirists, if you happen to be an English Quebecker. His article is exactly that, satire directed at Anglo Montreal musicians, many of whom happen to be on both sides of the vintage guitar market fence (angst ridden buyer and full-of-BS seller). I thought his article was hilarious, as usual.

[jingle_jangle]

Thanks, Dean. That is some DRY satire!

They played "Stump the Chumps" and won, which I'm sure they're used to.

The points raised remain valid.

Pag: I agree with you nearly 100%, but consider:

After a lot of consideration and a number of meetings and discussion by Rick experts, Rickenbacker brought out the 325C58. This was to be, as JH put it, a "warts and all" historic replica of the '58 325 that John Lennon bought to replace the European instruments that he'd been playing until then, which could be said to be the "most famous Rickenbacker" of all time. What music-conscious youth of the Beatles' generation watching the Ed Sullivan Show in February '64 failed to notice that cool black guitar with THREE pickups?

When I searched for my first Rickenbacker, after realizing that the Company was still in business (I'd been out of guitars for 35 years at the time), I read up on the various models and wanted a C58, more than anything else. But, I ended up with a 660/12 because I lost auction after auction (3 or 4) on C58s.

Despite efforts of RIC sales to dissuade them, Guitar Center ordered a whole passel of C58s at NAMM, and put them up for sale to the general public. Most were bought by folks who wanted a JL guitar, but had no idea of its quirks. Complaints mounted, GC got fed up with fielding the returns, and ended up blowing out the guitars at $750 each (less than half the MSRP), in an infamous Labor Day sale. Some speculators bought 20 of them and trickled them out in private sales and on eBay.

It may be an extreme example, but "historically correct" is a minefield, and any company would do well to pick their way carefully.

Second point: It's never easy for anything but a true Custom Shop to switch gears in production, and produce a small batch of anything, regardless of the talent present--and RIC has some awesomely talented people who COULD make it happen if they weren't filled up with orders for their line of regular, bread-and-butter MG 330s, JG 360s, and JG 4003s. Even a seemingly simple concept as COY or VP options have had to be put on hiatus, due to the production chaos they cause.

In 5 years, C58s have doubled in value. Any limited edition Rick is a solid investment, and still in some places, ordinary Ricks are so rare that professional musicians have yet to see one. We're lucky in the USA, as they are readily available though not as ridiculously ubiquitous as Fender Strats and Teles.

Frankly, there's a lot of vintage Rickenbacker stuff generally available, and prices for most lag far behind Gibsons and Fenders of equivalent vintage, though ironically both Gibson and Fender produced hundreds of instruments for every half-dozen Rickenbackers made back then. This alone is another good reason not to reproduce any vintage stuff, at least for the present.

[bvstudios]

In my little collection I have a 1970 Gretsch 6122 (just barely pre-Baldwin's years of weirdness) that broke one day onstage mid-show in the early 80's.... I grabbed my Strat to finish the night, then put the 6122 away in the case and left it alone for over 20 years, thinking that restoration to playability would somehow diminish its originality.

Three years ago, I finally took it to my luthier, and asked his opinion... His first question was "Do you want to play it or sell it?" When I asked what he meant, he told me that if I was wanting a player, then it was probably okay to perform some small detail updates that would make the guitar functional (in addition to the re-wiring it required), ie-a new bridge, refret and new nut, but if I wanted to keep it original to sell it as original, all he would do is rewire it to restore the functionality. In either case, he came out strongly against anything purely cosmetic (replating, refinishing, etc)

I chose "play" (natch), and have not regretted it. It's a great instrument, and if I didn't also spend a lot of time with my 370/12 it would doubtless see even more time out in the air.

Same goes for all my other guitars and basses. I keep them in their cases & take very good care of them, but they all are "working" instruments, each one bought with a purpose. They're played.

[coolingitdown]

It may be an extreme example, but "historically correct" is a minefield, and any company would do well to pick their way carefully.

Wholehearted +1, and that's why I'm so glad that RIC decided to design the 4001C64 to have (more or less; I know it's not exact) many of the features of the 4001 (pickups, and therefore tone, specifically), yet still make concessions to newer technology and improvements in how the new instruments are built (the RIHS pickup is less finicky than the old horseshoe pickup, two-piece neck, UV-cured polyester finish, etc...).

I can't speak for the rest of the C-series or any of the V-series, having never played them, this seems to be the way RIC has gone with reissues, and I applaud them for it.

[jingle_jangle]

In either case, he came out strongly against anything purely cosmetic (replating, refinishing, etc)

Luthiers ain't the Voice of The Almighty...he was playing it safe, based upon the Gospel According to Vintage Dealers, who got tired of seeing inaccurate and just plain bad "restorations" done by amateurs and hacks. It's much easier to establish a quick rule that benefits the dealers--"change a screw and it loses half its value", than to have to closely examine every non-original instrument that comes in for completeness and quality of workmanship, in order to nail down an accurate value.

Unless a guitar is badly butchered, a very limited production item, or celebrity-owned, this makes little sense when it comes down to it, but the proliferation of "relics" has had the effect of making those oldies even dearer, so I don't expect this attitude to go away.

Meantime, we're having fun redoing some Ricks from the '50s that were thought to be "beyond salvation". They will rise from the ashes to play another lifetime.

[bitzerguy]

The points raised remain valid.

I could not agree more. I faced this decision with my '90 360WB. In my case, the ability to play the guitar, gig the guitar, and enjoy a pristine esthetic suited to my taste was more important than any perceived loss of value by a dealer. That being said, the decision to restore and customize was done only after consulting with Paul and then having the work done by only the best Rickenbacker professional. This is for my piece of mind and is a guitar that I will enjoy, not for some dealer to tell me that it is worth pennies because it is not original. Would I have made the same decision had it been ultra famous or ultra rare? Probably not, but ...

I now have to have a re-fret done on my 1969 Les Paul Deluxe Gold Top, should I wish to continue playing it. I know what I will do. What would you do?

[jingle_jangle]

Dean, I've brought up many times that the market for unique Rickenbackers is one of dedicated enthusiasts who are knowledgeable and willing to pay for the best, whether it be a restored instrument or nice original. Dealers are not where the bulk of the trading in these instruments, goes on: they in general know too little and in general unwilling to break their own rules on valuation.

I (of course) exclude our really great enthusiast-dealers like Chris Clayton, Mike Parks, and recently, the Deas brothers. All of these guys really know their stuff and understand the Rick market.

[Clint]

Boy, I'm sick of the word vintage. Sometimes an old guitar is just an old guitar.

[cjj]

Boy, I'm sick of the word vintage. Sometimes an old guitar is just an old guitar.

+1!
And the word vintage, as it was originally used, in reference to wine, refers only to a particular growing/production year. No certain age implied at all. You can go out and find 2010 "vintage" wines, and later this year 2011 (probably already in the southern hemisphere), maybe not in stores yet, but certainly at the wineries.

So, why in the world did "vintage" come to mean something old and supposedly special when referring to guitars and such???

[jingle_jangle]

...but an old Rickenbacker...now THAT's a cigar!

[jingle_jangle]

Boy, I'm sick of the word vintage. Sometimes an old guitar is just an old guitar.

+1!
And the word vintage, as it was originally used, in reference to wine, refers only to a particular growing/production year. No certain age implied at all. You can go out and find 2010 "vintage" wines, and later this year 2011 (probably already in the southern hemisphere), maybe not in stores yet, but certainly at the wineries.

So, why in the world did "vintage" come to mean something old and supposedly special when referring to guitars and such???

I think it can be traced back to Ole Svensson, who dug all the post holes in the whole state of Montana. Ole used it for all sorts of stuff, and he was certainly well-posted.