Re: What's the Fascination with Old Instruments?
Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2020 7:21 pm
It's the "aroma" from old gear, and old cases!
...wisdom
...wisdom
drumbob wrote:I have been buying and selling used and vintage guitars for years and was there at the outset of the madness over vintage guitars and the introduction of high prices. There were reasons why this happened. Higher prices for vintage guitars arose partially due to the fact that some companies had serious lapses in quality at certain points in time, such as Fender and Gibson. If the current production models were ****, players longed for the old ones, because they were made better. Some of it was due to rarity, if certain models were not produced in large numbers, like the Flying V and Explorer, the prices escalated. Some of it was due to hero worship. Guitarists wanted the same model their hero played and that guitar was in short supply, like the 58-60 Les Paul Standard Burst. All the British blues players wanted to sound like Eric Clapton at one point, so vintage Les Pauls became desirable, as they did here, when players saw Keith Richards and Mike Bloomfield playing Bursts.
Early vintage guitar dealers capitalized on all this and a new retail industry was born around 1975 or so. I was there and saw it happen. You had honest dealers like George Gruhn in Nashville, but also obnoxious and sometimes dishonest sharks, like the owner of Guitar Tr*****, right here in New Jersey, who preyed upon musicians who wanted the old guitars. I knew him quite well. He closed his store, took his money and got out of town very quickly.
Sometimes dealers get together and agree to drive up prices of guitars. It's call price fixing and it's illegal. I know for a fact that two prominent vintage dealers singlehandedly and surreptitiously raised the prices of Fender Jazzmasters and Jaguars years ago and the industry somehow followed suit. Now, you can't touch a vintage example of either of these guitars for under thousands of dollars. Prior to that, they were cheap and easy to find for a song.
Certain companies, like Guild and Rickenbacker, really didn't suffer the terrible quality issues as others did. Guild never had bad quality. They were very consistent over the years, but most Guild guitars are "sleepers" on the vintage market, compared to Gibson and Fender. Rickenbacker seems to have had consistently good quality. Martin had their issues in the 70's.
Buy what you like. If you have the money and want an old guitar, buy it, but don't look upon the purchase as an investment, unless it's a real blue chip collectible, like a pre-war Martin, or vintage Les Pauls, Strats and the like. Be an educated consumer.
This reply pretty much sums it all.
But I feel inclined to add a couple of thoughts.
The guitar market changed a LOT from the late 60s to the present days. And so did the customer view of the guitar. What once was a musician's tool, became an object of desire, a symbol of status, and finally a coveted jewel.
Back in the 50s and 60s, the concept of "vintage" or "high end" guitar obviously didn't exist as we know it nowadays. Nor did Fender, Gibson or Rickenbacker feature boutique shops. They'd do custom orders, regarding colors and specs, but these guitars were exactly what "custom" means: they were special orders meant to meet the customer's needs.
When the "vintage" fad began, and I'd date it around the late 80s, being highly fed by what our friend said above, especially the bad quality that major companies submitted to in the 70s, the "custom shops" started to become boutiques and of course, we're living in a profit-based society (which I have nothing against, at all).
So there y'all have it: old guitars are worth wazoos of cash, and most companies have custom shop named sections that make more expensive guitars, out of "premium" woods and high quality craftsmanship and great electronics (which are indeed good but hardly exceptional), that don't do anything much fancier than the "standard" production models (of course, I'm saying this regarding US made good stuff in general), but cost about twice or more.
Will an old or custom built instrument be necessarily better than a standard present-day guitar? Sometimes, yes. Some other times, not really. Especially on stage or in a studio recording room. But there's a fetish that makes people actually believe that faulty 50's pots are actually more desireable than brand new CTS ones that work perfectly. To each his own.
Anyway, there's a market niche for everyone. Musicians will often tell what's good and what's too much hype, collectors will have their own take on this, and cork sniffers, well... They'll throw stones. But that, my brothers, is the bare truth.
