Why do old guitars sound different?

[Keira Witherkay]

mojo...magic...whatever you wanna call it ...exists ...but ONLY if you believe it does....

i too can swear i can feel and hear the difference in vintage instruments ........ even tho most vintage instruments i have owned or played almost always have niggles and some are quite a challenge to play due to either age related issues ...be it electronic or fret wear ....BUT they always seem to have that extra magic/mojo ....whch draws me to them ...

when it come to plugged in tone .......... a good players can play any guitar that can stay in tune... then just change
the pickups to what suits his/her tone and get a giggable instrument ....be they solid or semi or archtop


BUT if you want to play acoustically with an archtop or flat top then it's a whole different ballgame ,,,since acoustic tone and projection is something totally different and reliant on the woods/construction and so on ...and most better top end guitars are top end because of better wood and contruction methods...so seldom do they get equalled by cheaper instruments ...but that said almost all pro jazz gigs are plugged in these days and even for home practise folks plug in ...so these instruments only fullfill a very small niche these days

so why vintage guitars sound different to new builds if they do..... relies solely on the listener /player and his/her belief or preference ...but the player makes the difference

[Little Jay]

I have a couple of old Framus guitars, from 1968, 1973 and 1976. Unamplified they sound much better than my 1994 Epihone Sheraton and my 1997 Furch, but my 2004 Gibson ES-333 can compete, that sounds really sweet unamplified too. With the ES-333 they have in common that they are lackered in nitro, but I doubt if that plays such an important role.... Amplified the Framusses are not particulary special, but still very nice.

My old cheapo Japanese ES175 sounds very good acoustically too, so I expect that just the age of the wood plays a big role. Maybe that combined with nitro and nice old pickups explains some of the vintage mojo.....

[Marty Grass]

Much of our perception is shaped by expectations.

How much drier can wood get after 10 years, especially an archtop or flat top? Really!!

I knew and know some of the old Gibson guys who built the 1950s and 1960s ES-175s. They were factory workers who put the guitars together on an assembly line essentially. They were skilled but not luthiers.

Julius Bellson The Gibson story: Julius Bellson: Amazon.com: Books was a family friend and one of the executives at Gibson back in the day. He would tell you that Gibson was a factory that made guitars, not luthiers in a factory.

There's no question that Gibson made and still makes some wonderful instruments. But consider that the old timers are highly amused that a 1958 Les Paul fetches over $100K and that thousands of players across the world want to know what their secrets were.

One of the old guys told me of how sometimes they'd run out of a certain glue and go to a hardware store to buy Elmer's just to keep production up. He also said that two major factors dropped the quality at Gibson: Elvis and the Beatles. They each produced a huge demand in instruments. Gibson ramped up its production to as much as 500 guitars per day. He said many of them were simply bad but they still sold.

Their top end archtops often were beautifully made. For example, the Johnny Smith had very high standards. But the ES-175 was a higher volume instrument and Gibson's entry level archtop, sort of like the Melody Maker to the Les Paul or the ES-330 to the ES-335.

I recognize that I hold some unpleasant and unpopular opinions on the cork sniffing affair of vintage Gibsons. Growing up, I knew the men and women who designed and built many of them. I loved my Gibsons as a kid and asked them many questions. I still know some of them. That gives me a different perspective.

The good news is that the Gibson Custom Shop is putting out some of Gibson's best currently. Global competition demands it since Asian and European guitars are so well made in many cases.

[oriv]

I sure don't think they put some magic into the old gibsons or fenders and I also find it pretty sad or funny that people are willing to pay 100k for a guitar, no matter when it was built. But even putting records of artists aside, when I judge guitars that *I* played, in every case I preferred the sound of gibsons from the 70s or so to new ones. The new ones are ok until you play an old one and then the difference is obvious. I don't know, something warmer, mellower, less bright or stiff.. but anyway the difference is not because I was expecting it to be better - it is better (to my ears, other people might argue it's just different).

[Hjalmiz]

well , not all old guitars from Gibson are worth +100K .There are very few original ones left that is. They have a historical value and amazing looking and sounding (most of them) Whats so hard to understand about that ? These guitars are the start of the moderns electric guitar that realy has not chaged since. Now, if you try a late 50 early 60 335 for instance, that BTW very few of us under 35 has done and will ever do, i find i very hard to believe that people in here wouldnt feel the amazing qualities ! If you dont, stick to your eastman or whatever and be happy and spend the money on something else...Just be happy about that :-)

I have no idea Why they sound better and diffrent. I do think that what randyc Said " caused by resins within the wood gradually converting to varnishes that stiffen the sounding structures. This would cause a more resonant (and louder) sound since the natural damping characteristics of the wood would be diminished. " is part of it.


There are some new buiders that capture some of the qualities from old guitars.

Destroy All Guitars - JG Bluesmaster 59

/H

[vinlander]

These 50's and 60's guitars might sound different (better for some) NOW after years of aging, but when they were taking part of recording at the time they were NOT aged yet. Unfortunately we can't really compare their tone before and after aging...

[jzucker]

i don't think the difference in tones from the '50s and '60s guitars are due to aging. I played many of those guitars in the '60s (L5s, super 400s, etc) and they sounded pretty much the same as they do today. Listen to Wes or Jim Hall or Joe Pass from the '60s. Those guitars sounded amazing when they were new. People sort of forget that.

I owned a '64 Gibson L5 which I purchased around 1973. It sounded like an L5 should. I think a new, well made L5 sounds pretty much the same.

[randyc]

Marty Grass describes manufacturing expediencies very well, whether the product is guitars or mouse-traps. An older engineer in a company that manufactured microwave radio links advised me: "Don't ever stand between the radio and the door".

If that seems cryptic, he meant that shipping product was priority one and anything/anybody that impeded that priority wouldn't get much sympathy from the corporate bean counters. The Elmer's glue anecdote reminds me of many similar "corrective actions" I've witnessed over the years, LOL. Somehow, however, we muddle through ...

[John A.]

With Gibson, I think a lot of the mystique stems from the sounds on a handful of recordings made with Les Pauls that have not often been successfully replicated (e.g, the Clapton Bluesbreakers sound, Peter Green on Black Magic Woman, SuperSession-era Bloomfield, a few others). That sort of launched the legend of PAFs, mixed in with the rarity of original sunbursts, and the obsession with vintageness kind of fed on itself and spread to other models as the collectors ran out of rare old Gibsons to glom. At this point, so many people have so much invested psychologically and financially in the idea that old is different and better than new that I don't think it can really even be looked at objectively for the most part. My only limited hands on experience is with a real dot-neck 335. The heavens did not open for me. They have for some other ones (best I ever played was a 70s block neck/trapeze tailpiece; I've been chasing that sound ever since, and think I finally found it in a non-Gibson)

With Fender I think the deal is a little different -- CBS-era stuff was plagued with MUCH worse quality problems than Gibson ever had -- Gibson made aesthetic, material, and design decision that people didn't like, but they didn't routinely make guitars that were virtually unplayable, as Fender did. That spawned an industry of people who figured out how to fix and improve Fenders, and between people figuring out how to fix the salvageable ones, and the worst dogs being turned into firewood, CBS-era managed to become vintage, too. Not for me -- somebody gave me an early 70s Strat that was so horrible I gave it back. I have an '89 American Standard that is kills anything CBS era I've ever played. But, obviously, others differ. And Lowell George and Jimi Hendrix sounded just fine, thank you

To make a long story longer, with old instruments there's also a sorting function. There were an always be good and bad ones because of the vagaries of making things out of wood in factories. The good ones survive and the bad ones get tossed, or modded into unrecognizability. 20, 30, 40, years later we only have the great old ones, so we think all the old ones are great.

John

[D.G.]

I prefer new guitars/amps based on old designs, but updated for safety and ergonomics, with much higher QC.

[AlainJazz]

I prefer new guitars/amps based on old designs, but updated for safety and ergonomics, with much higher QC.

Ditto. I do have a few nice vintage instruments but only because they fulfill a function. Eg. An old es-150 is just great for big band music. I'd have no problem at all playing a more modern instrument for that though. I just happen to have the old guitar. I do prefer more modern designs and ergonomics. I love my L5 iit not because it's old (it's actually not that old) but because it plays well and sounds great. I love more modern designs like sadowsky.