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For you P90 fans. Zzounds has them in stock. They look cool but $5K. I would get one if they were a G cheaper as it was my birth year. They probably sound pretty darn good.
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01-26-2016 04:36 PM
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You can get a vintage one for less....
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"You can get a vintage one for less...." no kidding, I don't think I could get more than 3 grand for mine
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just sayin ...fella's. You won't see me paying $5k for a 175. I will say my friend has one of those reissue 330's with P90's and it sounds fantastic. I had one of those 59 reissue 175's and it sounded horrible (at least to my ears) but some guys think they are the cat's meow. Don't shoot the messenger. I am glad to see the regular 175 back in production though. That is the sound I like. Heavy plywood and dark sounding but that is just me. Everyone floats a different boat.
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Originally Posted by vinnyv1k
I had a 330 VOS and it sounded stunning. Neck was all over the place though and for a guitar that was two years old, worrying indeed.
I've said before that out of the 5 or so VOS Gibson's I have seen 4 of them the necks were on the piss already. I would never buy a new VOS because I do not trust the wood or methods they are using for the necks and we dont get the same warranty.
Not bashing Gibson just reporting on what I have seen.
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My newest Gibson is a 2004 ES-335 that was made in Memphis. The neck is perfect. I had a 2008 ES 175 that came with a less than perfect neck brand new. After a few months, I sold it. The neck wasn't bad enough to send it in for a warranty repair, but it was not perfect enough for a keeper. I also never bonded with the large square D shaped neck profile and felt that the sunburst was not up to par for a guitar of that price range.
The new wood just ain't like the old wood. ;-)
And that is part of the charm of the vintage Gibby's. They had better wood in those days. Another reason to pay 3-5K for a vintage 50's ES-175 rather than buy a new reissue for 5K.
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Originally Posted by Stringswinger
Yeh that profile took some getting used to. To be fair to Gibson although its just pot luck, the 2008 blonde ES-175 I had (went to a fellow member) was by far the best sounding and playing one I had got my hands on. So not all things bad come later but its finding the diamond in the ruff for sure at this point.
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Memphis has been a real QC crap shoot since the early 2000's. I personally have sent back 6 with either bad tail rises, trussrods bottomed out or inoperative , or misaligned pickups, but when you get a good one you get a good one. The last 59 VOS 175 I got was perfect though I sent back 2 prior. Just didn't like the bright thin sound but build quality was spot on.
BTW just got a email from Gibson. They are just finishing up the warranty neck refin on my Tal. They said I will have it back in a week or so. I miss my Tal.
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The old wives tale that old wood is better than new IMO is a load of poop. I have played many a old Gibson that was sonically a dud also. I will say that the old wood was properly seasoned before building a guitar with it back in the day. These days a lot of mass produced guitars are being built with green wood with too much moisture causing problems shortly down the road. That is what happened with my 2014 Tal Farlow neck. They are also building far more guitars now then back in the 1950's. Back then they could give wood more time to season properly. I think trees are like people. Some are good and some are bad regardless of age.
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Is the casual guitarist better at determining old from new wood than a professional violinist???
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My 2 cents:
On an archtop guitar * body* - -
.....Old * Solid * wood vs new * solid * wood , properly seasoned, properly dried, I absolutely see your point.
....Old * laminated * vs new * laminated * wood, very doubtful there's any benefit to old glued wood.
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In fact, I'd be surprised if glues/epoxies and laminating processes haven't improved. (But I really have no idea.) Originally Posted by Dennis D
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grez is a member here..and fast rising young american luthier. ie tim lerch, paul pigat, tommy harkenrider..with old school affinities mixed with some modern techniques
i find this to be a very interesting vid by him...good stuff
cheers
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My dad was a violin maker, and I don't think he thought Stradivarius violins were superior to other well made instruments. He also thought there were rather a lot of them! I know he made at least one violin in the style a 17th century Cremonese instrument that fooled a dealer!!! It's all mojo isn't it?
I bought an L-5 recently because I wanted an L-5. It was an object of desire. I can't justify on any other grounds!!!!!
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If I was in the market, I would likely go vintage as well. A quick search on Craigslist finds this one owner 1956 ES-175DN with case, case candy, receipt... asking $5,500.
https://detroit.craigslist.org/okl/msg/5403808500.html
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This is a very interesting topic. Personally I have do not have a pre conceived view of a guitar's sound but had thought what many do that old is better.
Interestingly, I went to a guitar makers festival, guys making $5,000-$15,000 acoustics. They said that a guitar improving with age is a myth and that a guitar will lose its focus, its mid range punch overtime.
A consistent message was a warning that their guitars may not sound the best on day 1 (some hold them in the workshop for 12 months constantly adjusting) where as cheaper guitars in a shop are made to buy with a scooped sound, whoo you with its bass and top end, but that will be the best that guitar will ever sound. They said that the top end guitars are made with a knowledge of the mellowing of the sound so may be mid heavy initially but in a 1-3 years will be balanced and should sound good for a good 30 years.
One maker (who makes for a top end shop in Japan owned by a major collector that has a collection of one of the oldest Gibsons, some model that the one guy owns all 6 that exist) played one super old Gibson. The maker said these super valuable guitars sounded super awful.
Certainly to my ears my 2012 es175 sounds better than some old (1970s Gibsons, Gibson was not imported into Australia before that) ones, but I am biased, I love my guitar.
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I can hear the difference in old wood vs. new wood. I think that the old growth trees were more plentiful in the old days and so you had better woods for instruments in general. I also think that as the wood ages, it dries out and the sound improves.
I have never played a new guitar that sounds as good as some of the old ones. Even high end Gibsons, Custom shop Fenders and high end luthier made guitars.
IMO, the mojo of vintage guitars is real. Not all of them are great, but the great ones are the best.
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This second "test" is just as badly done as the first. Just commenting on the test methodology, not implying that old Italian violins must needs be better than new violins. These tests just aren't enough to elucidate any differences. At the end of the day, it is just a test of preference happening within those two 75-minute sessions in those spaces to those ten violinists. And imply nothing more than that. Originally Posted by icr
Edit: 12 violins, two 75-minute testing sessions. 6.25 minutes with each violin in each space. 12.5 minutes with each violin in all with travel time to be accounted for and different times on possibly different days. 6.25 minutes each session? I doubt if the violin or the violinist is even warmed up at the end of each 6.25 minutes. Sorry but a FOOK OFF to the test! Or
I hate bad science!)
As with anything that is subjective, the mood of a person also plays a part in affecting his evaluation of anything, be it a pair of jeans or a violin. There is also no consideration that the cognitive ability to tell differences get wearied and increasingly unreliable with rapid changes from to the other and in time. At the end of a 75-minute sesssion with 12 violins, your cognitive ability at the end of it is remarkably lower than when you started out. What would be interesting to see is in what order these violinists' favourite violin lies in? It would probably be one of the first 3 when the senses are freshest.
Any violinist worth his salt also considers that the bow is part of the equation on how a violin sounds, feels and plays. How come nobody ever talks about the bow? And what about the strings? The violinists have no preferences when it comes to strings? No differences amongst strings either?
(Two 75-minute sessions in a rehearsal room and a space for 300 because they are "representational" of the typical spaces that violinists find themselves in? Don't make me laugh at such bad premises. The premises are already flawed from the get-go. This is terrible reductionism. Try living with the violins in a room that you are intimately familiar with for one year and then tell me. I just rearranged the furniture in my living room and the acoustics changed. This is a space that I have lived in for the past 49 years. As it is, my one-year time parameter is also a flawed premise based on a hunch that it requires me at least one year to say I know a person. And my own experience with guitars that I have owned and played now continually for over 5 years. Two 75-minute sessions? Where did those palookas pull that one out from? "Oh, we can't spare the time." Then don't do the "tests" and pronounce the results.)Last edited by Jabberwocky; 01-27-2016 at 05:22 AM.
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That sounds as if they talked about flattops. Flattops and archtops are very different beasts. Flattops (and classical guitars) typically decline in quality after 20-30 years due to the way the strings pull at the top. In archtops (and violins) the forces are better balanced and the instruments normally have a much longer life (provided they are well built). Originally Posted by gggomez
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gggomez made a valid point. Audio and TV salesmen know this trick really well: goose up the bass and treble on speakers, goose up the dynamic contrast and saturation on TVs. Make the speakers and colours pop. In a short evaluation, those things catch the attention of the consumer.
Take those things home and they begin to wear down the ears and the eyes, in your own space. Moral of the story: initial impressions in an unfamiliar space can fool ya. Even experts.
Now, it may be argued that those ten are professional violinists. Professional violinists may not be experts at bad testing methodologies. No professional violinists I know would pick out a violin based on a 6.25-minute session. Not even an hour. When real money of their own is involved, you bet they would want some serious quality time with the violin they are considering with a bow of their choice and in a space of their choice. They would want the opinion of teachers and other experts to confirm their bias or debunk it.
My conclusion is this: those ten were unwitting victims of a test designed to fail.
Ask them if they would choose to spend their own money to pick a violin based on the same methodology used in those tests and you would have your answer on how much validity they themselves put on it.
*Violin-makers call the soundpost the Anima of the violin. The spirit. The ghost within the machine. Where it is positioned brings out the "soul" of the instrument. The bridge is just as important to the tone. Violinists choose their bow with as much care as they choose their violins, bows that can cost as much as entire violins. The tone of a violin cannot be that simply evaluated in a bogus double-blind test designed to fail.Last edited by Jabberwocky; 01-27-2016 at 05:07 AM.
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I wish my dad was still alive, I could quiz him about all this. I know he was not interested in provenance and only in the merits of the instrument. You are right Jabber, he would often be adjusting sound posts for people, making tiny adjustments, it would sometimes take a long time, hours even (although this was probably because the customer was dithering). I would imagine those 12 violins were as they came. 12 guitars with no ability to set them up to ones liking would yield different preferences to 12 guitars optimised to the individual.
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Originally Posted by jzucker
Again, with the emphasis on laminated old vs laminated new woods:
Just because you can supposedly hear a difference, doesn't necessarily mean one is there, any more than -
Just because I don't hear a difference doesn't necessarily mean one isn't there.
So - polite conclusion - I guess we can agree to disagree.
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i've taken years to test guitars - there is just no way to do it properly and quickly - you need lots of gigs and lots of time
i had a beautiful 1953 es 175 that was OBVIOUSLY less musically appealing than a brand new sadowsky jim hall
i gigged for a long time on a late 90's super 400 with a lovely player who used a fifties super 400 - and i can't help thinking he preferred the fuller fatter darker bigger tone of my newer instrument over the finer and more delicate sound of his guitar. (i would not have traded - except for purely financial reasons i suppose)
my current brand new L5 CES has a better acoustic FEEL than any of the dozen or so boutique archtops i've used over the last 10 years
my current new ibanez gb10 sounds feels and plays better than an andersen little archie hybrid i had for over a year (which keeps popping up for sale on here btw)
when i listen to home recordings of the super-pricey boutique archtops i've owned they sound basically CRAP compared to the L5. thin - toppy - shrill - without any real body to the tone
what is the market for acoustic or boutique-made mounted pickup carved archtops? what music are people playing with them? 4 in the bar rhythm stuff? i stuck with them for years because i was hoping to marry increased sensitivity and responsiveness to usability and quality construction. all i got - basically - was a series of gorgeous looking guitars that were made to incredibly high standards and sounded all wrong.
there was a clip posted by mr b. on here recently of five monteleone archtops - worth, i don't know - 50 k each. over-decorated but very eye-catching. but they sound like acoustic guitars more than jazz guitars.
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I am lucky enough to live near NYC, and over the last 25 years have played and compared vintage and newer instruments. IMO there are two types. Guitars that sound great (new or old) and guitars that do not. There are lots of good sounding guitars (new and old) but very few great ones. (New and old) The better Gibson and Fender RIs sound every bit as good as the best vintage pieces, and the good sounding new ones sound as good as the good sounding old ones. It comes down to the individual instrument, ESPECIALLY with acoustic guitars. We all have our opinions. Thats mine due to my personal experience. I am also lucky enough to have a buddy with 2 DeAngelicos, 17 and 18 inch to compare with any time I want. I have been to Mandolin btothers, lark street music, goldenage guitars and all the others countless times. Not that this makes my opinion "better" than someone elses, but I have had a wide and large sample of the finest old guitars for comparison. I tend to like newer guitars now because they sound just as good to me, often better, and they are set up and play to perfection most of the time.
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I think its about the seasoning. When I mentioned wood, well mahogany is mahogany to an extent. I'm more concerned about the curing process which I gathered from the recent neck issues Ive seen as being below par or not up to scratch. Originally Posted by vinnyv1k
I also saw some new CS models in GV and a couple of them already had ramping.
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