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With respect, I didn’t say there were none, and included no figures about it, just stated that I couldn’t think of any off the top of my head. Kessel and Metheny don’t count, because they bought their “vintage” guitars at the beginning of their careers new (or at least lightly used).
Originally Posted by jzucker
Not true. Kriesberg has always played and preferred an older 175. Same with Peter Mazza and his Super 5. Barney Kessel always preferred his vintage 350 despite multiple attempts by Gibson and others to sway him. Adam Rogers plays an older 335. Metheny played his horrible condition 175 until the endorsement deal offers got too good. Not sure how you derived your data but IMO, it's flawed! I was talking to Jesse Van Ruller who just raves about how great his ES-150 is!
And there are many more who I can't name because they have told me in confidence and they are signed to endorsement deals. In fact , if you check the older jazz guitar players, they mostly played older guitars until the day when they got their endorsement guitar and check.
The information is out there if you care to look for it.
Playing vintage instruments might be a recent trend, but my point is that most classic jazz guitar albums were recorded on newer instruments.
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05-09-2019 09:21 PM
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that misses the point. The point isn't that old is better. The contention (and I happen to agree) is that the guitars being made today (by gibson at least) aren't the same quality and tone as the older ones. Many disagree and that's fine too but nobody is saying that the magic is in subtracting the number 30 from the year and there's automatic "mojo". Originally Posted by Doctor Jeff
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I think what I was trying to express in my original post is that, from a strictly personal point of view, contemporary works just as well as vintage for me. I own four Gibson guitars and two of them are vintage. I love the "feel" of the vintage ES 300 and ES 125 guitar a lot and I use them for recording and on the couch. I used to own a great 63 BK too and a 50s ES 125 years ago. But I find the contemporary guitars (ahem, my 1982 ES 175 is still 37 years old and my Tal 21 years) are more stable and offer better playability so I take these out. Also as an investment, vintage guitars (they are aburdly expensive over here) are not worth the hassle and risk for me personally anymore, even if they sound better. Bottom line is that all four of the Gibsons that I own are great guitars. But maybe my ES 175 is a vintage one too these days, being from 1982? Originally Posted by jzucker
I have little experience with Gibsons built after the turn of the century.
My original post was strictly a personal thing. Not necessarily about vintage guitars being better or worse than modern ones. Heck, all my recent recordings I did on a guitar from 1947 and it sounds like a million bucks.
I like all my guitars, vintage or not. Fortunately ...
DBLast edited by DB's Jazz Guitar Blog; 05-10-2019 at 08:31 AM.
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Unless you're selling -- then automatic mojo appears after year of manufacture + 20 ... Originally Posted by jzucker
Anyway, my oldest electric turns 30 this year and I'm officially renaming the schmutz "patina" and the dings "character". Woulda done that 10 years ago if I were selling.
John
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New doesn't automatically equal better playability or stability. Many times, it's the opposite. My '63 kessel blows away the plek'd tele I have in terms of playability and stability and I once left my '88 175 for an entire season without playing it and 3 months later, it was still perfectly in tune. It also played better than my plek'd tele or any other of my new guitars.
Originally Posted by DB's Jazz Guitar Blog
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Too bad there aren't any violinists to chime in on this discussion. Talk about a world of "vintage vs antique" !!!!
But my understanding is that there are comtemporary violin makers trying hard to make a great "classic" sounding violin and doing it pretty well. Different market I guess. I mean, we guitar players like all kinds of options, but most violinists are after one thing.
Another interesting analogy is the old car market. Nobody expects a '55 Chevy to perform like a new Camero, but the market is still there, and understandably so. In Kansas, you can get an "antique" license plate for a car 35 years old. Kinda like joining the AARP. I expect a '55 Chevy to hold and increase it's value in the next decade or two, assuming gas is still around and there is no Zombie Apocalypse.
Personally, I don't see that the vintage/antique guitar market will change in a dramatic way.
Older = rarer = more collectible, even if the tone & playability isn't up to current spec.
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I think we have a misunderstanding on our hands. With "contemporary" I do NOT mean "new." I have never owned a new archtop in my life. All my "contemporary" Gibsons were used and years old when I bought them. I use the term "contemporary" for everything later than 1970. My 1982 ES 175 is a very stable guitar indeed and so is my 1998 Tal Farlow but I still call them "contemporary." But they are not new of course and now 37 and 21 years old. I only apply the term "vintage" for everything before 1970. Originally Posted by jzucker
I have no experience with "new" archtops at all. Never owned one and frankly, I am sure I will never own one because I do not buy guitars new.
DB
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Golden age instruments from the famous '50s or '60s recordings were not yet vintage or aged at the time they were recorded!
Basically they were like 10 or 20 years old at best as if nowadays we would really see big names recording or performing with '90s or 2000 Gibson, not something we see much!
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I believe the unwritten rule of thumb to define 95% of the vintage guitar market is pre CBS Fender and orange label Gibson. Something that is rarely spoken about and difficult to quantify is that in decades gone by, many American companies, whether they manufacturered guitars or washing machines or toaster ovens and blenders, strove to make the best products that they could with the best components available. Greed, while a human characteristic, was not the prevailing corporate mantra that it is today. I firmly believe that 60 years ago, USA companies used to focus on making good or great products, and deriving profits from their efforts, whereas now I believe it much more common for them to have a schedule of expected profits and work from that point forward. It’s a difference of mindset; how can we make a living vs how can we make a killing?
On the other side of it you have the precision of CNC machines and CAD creating far tighter tolerances and symmetry that can never be achieved by even the most skilled craftsmen. I saw a video on verifying original burst LP’s and one of the factors looked at to determine if said guitar is really worth $225K is that the routes for the abr bridge posts often are not in the correct place, making precise intonation difficult, sometimes impossible.
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As a working musician, with the usual pay grade that goes with that, I find the vintage market to be absurd. The quality of instruments now, even some sub $1K, is amazing. They sound great, play great, intonate better than most vintage instruments (I had a lot of them) and you don't have to fear breaking them or having them stolen at a gig. Why would anyone pay $10 to $20 K for an instrument that may be just a fraction better in terms of tone and playability? The audience will not notice the improvement but your bank account will register the deficit. Originally Posted by DB's Jazz Guitar Blog
The only substantive arguments for vintage are: 1) vintage guitars are good investments and 2) "I've got lots of money so why not?"... Regarding 1, they can be good investments but that usually means you tend to commit to leaving them at home for gigs for fear of losing or diminishing your investment. They sit in a case or up on a wall. Re 2, few working musicians can seriously make that argument.
A related aside...I was in a music store yesterday and the owner asked me to play a new $13K Collings arch top they just got in. Apparently it is the only one in that model in the world. It is a beautiful guitar, plays like butter but it is not 13 times better than my sub $1K Ibanez AFJ91 with a Gibson 57 in it. It is not even twice as good and discerning listeners would be hard pressed to tell the difference. In a band context I bet they could not tell the difference. I suspect that Collings will find a good home in a tony neighbourhood and will end up staying in its case for years and rarely, if ever, see a gig. Seems like a waste to me.
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My 60 year old Kessel is VERY stable. And regarding price and investment, I paid less than a new 175 for it by a mile! (or even a 20 year old one) Originally Posted by DB's Jazz Guitar Blog
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Whenever i read about guitar collections of famous players, there are usually a lot of vintage pieces that receive a lot of love. And i never understood the "x percentage better" thing. If it's better it's better. Many of us never go there, for lack of interest, or finances, or convenience, and of course you can make music with any kind of instrument. But for me at least, once you experience a great guitar (or amp), the lesser ones fade away. Their limitations become painfully obvious.
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They may have been good investments 20 or 30 years ago but in Europe prices for vintage guitars are so ridiculously high to begin with that you'd be lucky to sell one at a profit, unless you have owned it for many years and got it very cheap. I have seen vintage guitars at a local trader for sale for over 5 years. Some almost 10 years ... When I bought my 63 Barney Kessel it had been for sale for years too. I traded it in because I knew it would not sell quickly and had some issues. The vintage guitar market for higher end Gibsons is so slow that a sale can hardly be expected within a reasonable time. There is simply no market for guitars in the price range from 5 to 10k and it gets worse every year. A higher end vintage guitar is great to own and play but definitely a lousy investment. Judging from the online market places here that I have been tracking for many years, I am beginning to think that anything over 2k is hard to sell, the 5k+ realm almost impossible even. Originally Posted by Roberoo
DB
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Originally Posted by DB's Jazz Guitar Blog
It's not just Europe, and it's not $2k.
I chatted with a guy about a very fairly priced Ibanez AS-200 and he had "offers" of 50% of the asking price.
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Don't really agree. I have had a number of high end vintage guitars and now I just have cheap and cheerful gear. The "limitations" of the latter are very hard to discern and I find you can make great music with it. It is mostly in the hands. In most situations it is probably more worthwhile investing in a decent amp. Originally Posted by Alter
Now all that said, I do remember a time when playing cheap guitars was a struggle with their poor tuners, awful intonation, bowed necks, sketchy electronics, humbuckers with 60 cycle hum you name it. Those days are long gone.
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What is the cutoff date for "Vintage"? Kreisberg's 175 is from the early 70's, the notorious Norlin era and Adam Roger's 335 is identical to mine, which is a mid 90's model, I believe.
I don't doubt that old wood probably makes a difference, but I'm even more intrigued by the differences that exist between even newer guitars. I have a '97 Wesmo that is stable as a rock and lovely, easy to play. Then a 2014 175 VOS that has become my favorite, after getting a couple of loose braces fixed and swapping for a TOM bridge.... amazing guitar, now, and it HAD a neck twist that my friend worked out with some magic. But my Sadowsky Jim Hall from 2010 sounds bright and jangly in comparison, plays well, but I struggle with the tone, in comparison to the 175 - slightly narrower body and maple neck, but lighter, thinner plates. Something in what seems to be a simple formula is responsible for a huge difference in tone. Go figure. Sounds nothing like a 175 to me, even though it's supposed to be a replacement for Jim's replacement for his 175. Maybe a dud, not sure.
Getting to play great vintage instruments is a challenge for many, including myself. I don't doubt that there is something there in an older instrument, but in the end, it would seem it's most important to have a reliable instrument that plays well and gets close to the sound you hear in your head. Maybe it's vintage, maybe it's new. For me, not worth arguing, except that I will always buy ONE more guitar than I already have, so maybe I'm fortunate that I don't have easy access to some pricey vintage model that I might decide I can't live without.
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Yedbox, very good points. Have you tried swapping pickups on the Sadowsky?
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L-5 -> Les Paul -> ES-175 -> D'Aquisto laminate electric -> Sadowsky is the sequence as I understand it. There's a D'Aquisto carved acoustic in there too. Originally Posted by yebdox
IMHO Jim Hall sounded bright and jangly on that guitar compared to his ES-175, and also I thought that his D'Aquisto also sounded thinner and brighter than the ES-175, too. I always put that down to Jim being 50 years along in his career as a musician and having lost a fair amount of top end hearing; might have sounded just the same to him- or maybe he heard fine but was seeking a brighter tone. While I loved a lot of what Jim played on the later guitars, I often didn't love his tone on those recordings (I'm thinking of his later records on ArtistShare, These Rooms with Tom Harrell, the duo recording with Charlie Haden, etc.- brilliant playing, but that warm inviting sound he got with the ES-175 wasn't there). But that's just my ears which my doctor tells me are 43% tin.
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With respect, I am not convinced that prior to 1959 there was a golden age of manufacturing where profit was secondary. When has making money NOT been the goal of running a successful business? If it isn’t, then you go under, like Epiphone, who made very good guitars in those days. (Maybe there’s some data on profit margins or a similar metric to prove your point. It could be out there, I just haven’t seen it.) Originally Posted by whiskey02
I will grant that CEO’s were not paid so many multiple of salaries of their workers, and boards of directors were not so compliant re’ compensation. That’s a fact we can discuss, but not really relevant to this discussion.
“Many American companies...strove to make the best products that they could with the best components available”—that could apply to Gibson under Henry J as well as 1950’s Gibson. Just saying things were different doesn’t make them different.
What contributes in part to vintage mojo (IMHO) is that there were experienced craftsman making the products who had been there a long time, so they knew what they were doing. Also with collecting, most misfires and duds disappear over time, so you’re left with the really good stuff. Most of the interest in collecting pre-70’s artifacts—cars, clothes, guitars—is pure nostalgia. People long for a time when cool products were made by American companies in the US, when not coincidentally America was at the peak of her power economically, militarily and culturally. A 1955 BelAir and a 1955 Gibson are absolutely emblematic of this. When Elvis came along, and Johnny Smith and Barney Kessel were making names for themselves in the jazz world and so forth.
I will grant a 1955 Gibson should be easier to deal with (and safer!) than a 1955 BelAir. Guitar manufacture has changed very little relative to cars and appliances.
This is not to knock anyone who’s into collecting, as I have been in various areas. I think I mentioned antique handtools...for a long time vintage was the only way to go, as companies were not into making quality products for woodworkers, but about 15 years ago there was a renaissance of manufacturing such that you can buy stuff absolutely as good (and probably better) than vintage. Some of it is even made in America and commands quite a high price.
I have about 30 handtools I use regularly, and only 2 or 3 are recent products. The rest were made up to 100 years ago. I like the mojo and the look and feel of them. But A) there are modern counterparts that functionally will work just as well, and B) old Stanley wanted to make a profit as much as modern Stanley. Modern Stanley realizes that good quality is part of their brand, and they will lose out if they sacrifice that for expediency.
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This is a difficult subject. I have both new and vintage guitars, carved and laminated. I love the older ones for many reasons. I love the look and feel of a well-played older guitar almost as much as the sound. There is something special about making music on a guitar that has been around for 50 or 60 years. Then, there’s the nostalgia factor. I still have a 1969 ES-175 that I bought new when I was in high school. Picking up that guitar brings back a lot of fond memories for me. I also have my father’s 1953 L5CES that he played for several decades, and that one has a lot of sentimental value for me. Not all of the old guitars that I have owned were really great guitars though. I once had 1939 D’Angelico that didn’t quite meet my expectations. Most D’Angelico’s that I have played were absolutely amazing, but mine was just not as lively as others and didn’t sound as good to me as my other acoustic archtops (old and new). In my experience, newer guitars can be fantastic. So many extremely talented modern luthiers are building wonderful archtops these days. Also, recent Gibson L5’s and 175’s look, sound and feel great. I agree with others that they are a little on the heavy side, but I believe that affects how they sound when plugged in, probably for the better in many situations. I have had a few duds in the new category too. I guess this means you can find good ones and not-so-good ones from all eras, so there is no simple answer to this question.
Keith
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All you have to do is add "I like" in front of "better", and the entire argument becomes moot.
Vintage are not objectively "better" (or worse.) Both categories have dogs and gems. I've played examples of both. Ditto newer guitars.
"I LIKE vintage better" is the accurate phrase.. not "vintage IS better". It may be better to YOU because you LIKE vintage better, and that's A-OK. I think the ultimate point was made when it was pointed out all of our heroes played NEW guitars. The sound we love came out of NEW guitars, not vintage ones.
With regards to Martins, I'm going to use a construction example now, I believe the famous "pre-war" Martins had the forward-shifted X-bracing, which for whatever reason Martin stopped using... so those guitars DID sound different (again, "better" is a loaded term)... but nowadays, you can get a D-18A built exactly like the old ones, right down to the hide glue, and that guitar will sound the same as a NEW D-18 did in the older era.
And aging definitely changes wood. Not always for the better, depending on the conditions it was exposed to over 50+ years. But that's where all this "torrefying" and "tonerite" stuff came from in recent years....
But the fact remains, our heroes were not playing vintage instruments. The sounds we love came out of new guitars. (and of course was then subject to the inferior recording mediums of the day in some cases).
Now, I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't dig an old ES-125... BUT.... it would have to be a GREAT one. I'd pick a GREAT NEW ES-125 over a mediocre vintage ES-125 any day of the week. I certainly admit I "get" the "vintage mojo" nonsense.... there is something to it... but the same can be said of new guitars. I've played MIM Fenders that, to me, were better than CS instruments. I've played a vintage Martin Pre-war D-18 and a vintage 53 tele (I think it was a 53, very early), and they were both dogs, as players. Actually- the NEW D-18A I played was a marvelous guitar, and the vintage one was a dog. Ditto the 53 tele: it was actually one of the worst teles I've ever played. Now... SOMEBODY may love it, and that's great.... but that's SUBJECTIVE, not OBJECTIVE.
Which is why "I LIKE" is a more accurate way to say it.
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Reading this thread one could say that guitars from the 70's and 80's are now considered "vintage". Arguably, guitars made in the 90's are now vintage as well.
I gotta quit reading this thread. It is making me feel old.
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My opinion.
A good instrument is a good instrument no matter the age.
My new Eastman is a better quality than my "vintage" Gibson.
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Me too. Especially when you are the original owner of a vintage guitar. Originally Posted by Stringswinger
Reading this thread one could say that guitars from the 70's and 80's are now considered "vintage". Arguably, guitars made in the 90's are now vintage as well.
I gotta quit reading this thread. It is making me feel old.
Keith
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I don't think there's an objective definition for what makes a vintage guitar. Some argue 20 years, others say 30 years and many see pre 1970 as vintage. I even think pre 1965 is used by many. Originally Posted by Stringswinger
Reading this thread one could say that guitars from the 70's and 80's are now considered "vintage". Arguably, guitars made in the 90's are now vintage as well. I gotta quit reading this thread. It is making me feel old.
Some say age is the most important variable whereas others claim it's both age and desirability/collectibility.
Of course it depends on the brand. Vintage Ibanez would be 70s whereas Fender and Gibson would be pre 1970 at least.
Personally for Gibson, I'd go for pre 1965. That would make most sense to me. I would not pay top vintage dollar for anything after 1965 but that's just me.
And the 70s as a vintage era for Gibson and Fender? Mmmmm ....
DB
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