# Guitar folks educate me on old guitars **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 20, 2017, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guitar-folks-educate-me-on-old-guitars/804912 "2017-12-20T02:31:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Plumpudding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Plumpudding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Plumpudding)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2017, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guitar-folks-educate-me-on-old-guitars/804912/41 "2017-12-28T17:14:38Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > Vintage has a lot of hype, and a lot of old guitars are wonderful to play. The hype lies in people wanting to use “vintage” as shorthand for “special and excellent.” It’s not even remotely close to that simple. Old guitars are a joy to explore and learn about and experience but the collectible aspect is its own separate beast that affects pricing. > > When I realized I was interested in an old Martin small body in rosewood, I exploited a collectibility loophole: old Martin Style 28’s are _the_ standard Martin rosewood guitars. A D-28, a 00-28, etc - they have the features and history folks think of. Ah, but Martin also makes a Style 21 - rosewood, but with the lower-end binding and features of the mahogany Style 18 guitars. I prefer less bling, so yay there - and 21’s typically went for 30%-40% less than comparable 28’s. Found a great old 00-21 and haven’t looked back. > > And again, we are mostly discussing electrics here. In my experience, an excellent old acoustic has a tone that I simply don’t hear in new excellent guitars. If you enjoy guitar and haven’t played a few old acoustics, you really should. I was just trying to add that “vintage” is not necessarily short-hand for incredibly, out-of-this-world expensive!🙂 And that a great many cheaper, old guitars can both play and sound incredible. I was never into acoustics to a bigger extent than if I felt a piece of music needed it, I’d add it. All about recognizability of a certain type of sound to convey a certain type of atmosphere, nothing more. Same with horns, strings and organ. But I do care about timbre. If you feel an old acoustic has more of a freq-range than a new one, I’ll believe you. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2017, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guitar-folks-educate-me-on-old-guitars/804912/42 "2017-12-28T17:27:06Z")
> [@Plumpudding](#): > > I was just trying to add that “vintage” is not necessarily short-hand for incredibly, out-of-this-world expensive!🙂 And that a great many cheaper, old guitars can both play and sound incredible. > > I was never into acoustics to a bigger extent than if I felt a piece of music needed it, I’d add it. All about recognizability of a certain type of sound to convey a certain type of atmosphere, nothing more. Same with horns, strings and organ. But I do care about timbre. If you feel an old acoustic has more of a freq-range than a new one, I’ll believe you. All good. It’s not more frequency range; as I have heard from acoustician/guitar geeks, it’s more “cut” - more of the energy is allocated to the desirable frequencies, and less to the undesirable ones. So the instrument can sound a bit more focused and it can cut through a mix better. Broken in, in a good way. ETA: And yes, there are great values out there. When my son was good enough to warrant a better acoustic, we ended up at Steve’s Trading Post in Santa Cruz. He fell in love with a '50’s Harmony archtop for $225. Still his main strummer - he named it Naoko after a favorite book character. ---
**Author:** ![Plumpudding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Plumpudding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Plumpudding)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2017, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guitar-folks-educate-me-on-old-guitars/804912/43 "2017-12-29T20:05:49Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > All good. It’s not more frequency range; as I have heard from acoustician/guitar geeks, it’s more “cut” - more of the energy is allocated to the desirable frequencies, and less to the undesirable ones. So the instrument can sound a bit more focused and it can cut through a mix better. Broken in, in a good way. > > ETA: And yes, there are great values out there. When my son was good enough to warrant a better acoustic, we ended up at Steve’s Trading Post in Santa Cruz. He fell in love with a '50’s Harmony archtop for $225. Still his main strummer - he named it Naoko after a favorite book character. Ah okay, so acoustic filtering of some sort. I’ve never heard of it, but I’ve never been all that interested in acoustic guitars. My main exposure has mostly been that annoying dude at who sits in the kitchen at parties, who always plays some trite folk song on the guitar accompanied by 90’ies techno from the stereo. I really like good songs played well in the right environment though. Electro-acoustic, electric and electronic is more my thing, I guess. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guitar-folks-educate-me-on-old-guitars/804912.md?page=2)