Out of boredom today, I Googled and Ebayed some guitars I’ve had over the years. They were mid-to-late 60s Gretsch Chet Atkins Country Gentleman, a 1976 Fender Stratocaster, and my current one a 1973 Gibson Les Paul Custom. As I remember, when I bought the Gretsch in the late 60s/early 70s, it was only $300. Likewise, the Fender and Gibson cost only $300 in a Texas pawn shop, when I bought them in the 80s.
Now, it looks like the prices to get exact replacements has gone bat shit. Why? While they are/were certainly good instruments, they were not special or collectible or rare. Quite simply, if I wanted to get all 3 of them today, I couldn’t afford to. Why the huge jump in prices? I don’t get it.
Assholes with money who cannot actually play the guitar think it’s “cool” to own something they can talk geek about, and they’ve driven prices up.
Also, perhaps you dint notice, but most things are batshit expensive now… like gasoline that was $.63/gallon in 1975 is now sometimes $3.00/gallon. Or milk. Or movie tickets. Or a day at DisneyWorld. Or <insert consumer item here>.
I think over the years is the key. I did a quick google and apparently my bog-standard 1977 Tele is now a vintage guitar. When the heck did that happen? Fender were making some pretty poor guitars around then. Just because a guitar is old doesn’t make it good, I bet there are a lot of crummy “vintage” instruments out there.
Something I do find odd is the (very, very expensive) vintage guitars in mint condition still in their original case etc. If the guitar is so good why isn’t it on it’s third re-fret? If it’s just like new why not just buy a new guitar for a fifth the price?
What Bo and Small Clanger said - the market it going nuts.
Truly vintage, 50’s guitars are off the charts. A cherry under-the-bed '55 Strat just went for $76,300 on eBay, and a similar Les Paul Junior (1 pickup and simple, like Billie Joe plays on a lot of American Idiot songs) went for $20,000. The Stradivarious of electrics - '58 - '60 Gibson Les Paul Standards with the Cherry Sunburst finish - go for well over $200,000 in great condition.
with the '50’s guitars, Fender and Gibson became the branded gold standards for electrics. Their tones defined the sound of rock. In the 70’s both manufacturers, frankly sucked - Fender was owned by CBS and Gibson by Norlin - and they substantively changed the designs of their signature guitars. Les Pauls went from mahagany to maple necks, from 1-piece mahogany bodies to 3 or more piece “pancake” bodies (which weigh a ton - ugh). Fenders went to the 3-bolt neck and different pickup designs. Manufacturing quality tanked. You can find examples with mojo, but they are quite uncommon - you can play dozens before getting a good one.
But there is a market from a collectible standpoint and that is what is driving up prices. Real players have to sort through the dozens to find a good one, or simply seek out better-made guitars.
As for the “if they are good, why weren’t they used?” well, that is the difference between a Collector’s guitar and a Player’s guitar. I look at a guitar as a tool - I kinda prefer them to look beat and MUCH prefer a played guitar…but collectors prize condition, “case candy” - price tags and instruction booklets - but put the guitars in glass cases…sigh.
I bought a Taylor 712 back in '91 or '92 for the then scandalous price of $1000. Now it’s twice that.
What’s interesting is that while the Taylor is now so much more expensive, Santa Cruz, which in my mind is a cut above Taylor (but I want to be buried with my Taylor, regardless) hasn’t gone up nearly so much. Granted, there’s only so much you can charge for a guitar.
Also, the strat has retained it’s “value guitar” status. You can get a basic American Strat for under $1000. Well, just barely. If you want a Strat for $300 you can find one. I got an American Standard in the mid-90’s for around $700. I thought it was a good deal.
So in terms of a basic brand new Strat or Les Paul, I think the price points are at roughly the same place they’ve always been. It’s when you get into the reissue/nostalgia models that prices get out of whack.
Oh - and I had a 1955 Gretsch Country Club - basically their rockabilly Chet Atkins guitar in pearl green (“Cadillac” Green) and no Bigsby vibrato. Long story, but got it for a song.
I was in under-the-bed condition. I couldn’t every play the f*****g thing - every time I did I took its value in my hands.
I ended up trading it for a Taylor acoustic, a U.S. Strat - both of which I still play regularly - and some $$. Never looked back. Wish I had a beater version of the Gretsch but again, my guitars are tools and I don’t like the Hang on the Wall and Stare aspect to guitar collecting…
It’s funny - I am a collector of other things (books - first editions) but guitars are different…
[QUOTE=WordMan]
I was in under-the-bed condition. I couldn’t every play the f*****g thing - every time I did I took its value in my hands. QUOTE]
“I was in under-the-bed condition”??? What am I saying - I was a freakin’ stalker or something?
Let’s try that again:
It was in under-the-bed condition. I couldn’t EVER play it…
:smack: :smack: :smack:
There are a number of rich collectors out there. I’ve read that a lot of vintage guitars went to Japanese collectors. There is also that guy who started the Hard Rock Cafe, and decided to decorate them all with classic axes. Without any hard evidence, I believe he, more than anyone else, is responsible for driving prices up.
And I’m afraid we’re in for more of the same. Both Fender and Gibson have switched from merely making a competent product to “Branding” themselves. A quick perusal of any recent copy of Musicians Friend shows that both the Gibson and Fender (especially Fender) names and logos are available on all sorts of non musical crap. Gibson even aired a television commercial recently, and I’m afraid that doesn’t have much to do with selling guitars, but rather with getting the name and logo out there.
I’m guessing that both these companies are going to go the way of Harley Davidson and Jack Daniels and cross over into marketing hell.
As WordMan has noted, guitars from the fifties and early sixties have gone up in price amazingly. Part of the reason for this, besides the ones he mentioned, is that relatively few of these guitars were made. The early Les Paul production totals were under 1000 per year. When the early LPs and Strats first began to appreciate, it was because players began to recognize that they had a distinct feel and sound that was not found in newer instruments. At first, it was rock stars and discerning but well-off amateur players who drove up the prices. Then collectors got into the mix, some of whom were also rock stars, and playability became secondary or beside the point. Original condition is the main thing for collectors. Remember the This Is Spinal Tap scene where Nigel points to a guitar so valuable no one is allowed to look at it?
There are rock stars who play vintage instruments who have maintenance done on them. Any old instrument that is played for many years will require new frets eventually. This diminishes the pure collector value of the guitar, more or less depending on the quality of the work. The insistence of collectors on original condition can create opportunities for players. I have a 1965 Fender Mustang that I bought recently for under $500, because it had been stripped to bare wood. it’s value as a collectible is minimal, but it plays and sounds great.
If you are talking about the costs of new guitars now versus their prices years ago, things are actually pretty good right now. When I was a kid, entry-level guitars absolutely sucked. Now, there are playable guitars available for $200 or less. I ran a couple of guitars I bought new many years ago through an inflation adjustment calculator. I bought a Martin D-28 in 1971 for $400, which is $1818 in 2006 dollars. Current price at Musicians Friend - $1999. I bought a Telecaster with a single coil and a humbucker in 1974 for $300, $1118 in 2006 dollars. I can get a new one for $979. And despite the reputation Martin guitars have for increasing in value, the 2005 price guide I have says my 1971 D-28, if I still had it, would not be worth much more than a new one, under $2500 if I recall correctly.
Maybe I’m just getting old, but to me anything made in the 70’s is definitely not vintage. It’s recent. I don’t get the idea of shelling out for any instrument and then not playing it. All the guitars I ever had, were bought to be played. Played well or played poorly is a matter of opinion, but dammit I at least played them. Frankly, I faill to see any mystique about guitars that were mass produced in huge quantities and were not any better or worse or different than previous or later “models”. To me, a mass produced guitar is just that. It may be a very good one, but it is not a special or a one of a kind or instant classic just because nobody destroyed it yet. I guess it’s a good thing I had a chance to try out some different ones before they became untouchable (for me).
So in a few more years, my old Peavey Predator will get me…
Still $100 in store credit. Oh well. Still fun to play.
I suspect that the major problem is all the people who wanted to be rock stars in the '60’s and '70’s now have money to buy whatever they want. They’re doing a “relive your childhood” thing by buying the guitars they couldn’t afford back then. It’s the same reason that the decor in the Hard Rock(s) is pulling people in. (It sure isn’t the food.)
I have a Brian Moore MC/1 (harmony-central reviews) that I bought back in '95 or so for $1700. It was hanging on the wall at Grandma’s and they wanted to dump it. I went looking for another one and found that a) they only make 12 a year nowadays, b) there are almost no used ones available and c) the only two I could find were in the $6000 each range.
Sheesh.
Just be thankful you’re not vintage synth guys. With 30-year-old components failing left and right, replacement chips and boards are more scarce (and more expensive on e-bay) than the actual synthesizers. There are guys out there buying three or five Moogs just to assemble one functional one.
First of all, I agree with all of the points of your post, SteveG1. But just to represent the other point of view - there are some differences with truly “vintage” instruments:
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the materials were different. Sometimes this was because the wood available then was different - vintage hounds would argue “better” (I happen to strongly agree with this particular point - “old wood” solidbody electrics do sound quite different to my ears). Sometimes this was due to the technology at the time - capacitors made in the 50’s were not as efficient as todays electronic parts - but, it turns out, their inefficiency had a pleasing effect on tone, so Bumblebee caps from old guitars are fetching big $$ relatively speaking.
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the model designs were different. A manufacturer often doesn’t realize until later that a particular design really worked - either because they weren’t paying attention, or, in the case of say Flying V’s - they weren’t embraced until a later generation came along. Les Pauls from the 70’s sound and play dramatically differently from Les Pauls from the 50’s for countless reasons based on the design. It turns out that folks have ended up judging the 50’s design to be superior so most LP’s made today are more similar to that design. Fender’s 70’s-era 3-bolt necks were another design “innovation” that folks simply didn’t prefer vs. the old 4-bolts…
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the craftsmanship was different. Labor was cheaper “back in the day” and so more manufacturing steps were done by hand. With many steps, the only difference is efficiency, but with some activities, that human touch makes a ton of difference. With necks, for example, there is simply no comparison between a well-done hand-shaped neck vs. a computer-cut-and-sanded design. The computer ones will be much much more consistent from one neck to the next, but finding a truly special hand-shaped one is magic at a whole 'nother level.
So bottom line, I agree with your basic premise, but realistically there ARE differences across mass-produced products - in this case guitars. The fact that that also gets tangled up in the whole “collectibility” thing is a different matter entirely, although the two get so blurry that you can’t tell when one lets off and the other picks up…
I’ll accept the idea that the wood was different and probably better, and that the workmanship may have been a bit better. Common wisdom says that the wood used (if it’s the right kind) gets better as it ages. Still some of what I’ve seen blows my mind; just today on EBay, I saw one guy selling the controls - just the potentiometers - from an old guitar. Three pots is all. Asking price? Over $600 US. That’s just insane. I think maybe it’s just aging baby boomers with too much money, trying to recapture their old garage band days.
Still, I feel fortunate that I got the deals I did, when I got them. Too bad I lost the Gretsch to thieves and I gave away the Strat to a friend. I kept the LP because 1) it was the more playable and enjoyable one and 2) I had always lusted after one and 3) at the price, it was actually cheaper than the knockoff copies hanging right next to it in the pawn shop.
Meanwhile, what’s the buzz now on “collectible” Japanese Strats? I remeber when they came out nobody would touch them, and anyhing not “pre-CBS” was looked down on. Since the Mexican Strat factory burned down (from what I hear) should I just buy up all I can and leave them Under The Bed for a few years? 
They are going real cheap (right now).
Collecting guitars isn’t that weird in itself, I’d say. Collecting guitars and then not playing them is weird. If I had money to throw around on such a thing, I might like to own a Telecaster from when I was in junior high, or a late 60s Epiphone Casino, because they would be interesting to play, and I am not so crappy a guitarist that I couldn’t appreciate the difference. I will never be able to compete with someone who collecting them like baseball cards, though.
“Lawsuit” Strats made at the Fuji Gen Gakki factory in the late '70’s through about 1985 under the names Tokai, Burny, Greco, etc. are VERY well-made - certainly much better than the equivalent US Fenders at the time. Put it this way: that “Strat” SRV is holding on the cover of Texas Flood? A Tokai. He toured with them for years before Fender got their act together and improved their quality control.
When the Lawsuit Strats came on the scene, Fender got smart and contracted with one of the makers and came out with Fender Japan guitars. Those 1st generation Fender J guitars are also VERY desirable - there is a story about how when the first FJ guitars were presented to the heads of Fender, they freaked out because the guitars were so much better than the US ones.
As for the potentiometers you mention - yep, that’s when collectibility and difference combine for insanity. Late ‘50’s pots - which were just standard parts at the time - have a certain taper and inefficiency that just sounds good. Are they worth $600? Hell no - you can find them pulled from other things made back then for nothin’…