Modern versus older guitars

HAL9000

There's a lot of talk about how great, say, a '62 Strat is or what a wonderful Guitar a '52 Tele is. Are older guitars really that good or is it so much snake oil?

Surely, back then a lot more of the manufacturing process would have been done by hand, and by good fortune some of the instruments made would have played and sounded very good indeed. But I'm guessing there would also have been a large number of complete duffers put out too.

I guess now with computer-controlled assembly lines that even lowly Squiers are far more consistent in terms of build quality, playability, etc and the chances of picking up a bad'un are quite low. Ok, I'm not trying to say that a Squier is in any way comparable to a vintage Fender, but in terms of build quality, tolerances of, say, the neck pocket, etc, and bearing in mind that more is known about the technical bits such as pickup properties, then surely all else being equal I'd expect a 2014 guitar to be better than a 1962 one?

ThePrettyDamned

There is the idea old wood sounds better.  

I don't know about that - I've heard that left over saps and oils etc can rearrange in a body to best allow vibration (which makes sense) - but then again, how much is left in a body?  

But in the old days, other stuff was better - the bridge materials were much better than a lot of the zinc pot metal stuff you get these days.  

And I'm certain thinner finishes are better, having used one on my jazzmaster.  

But I think modern guitars are, in general, probably better.  

crunchman

There is something to the old wood thing.  Wood changes as it ages.  You can hear that on a good acoustic.

Wood does affect the tone of the guitar - even plugged in.  Try an all mahogany body PRS Standard compared with an otherwise identical Custom with it's thick maple cap as an example of the difference wood can make.

As wood affects the tone and the wood changes as it ages there will be some effect on the guitar.  How big it is I'm not sure.  There are so many other variables at work.

The other thing to consider is the quality of the wood in the first place.  Older Gibson style guitars have good lightweight mahogany which is no longer available in large commercial quantities.  Apart from the Custom Shop reissues, all recent Les Pauls have weight relieved bodies becuase they can't get the stuff they used on the old ones and the new stuff is too heavy to use in a completely solid guitar.  You'd have have a similar issue with Brazilian rosewood as well - you just can't get that on a new guitar.

Having said that, I would agree with the OP that the overall quality of engineering and construction on newer instruments is better, and that there are some old guitars out there that are not very good at all.

When you do find a good old one they are something special.  The other thread about The best Guitar You've ever Played is full of people raving about old ones.  The best one I've played was a refinished 50's Tele.  That was absolutely spectacular.  Light weight but with an absolute monster tone.

frankus

Old guitars around today are tweaked and fettled to a state of being good.

New guitars are made with better more precise tools

you're not going to find a definitive answer

ESBlonde

Old wood is often touted as the answer. It is suggested that the timber sourced and seasoned in the 50s was more compatible with guitar tone than that available today.
Many luthiers are able to select the timber for a single guitar and produce a quality instrument that 'rings'. They rarely get a duff one. Manufacturers can't be as fickle and the musicality of a batch of  guitars will vary even with computer controlled machine assembly.

No not all vintage guitars are peaches, no not all modern guitars are bland, but perhaps proportionately these statements seem true to some people.

What Frankus says about old guitars passing through lots of hands and at some point someone that knows sets them up just so. A well set up guitar does sound better (imho).

Play it, if you love it take it home.

 

Skipped

Instead of talking about old guitars (which may lead to an assumption that Old is Good) maybe we should talk about manufacturers having particular periods in which everything just came right (IMO).
For example:
Martin D28: 1930s
Gibson Les Paul: 1950s
Squire Telecaster: 2008 to 2014 (Classic Vibe Series)

fretfinder

Lol, comparing Squier CVs with 50s Gibsons, I literally laughed out loud!

Skipped

fretfinder said:

Lol, comparing Squier CVs with 50s Gibsons, I literally laughed out loud!

But it's true!
At some point Fender will screw up, or see the light (depending on your point of view) and the pine will be used on Custom Shop guitar bodies. That will be the end of that particular golden era.

And then in future years, people will say "These guitars are amazing. How come they were so cheap??"

p90fool

I started playing pre-CBS Strats in 1980, when they were 16 or so years old and lively, light and responsive. In comparison, 1980 Strats were clunky, dead and muddy-sounding.
34 years later and they still are, so the "aged wood" theory is utter bollocks.

Fender and Gibson (along with Harley-Davidson and, er, British Leyland) all seriously lost their way in the 70s, either by terrible QC (Fender) or making unwanted changes to a much-loved design (Gibson), thus giving rise to the "vintage" guitar market.

Seriously, it was that simple, the only Strat you could buy new was a clunker compared to a 15-year-old one, they didn't even look alike, so all the good players played old ones.

The lines are totally blurred now, you can get decent ones at most price points, but when I was starting you couldn't even buy a new Fender with proper body contours, a 4-bolt neck join or staggered pickups, they absolutely looked and sounded like something you'd get from Argos for a kid these days.

The current vintage market is based on myth, "mojo" and wishful thinking, but it started out as a genuine need for usable guitars which actually sounded like the ones on records.

monquixote

p90fool said:

I started playing pre-CBS Strats in 1980, when they were 16 or so years old and lively, light and responsive. In comparison, 1980 Strats were clunky, dead and muddy-sounding.
34 years later and they still are, so the "aged wood" theory is utter bollocks.

Very good point. 

In the 90's when I started playing 50's strats were the age that 70's ones are now, but they sure don't sound like 50's strats even now they are 40 years old. 

richardhomer

monquixote said:

p90fool said:

In the 90's when I started playing 50's strats were the age that 70's ones are now, but they sure don't sound like 50's strats even now they are 40 years old. 

Spot on. My '63 Strat was 20 years old when I got. This year my '94 American Standard Strat celebrates the same birthday. The '94 is still a 'new' guitar in my mind. A vintage classic it is not....

ToneControl

I'll try to be concise, since I'm repeating what I wrote the other week:

I refuse to believe that in the 50-60 years during which we invented computers and went to the moon, no one improved the way we make guitars. All the evidence I have seen supports this

crunchman

I don't think that anyone is arguing that the new ones aren't better made on the whole.

It's about the wood - partly the aging thing, and partly the quality of it to start with.  Gibson do not use the same mahogany on their LP Standards that they used 55 years ago.  The stuff they use now is very heavy and has to to be weight relieved.

Martin use Sitka spruce for almost all their tops because there is very little Adirondack available now.  The back and sides is Indian Rosewood not Brazilian.

There may be other factors as well.  Nitro finishes are reputed to get thinner and harder with age.  This may also have some effect on the tone.  The thick poly on a 70s Fender won't benefit from this.

carlos

This thread, so much bullshit. Old wood sounds better. LULZ. Listen to yourselves. Oils rearranging in a plank of dead wood. Finishes affecting tone. Oh dear. Thanks for propping up the collectors market, somebody is paying their rent with this crap.

TheMoz

I remember years ago jc guitars in Newcastle looking misty eyed at the 60s strats few years later when I knew a lot more about guitar set ups ,neck alignment ,etc, I looked closely at them and 90% of them were dogs ,low e string nearly off the fretboard frets looked badly seated, yes I know it was hand built and old but the original poster has a point ,machines cncs etc make cheaper guitars better and more accurate so find a lively,resonant one and upgrade pick ups pots etc and let some other mug pay £5000 for a dog (yes I know there were a few great ones but most were dogs ,

puts tin hat on and retreats into the trenches !!!!

crunchman

georgenadaintl said:

This thread, so much bullshit. Old wood sounds better. LULZ. Listen to yourselves. Oils rearranging in a plank of dead wood. Finishes affecting tone. Oh dear. Thanks for propping up the collectors market, somebody is paying their rent with this crap.

I've got guitars that I've had from new that now have some age on them.  They have definitely improved.  Whatever the physics behind it they do get better.  Same with Violins.  With modern facilities and techniques you could create a new Stradivarius but all top violinists seem to prefer old ones even if they are not Strads.  Like it or not it is about the age of the wood.  It's probably more than just pure age else you could get some 300 year old furniture and turn it into a guitar or violin.  It might be something to do with how vibration affects the wood over time.

All this assumes that you can get good wood in the first place.  As I said above, modern volume production cannot get good mahogany in the required quantities.

I wouldn't be inclined to spend massive money on something from the 60s though.  I think early 90's stuff might be a good buy now as it has 20 years on it.

Also, I've played horrible older guitars.  A great guitar is a great guitar regardless of age.  I've bought modern new guitars when I had the chance to buy old ones.  My Martin dreadnought was much better when new than a couple of early 70's ones I played that were a similar price.  It has got even better in the last 7 or 8 years as it has started to age.  It's when you get a combination of great and aged you seem to get something special.

Zodiac51

Skipped said:

Instead of talking about old guitars (which may lead to an assumption that Old is Good) maybe we should talk about manufacturers having particular periods in which everything just came right (IMO).
For example:
Martin D28: 1930s
Gibson Les Paul: 1950s
Squire Telecaster: 2008 to 2014 (Classic Vibe Series)

^ Skipped is right about the pine CV's

Skipped

georgenadaintl said:

This thread, so much bullshit. Old wood sounds better.

But is anybody saying that? I think a couple of people are saying that the guitars that were made before the stash of nice wood ran out sound pretty good. Old Wood is misleading.
When Gibson started making Les Pauls nobody told the guys (who had been producing Jazz guitars) that these new ones were for "light entertainers" and were not that important really.

Skipped

TheMoz said:

I remember years ago jc guitars in Newcastle looking misty eyed at the 60s strats few years later when I knew a lot more about guitar set ups ,neck alignment ,etc, I looked closely at them and 90% of them were dogs ,low e string nearly off the fretboard frets looked badly seated

They were dogs. Every vintage Strat (early sixties Strats) I picked up in the early 70s was a dog. That is because the number of proper guitar techs/luthiers was a 10th of what we have now. Maybe even less. The materials were fine. But nobody in the shop had a freaking clue how to set up a guitar that had slogged around the clubs for 10 years and was now in need of a lot of TLC.
Different now. No problem having a guitar set up to play and sound the best that it can ever be.

ICBM

georgenadaintl;145923" said:

This thread, so much bullshit. Old wood sounds better. LULZ. Listen to yourselves. Oils rearranging in a plank of dead wood. Finishes affecting tone. Oh dear. Thanks for propping up the collectors market, somebody is paying their rent with this crap.

Try taking a thick finish off a guitar and then tell me it doesn't affect the tone . A good test example would be a late-70s Strat.

Actually while you're at it, record it properly before and afterwards, then use a spectrum analyser on it and *see* that it affects the tone ... remembering how the body wood supposedly didn't affect the tone either - except that it conclusively did .

I agree with some of the other stuff - but the collector market is based on originality and not tone, so it's a slightly different issue.

I do think that old guitars sound different from new ones in general - not necessarily better though. There are a lot of old guitars that just sound bad and old... but they still sound old rather than like bad new guitars.

I'm actually as interested in busting myths as you seem to be, but I think you're dismissing a lot of stuff that's real as well. Do some proper testing and you might surprise yourself .

Tex Mexico

In my limited experience of playing real vintage guitars, I've learned that there can be just as much difference between a '63 strat and a modern strat as there can be between a modern strat and another modern strat.

I once played a real '56 Goldtop Les Paul. I then played an R6. There was very little in it. Then I played another R6, and it was a piece of shit. In fact most reissues I've played have been surprisingly average players. I've played a few great ones and I've played some properly awful ones. But then the more expensive a guitar is, for example when you get to CS Gibson prices, a good one has to be seriously good, and anything less than above average is a complete disaster.

I have in the past chosen a Mexican Fender over an AVRI. I could afford the latter but the former was more resonant, responsive, vibrant. And a third of the price. Just last week I was getting ready to buy a two grand guitar. I bought a similar one for half the money in a last-minute change of heart - and now I'm delighted that I did, because the one I bought is not only half as good as the other one. In fact most things it does as well, and some things it does better. There's one thing it doesn't do, though, and that's emulate being seventy years old. On balance however, I'm not sure that emulating being seventy years old is all that high on my list of things I want from a guitar.

The way I look at it, the people who have the luxury of playing vintage instruments are established, wealthy rock stars who have people who will source the best examples for them and other people who will keep those items in playable condition. Other than that, I'd suggest that the private citizens who own vintage guitars are not necessarily playing them. I seriously doubt they're gigging with them in any case. I honestly don't think there's any reasonable justification for your average hobbyist muso to own anything other than a replica of an old guitar. Modern guitars are really good, a lot of them are fucking great, they don't cost three years' salary and you can replace them if they get broken or nicked.