What even is "vintage"?

Andy79

deleted

Funkfingers

The word comes from wine.

In the context of elderly guitars, vintage has become a euphemism for ambitiously over-priced.

Common to both musical instruments and wines is the possibility of paying ridiculous sums of money for a product that has long since turned sour.

wesker123

When Guitarist magazine put it on every other front cover. 

wesker123

guitars4you said:

I'm a peasant when it comes to wine but doesn't vintage mean a certain good year - As such a '59' bottle might be good and a '58' bottle not so good - depends on the grape

We want the finest wines available to humanity! We want them here and we want them now!

JerkMoans

wesker123 said:

guitars4you said:

I'm a peasant when it comes to wine but doesn't vintage mean a certain good year - As such a '59' bottle might be good and a '58' bottle not so good - depends on the grape

We want the finest wines available to humanity! We want them here and we want them now!

Miss Blennehassett: the police!

chris78

p90fool said:

Vintage in electric guitar terms means pre '66 Fenders and pre 1970 Gibsons.

My '77 Strat will never be vintage and no PRS ever will be. 

Guitar dealers may beg to differ, but then they would, wouldn't they.

Agree about fenders and Gibson’s. I don’t think a 1970 fender will ever be vintage for me or a 75 Les paul for example.
Weirdly, I’d say PRS with early brazilians or made In Annapolis might become vintage, even though that means Pre 95. 

capo4th

Pre 1979

MagicPigDetective

 My wife is big into antiques. Form being dragged around many many shops, I have deduced that ‘Vintage’ means any old crap or tat produced in the 20th century that no serious collector is interested in. You can call any old shit vintage, in the hope you can charge more andwill fool people they are buying something special.

Sorry, back to guitars..........

blobb

The 'Original Vintage Japanese Guitar Fanclub' fb site (great club btw, if you're into that sort of thing) defines Vintage as:

"VINTAGE MEANS 20 YEARS OR MORE OLD. No arguing about this either. That's the line the group has held to since its beginning. The current cut-off is 1998, or before."

Guess it needs updating to add the extra 2yrs to-date but there you go, anything pre-millenium counts!

sixstringsupplies

guitars4you said:

I'm a peasant when it comes to wine but doesn't vintage mean a certain good year - As such a '59' bottle might be good and a '58' bottle not so good - depends on the grape

In guitar terms many now refer to it as over 25 or 30 years, which I disagree with - But I can see it is a simple statement to make - But I tend to refer to it as per @chrisj1602 that certain makes from a certain era are 'vintage' - But vintage doesn't mean it's good either on that basis 

In guitar terms it is just an adjective that doesn't need to be applied - An advert for a Gibson 1959 Les Paul Standard is all we need to know - We know what it is - We don't need to see it as Vintage Gibson 1959 Les Paul Standard 

Yes vintage in wine refers to a particular outstanding bottle from a certain year.

For me vintage is something in it's prime and can relate to anything

Vintage Flintoff/Shane Warne: 2005
Vintage Stokes: 2019 (could be bettered)

jeztone2

The best guitars I own are all post 2000 apart from my 83 Yamaha SG1000. I sort of think the golden age is now for guitar making. People know what works now. 

But unfortunately it isn’t the golden age of record making anymore. So the tools used to make classic records have taken on their own romanticism and hyperbole. 

DB1

'Best' is subjective, for me. Six of mine are less than ten years old (B&G, TV Jones, Gretsch, Gibsons), one is fifteen years old (Gibson), one is twenty-eight years old (Gibson), one is fifty-seven years old (Guild) and two are over sixty years old (Gibsons) so I have no axe to grind - no pun intended - either way.

They're all extremely well built - the 1953 ES-295 has some scars, but it's older than me, and I've been well-used as well. It still beats my reissue that I had for sound and feel, The 1963 Guild is the one that I'd probably sell last of all, although that's got some scars and had some work done. It just sounds and feels great - to me. The one that I regret selling was a 1948 ES-300, which a couple of forum members have played and would confirm that it was astonishing in terms of sound, feel and playability. The 1955 ES-130 was really the posh version of a student guitar, but is in remarkable condition, superbly built and sounds smokey. By the same token, I've sold about a dozen vintage Gibsons from that era that didn't quite do it for me. 

To balance that, I've sold over a hundred modern ones in the the past four years that I generally haven't missed.

But the newer ES-330, TV Jones, Gretsch, Lucille, L-5, ES-165 and a couple of others that are currently in the rack are all excellent in their own right and a pleasure  to play.

If it's good, it's good - I think where some of the vintage stuff does it for me is in the type of music that I like, which is older blues/jazzy type stuff, so I'm drawn to the sound of older guitars that have that sound and feel.

Quite what the difference between a pre-CBS Strat and a Masterbuilt example is, I couldn't tell you.

JamieWakeham

sixstringsupplies said:

Yes vintage in wine refers to a particular outstanding bottle from a certain year.

I'm afraid not - as Prowla said above, vintage simply means the wine made in a particular year.  So that £3.99 bottle of Aldi plonk is indeed vintage 2019.  Almost all wine is vintage - champagne, notably, is usually not (they typically blend from three or more different years to keep the style consistent).

Of course, some years are better than others in different regions, and the better vintages will not only taste better but last longer as well.  Even bog standard red wine usually improves for a year or two in the bottle.

Oddly enough, probably the finest vintage in Bordeaux of the last century was 1959!  The very top chateaux of that vintage - Lafite, Latour, etc - are still going strong.  Not that I am any more likely to ever get my hands on one of those than I am a '59 Les Paul...

andyp

I’ve been wondering... what’s the difference between “classic” and “vintage” in terms of guitars? Other than the Fender ranges, nobody seems to talk about “classic guitars”? Or do they?

If you were talking about cars, I’d say vintage is the early 20th century stuff, classic could be 50s/60s through to Maybe even the mid 80s... It’s all very subjective.

Andy

chris78

capo4th said:

Pre 1979

No way. I’m born in 78 and I’m not admitting to being vintage yet

gubble

A true Vintage guitar is made by a 3rd party manufacturer usually in the far east and distributed by John Horny Skewes.

They most commonly are seen with Wilkinson Hardware and their designs bear close resemblance to those created by american guitar companies.

(I'll get my coat)

rlw

Vintage cars were made between 1918 and 1939 - so that rules out all these modern guitars as pretentious tat

rlw

sixstringsupplies said:

guitars4you said:

I'm a peasant when it comes to wine but doesn't vintage mean a certain good year - As such a '59' bottle might be good and a '58' bottle not so good - depends on the grape

In guitar terms many now refer to it as over 25 or 30 years, which I disagree with - But I can see it is a simple statement to make - But I tend to refer to it as per @chrisj1602 that certain makes from a certain era are 'vintage' - But vintage doesn't mean it's good either on that basis 

In guitar terms it is just an adjective that doesn't need to be applied - An advert for a Gibson 1959 Les Paul Standard is all we need to know - We know what it is - We don't need to see it as Vintage Gibson 1959 Les Paul Standard 

Yes vintage in wine refers to a particular outstanding bottle from a certain year.

For me vintage is something in it's prime and can relate to anything

Vintage Flintoff/Shane Warne: 2005
Vintage Stokes: 2019 (could be bettered)

Vintage in wine terms refers to an oustanding year for a region.  So, for the Loire Valley, 2018, 2015 and 2009 are the best vintages in the 21st century.

The term does not refer to an individual bottle, although it may refer to a very specific vineyard or area.