Technological advancement vs Vintage, and why

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Peeps,

I do not mean to offend anyone or start a falme war. I know how passionate vitage gearheads can be. This is an honest question and I would like to understand the draw that vintage gear has on some people. To me, it almost a denial of reality to think that a '71 Gibson SG plugged into a '70 Marshall Superlead sounds better in any way than....say.....any modern high end rock oriented guitar (solid body, double humbuckers) plugged into any modern high end high gain amp (mesa, H&K, Soldano, VHT). Not warmer, not smoother, nothing. In my opinjuon anyway. but then I could be missing the point. Is the point that vintage gear sounds like vintage gear? Is there a draw to that old sound?

Thanks :D
 
It makes me wonder, too. The stuff that was new when I was young was considered crap when compared to twenty year old equipment. Twenty years later and it's vintage and desirable. Seems to me old crap is still crap. Technology should make things better, right?
 
I'm sure this will grow into a large thread.

My 2 cents: If it's worth it to you, then then vintage sound/instrument/etc is probably worth every penny.

But I look at 40 year old instruments and see 40 year old parts. They might be increadible, or they might be rusty/etc. A roached out 58 LP, with bad pots, worn frets, etc. doesn't sound like a deal to me (well depending on the price I suppose). But the same model that's been impeccably taken care of might be a very nice guitar, but it would be way out of reach for me price wise.

But remember, that 40 years ago, that vintage instrument was new! So if you want to revisit the sound from 40 years ago, you might be better to look at new equipment using old technology.

I think one thing about vintage stuff is that they will tend to be more individual/unique due to manufacturing practices back then. Therefore, I would expect more variation... and that may not be the variant I'm looking for.
 
i'm 25 so i grew up with the emergence of modern rock and such, and honestly i don't think stuff really sounds "better" per se, just different. i used to be really into metallica and the cool thing is to get that mesa sound going. but since the last few years i've been falling back more and more to classic rock sounds. older records to me sound warmer, the heavy sound don't seem so processed. it's hard for me to explain, but the newer rock sound just has a certain something missing from it (most of it sounds like noise to me with all the downtuning that's done).
in terms of guitars, woods on older guitars are better (in a lot of cases). older guitar makers were able to select really good wood, which is becoming more scarce these days (at least from what i've read) which the depletion of natural resources and the like. take rosewood for example. it used to be obtained from brazil, which was high quality. now, most of it comes from india, which isn't quite as good as brazilian. so tonally older guitars are better.
i can't claim to be a gear expert or anything. frankly, i know almost squat. but i do know that i like the sound on older records than i do on newer stuff. (i should note i'm just comparing good vintage v. good modern, i'm not considering crappy vintage :) )
 
i'd love to have some vintage gear, haveing said that....

a lot of it is about chaseing the sound of the bands you love, even if not conciously.

better equipment sounds better whatever the age.(opinion bla bla bla)
older equipment just sounds older.

also, because of a company's inability to make a sonically transparent compressor (for example) they were forced to tweak it untill they got a sound people would like.
if they could have made it silent, 9 times out of 10 they probably would.
now though the i dea of an eq having "charcter" is built into the ethos, so sometimes companys add it unpurpose.

just what i think anyway.
 
All you younger folks here (say 25 and under) have grown up in an age where everything electronic grows better/faster/more powerful each year, while prices drop just as quickly. Computers are the prime example. You guys have just sort of come to expect that that's just the way things are and always have been.

That kind of thinking has definitely made in-roads in the world of music: keyboards do more than ever and prices continue to drop; computers and recording technology; effects pedals and guitar modelers like the POD that continue to get cheaper/smaller/do more.

When you live in a world where this is the norm, you tend to think of things as disposable and you don't get attached to them.

Us old guys come from a different paradigm. For example, I remember my family's first TV: it was a huge B&W that ran on vacuum tubes. I remember very distinctly it breaking down one time and my mom calling a TV repairman. He came out to the house and repaired it. Such a thing is unheard of today. Things in those days weren't built to be disposable; they were built to last and be repairable.

People had them for a long time, and people got attached to them. That's where the charm of "vintage" comes from.

Now, wether it sounds better or not is another matter. Let's talk about ice cream. About a year ago, prices on ice cream went up considerably. I'll bet you didn't notice. Here's why: ice cream mfgr's began marketing their product in smaller containers. The consumer at the grocery store still sees that a carton of rocky road costs $2.50, but they don't notice that they're getting 10% less ice cream per carton now than they used to.

Do you know the street price of a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe has been about has been around $500-$540 for at least 10 years now? How has Fender managed to do that, while the cost of parts, fuel, marketing, etc have all gone up during that time? How do you figure Boss has been selling the DS-1 for $39 for the last 15 years?

I do think there are amps, guitars, pedals, etc made today that sound every bit as good as "vintage" stuff, but I think they are all on the upper end of the price scale. Examples include: analogman, Fulltone, MesaBoogie, Dumble, Don Grosh, Melancon, Rivera, etc.

Lastly, let me say this: Guitars and amps are very different from electronics products. They are made largely of (fanfare...) WOOD. It's been said that it takes a least a decade for a guitar to realized it's a guitar, and not a bunch of different trees. I'd agree. I've got newer guitars as well as older ones, and I can absolutely affirm that after many years a guitar's tone and feel changes. Everything begins to resonate together. The tone opens up and it becomes more than the sum of its parts. Amps do this too, to a lesser extent.

I have two guitars in particular, one electric and one acoustic, that I will never part with. They are both old (not super old, but definitely not new by any means). They resonate and play like guitars now, and it's a beautiful thing. Beyond that, there is so much of my sweat and DNA in that wood now that you could probably clone me.

No doubt there is some great new gear, but the best 10 top you can buy doesn't compare to a guitar that's been played hard and put away wet for 20 years.

A
 
I'll chime in with a vote for vintage stuff too. The biggest reason is the one Aaron mentioned above - it takes time for wood to open up and resonate freely. Just because of that simple fact, older guitars sound better - at least for most applications. There are certainly types of music and playing that a good quality, newer guitar might sound better. It all depends on the kind of sound you are going for. I would suppose the more effects and whatnot you are adding to a sound, the less the original sound matters, though it still does. It is the foundation you are building on, so it should make a difference.

I am not old enough to have any 1st hand vintage instruments "lying" around, but if I had the chance to pick up a good quality older instrument, I sure would love to. Even after playing my old Alvarez (which I got rid of, <punch self in face>) only a couple years, there was a considerable difference in the sound. Add 20 to that...20 years of consitent, careful care of the instrument. It simply changes.

But again, I come back to the fact that all this doesn't mean a newer instrument doesn't sound great, or even incredible.
 
Zed10R said:
Peeps,

I do not mean to offend anyone or start a falme war. I know how passionate vitage gearheads can be. This is an honest question and I would like to understand the draw that vintage gear has on some people. To me, it almost a denial of reality to think that a '71 Gibson SG plugged into a '70 Marshall Superlead sounds better in any way than....say.....any modern high end rock oriented guitar (solid body, double humbuckers) plugged into any modern high end high gain amp (mesa, H&K, Soldano, VHT). Not warmer, not smoother, nothing. In my opinjuon anyway. but then I could be missing the point. Is the point that vintage gear sounds like vintage gear? Is there a draw to that old sound?

Thanks :D
Click to expand...


In a word, yes ... vintage sounds better most of the time. If this weren't true, then you wouldn't see old Bassmans, Deluxes, Voxes, Marshall Plexis, etc. lying around professional studios all the time. Well .. I shouldn't say "better," because that's entirely subjective, but I'll say "more desirable."

We also have to remember that the "vintage sound" that we like to hear on older recordings wasn't just a result of using that particular amp or guitar ... it was also recorded on older machines.

I'll take vintage over new in a heartbeat, almost every time. Granted, new gear has its place, but for my own personal taste, I can't stand the whole mega-ultra-saturated distortion sound, so I don't ever have a need for it.

Plus, vintage gear usually increases in value with time, so it's a good investment.

Here's the bottom line: If you can get the sound of Angus Young's solo on "Shook Me All Night Long" or Jimi's tone on "The Wind Cries Mary" with newer amps, then by all means go for it. It will probably be much cheaper. But chances are you can't, and that's why people still want vintage. They want to reproduce the sounds they like.
 
As usual, I have an opinion, and what's more, it is worth the usual virtual $.02.

The first thing that occurs to me is that the performance of music is, for most of us, a form of imitation. We hear a song we like, and we want to reproduce it. In the same way, we hear a sound we like, and we want to have that under our fingers. So we go out and buy what Eddie, or Eric, or Jimi, or whoever plays, and then wait for the lightnng to strike. This is a powerful incentive for buying "vintage" gear. Guitarists are a pretty conservative bunch, after all, and I can play the guitar that my idol played, who played it because HIS idol played it, and on and on. The flip side to that is that you are dealing with a more or less proven article when you pick up a 1956 Strat, say. There should be no surprises.

Another aspect is the whole "vintage" thing: I own a '63 Gretsch Chet Atkins, and a '70 Les Paul Deluxe, and a 1963 Ampeg B15N... but I bought them years ago when they were "used," not "vintage," so I paid reasonable prices for them. If I were acquiring guitars now I'd buy new ones, which have much better tuners, cleaner electronics, less-worn finishes...in fact, that's what I do, these days. I have a Carvin bass from 2000 and an Ibanez bass from 2004, and if the equivalent of my LP could be bought new for what I paid for mine, I'd probably had a new LP, too. I look at inexpensive guitars available now and am astonished at the quality. Back in the day, when you bought cheap stuff, what you got was cheap stuff.

And there's the issue of MUSIC: are you a Stevie Ray clone, or are you an independently formed musician? If you're the former (and, of course, you can stick in any name you please there) you'll want to stick with the SRV strat (or the equivalent Jeff Beck or whatever). If the latter, you may be playing something quite different from everybody else. Not to flog Eddie Van Halen (a very talented guy, obviously) but he imitated nobody. Wierd homemade guitars with spray can graphics, new techniques, he hit the ground running. So, if Eddie is our hero, we do the exact opposite of what he did: we copy his hairdo, we copy his guitar, we copy his amplifiers, and we copy his licks and songs. Who the hell would he be today if he had done that? One of life's ironies, to be sure.

Where does this leave us? I love my Chet Atkins. I also love the Pignose G40V I got last month, and the Ibanez bass I bought in December. They're for making music, and in so far as they allow me to do that, they are worthwhile investments. I'd hate to be stuck with only new gits, or only old gits, or only any one thing or another. The songs don't care what they are being played on.
 
If technology made everything better then all those line 6 digital modelling amps with a million different effects wouldn't sound like crap.
 
I do think vintage sounds better. But if you are after a classic rock sound, you have to consider that the music was not only performed using vintage gear, it was also recorded using vintage gear. I'm talking about analog recording. Digital just doesn't have the same sound to my ears.
 
i dislike both technogligogcal advancement and vintage.

i just want an ordinary modern guitar, nothing else.
 
What I don't understand is artificially aged guitars being done by Gibson and Fender. I say a brand new, aged Tele in the shop window the other day that was at least 3 times the price of a standard tele, and, frankly, it looked like shit.

I buy new instruments and hang onto them forever and take very good care of them so they look relatively new...
 
In 30 years I'll sell my closet full of "vintage" Behringer stuff for millions!!!!!!!

Start stockpiling now!!!!!!!
 
Vintage gear falls into at least two categories: guitars and amps. People get attached to vintage gear for different reasons. Some like the sound, some like the feel, and others like the memory.

Fender made some great amps during the 60s, and many of those have no equivalent in their product line today. Same for some Marshall and Mesa models. Many of those truly had a great sound, and one that is difficult to buy in today models.

Guitars can be different. Most early guitars were hand made in American plants and had very good fit and finish results. However many, expecially with single coil pickups, vere fairly noisy as compared to today products. Most Gibson products did not have this fault, and tend to have very good sound. A good 58 LP is hard to beat.

It again boils down to what each person wants. It they are buying a memory, then nothing other than vintage will work. It they are buying a sound, then there are both good vintage and today products that would fill the bill.

With any combo, the greatest factor in the resulting sound is not the year made, the model, the size, or any other physical factor, but the skill of the person playing. Guys like EVH and Jimi could make just about anything sound great.

Ed
 
Vintage is all too often for collectors, I'm a player. I don't own guitars to impress anyone, I have them for the express purpose of making music. I wont dispute the fact that some "classic," older guitars have not only a certain sound but also a definate feel to them, it's like they have a personality of their own. On the flip side of the coin, some of the newer guitars have a "playability," which amazes me. In my opinion there is a place for both the old and the new, and it is largely a matter of preferance and personel taste. I think we can all agree on one thing though, a bit of age combined with being well taken care of seems to bring out the true tones of a guitar, some of them just sound better than others.
 
hmmmmmmmm

well just thought id chime in. I have an all original even the tubes 1961 peavey classic 50 and i relly like the sound it puts out especially the clean sound. I get a different feel out of it if ya know what i mean. Then i also have a marshall jcm 2000 tsl 100 super lead head and i also love it. It's just like this many people buy oodles of effects to get different sounds but you can also get the same result from new and vintage gear. :rolleyes:
 
I read a good article about vintage amps, and about how simple the circuits were, giving them a purer, less processed sound.....i tried to find it to post it, but I couldn't....sorry, i'll keep looking. I have a 1956 fender bassman dual rectifier and i know that it has a clean tone I have not heard in any other amps I've played. But hey, a metalhead probably wouldn't like it for their style. It depends on style and preference.....but man oh man does my bassman sound better than any of YOUR amps :)
 
It doesn't necessarily have to be vintage at all for me, but when it comes to amps it's hard to say that something with tubes doesn't sound better. It doesn't have to be a reissue of an old amp, it could be a modern hi-gain tube amp, but I still wouldn't classify it as technological advancement. I'd say the only thing with guitars that has advanced are the digital modelling things. I thought we were starting a whole new debate on tubes here and now I find people posting about guitars :(

As for guitars, I don't think that much has changed, the wood available in the world simply isnt as good as it used to be, but for the most part guitars now use very much the same designs as guitars from the 50's and 60's. For playability, the newer guitars are better. So the guitar argument is very much based on personal taste. The tube vs. digital argument on the other hand, now that would be a good way to stir up some shit.
 
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