guitarinfo's Journal

Have you ever googled the price of just about any famous vintage acoustic guitars, or vintage electric guitars for that matter? You will be severely shocked at the price these instruments fetch, and this is not even at an auction, where the prices can scale to ludicrous amounts.

So, why are these vintage guitars so popular and sought after? Surely they cant be that much better than the Average-Joe-Guitar of today. They are all just wood and glue and paint and strings right?

This is where you are wrong - and there are several reasons for this.

The wood
The popular acoustic and electric guitars made in the 50's, 60's and 70's were all made with very high quality wood. These include your Spruce, Alder, Mahogany, Brazilian Rose Wood and Ash Wood varieties. These woods have great resonance and made great musical instruments. Unfortunately today, many of these varieties of wood are endangered and cannot be harvested anymore.

Today, spruce, cedar and maple are popular wood choices for making guitars, among others. These are also good quality tonewoods, but tend to sound a bit different than the vintage varieties.

The production
These days many guitars are made in factory setups, where many or all of the parts are mass produced. This often causes a loss of quality compared to the top electric and acoustic guitars found today. Vintage acoustic and electric guitars as well as all the top guitars of today are all handmade. The more effort goes into a guitar's production, the higher the quality of the sound your will get out of the instrument.

As a downside, production of these handmade electric guitars and handmade acoustic guitars do take a bit longer. The quality, however, is so much better. This is why the top acoustic guitars and best electric guitars today are all hand made, with love and effort and hard work.

Time
Vintage guitars do often sound better simply because their wood has settled over time. Electric and acoustic guitars that were made in the 60's have had roughly 40 years for the wood particles to settle, causing them to vibrate less than newer woods. This improves the wood's resonance, giving it a fuller and warmer sound that is often preferred.

Quantity

The fourth and final reason why vintage guitars are so popular and expensive is because there were not so many of each model made back in the day. You see, things were all hand made - the wood was shaped individually for each guitar, the pickups were wound by hand and the guitars were painted individually. This all took a lot of time, plus the demand was not that high - so there was no need to mass produce electric guitars like there is today.

Lastly - the chances of someone famous touching it was just so much higher. I mean, who would not want Jimi Hendrix's 1968 electric, or Eric Clapton's 1956 Blackie?

Modern hand made guitars have three of these reasons in common with their vintage forefathers - the great choice of wood, the careful hand made production, and the limited editions. The only thing missing is time, and as they say - good things come to those who wait. You may even get someone famous to hold it if you practice hard enough!