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How old is vintage ?


tweed

Question

How old should a guitar be to be considered vintage ?   Should the company still be in business, foreign or domestic, or now defunct as in our beloved Hamer models. I've got an old Univox Gimme that used to be my main guitar since my teen years. I'm guessing it's maybe 48 yrs old now. Would that be considered vintage ?

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6 hours ago, tweed said:

How old should a guitar be to be considered vintage ?   Should the company still be in business, foreign or domestic, or now defunct as in our beloved Hamer models. I've got an old Univox Gimme that used to be my main guitar since my teen years. I'm guessing it's maybe 48 yrs old now. Would that be considered vintage ?

Yes... 48 years old is vintage. Depending on which Univox you have you may have a $1000.00+ guitar. 

I see people claiming 1990's guitar's as vintage. I know with cars it's 20 years old to get Antique tags in So Dak.

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When I used to do the vintage guitar show circuit, the 1959 Les Paul Standard and Strats and Tele's a few years older were the definition of "Vintage".  It's an over simplification, but humor me.  It was the late eighties, so the guitars were about 35 years old or younger.  So, guitar from the mid-eighties are now "Vintage" to me.  

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I remember in the very early '80s, George Gruhn had an article in Guitar Player where he opined on this very topic.  I believe he said at the time, "Vintage" was over 25 years old, but I figured that's because he was still buying and selling and needed to be able to speak as an authority, but also to be able to tell a prospective seller that their '63 Strat wasn't "Vintage" yet, so he could slash the price.  It may also be that he just liked guitars from the 1950s at the time..

Like any experienced sales guy, his definition changed over time with the market:

https://guitars.com/gruhn-guitars-50-part-7

https://guitars.com/gruhn-guitars-50-part-8

 

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Got to an antique store and look at all the stuff you can remember.  Then start noticing the microwave safe dishes, the bar code labels, and the antique VHS tapes. 

Anything that was old when I started playing could be a vintage guitar.  At the end of the 70's my friends had SG models that were from the 1960's.  Around 1981 a 1957 Les Paul Jr. became mine.  A friend had a 60's Strat, but wanted one from the 50's.  I had a 50's Fender Duo-Sonic.  Epiphones from the 60's and early 70's were around.  70's Marshall amps were not that old, but none of my friends had them.  Friends of friends did, though. 

Friends got new guitars like 1970's Les Pauls, a 1976 Explorer, and Fender Strats.  In 1980 I got a brand new Rickenbacker 4001. 

Today it is all considered vintage.  I want another Rickenbacker 4001.  There is no need, but a desire for a Les Paul even with a sandwich body and maple neck.  My 1982 Hamer Sunburst is my favorite, so why not have several spare Sunbursts? 

"Vintage" in my case means old stuff I want again.  The 80's were only ten years ago, weren't they?  Someone selling 80's gear is going to call it vintage. 

I remember the local music store getting Music Man around 1986.  The Silhouette was cool, sort of.  It was different.  Now I wish I had bought that first one.  Around that time I bought my Boogie Studio .22 which I am glad I never sold.  I saw PRS guitars in an Atlanta store within a year or so of buying the amp, and wish I could have gotten one then. 

If you want a gauge of what might be vintage, regardless of how many years back it goes, look at reissue instruments.  Gibson is overdoing it, but they have to have chosen some of their instruments to reissue based on what the vintage guitar buying crowd has sought out.  Fender has picked out certain year instruments to reissue, and they reissued some amps.  Charvel gets marketed based on it history among collectors.  Kramer is trying to do the same. 

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My bands name is Vintage, and we're all over 64, and we've been in bands together for 47 years, and we all have guitars and basses from as far back as 1961, so yeah it's a Vintage Trifecta I guess.

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Just because something is old (and it doesn't matter how old) doesn't make it vintage. There is plenty of old c**p out there that certainly doesn't warrant the title of vintage. I look at it like wine, if they declare a vintage then the producer is claiming it is of a high enough quality for it to be labelled as such. If it is an old guitar and it is generally recognized that it is a good model then I would consider that vintage (it doesn't even need to be that old if it is no longer made).

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