What Is The Guitar Industry’s Obsession With The Past?

AlexC

Like a lot of you - I’m taking a wild guess here! - I spend quite a lot of time online looking at gear I can’t afford. And I’ve realised that well over half of guitars and related equipment take a huge delight in telling us that they are just like something from the 60s/70s. Or use valves. Or are a classic design. Or use pick ups that were designed in 1959. Etc, etc.
Pedals give you that ‘classic sound’ just like 1972 or the 80s. 
You too can recreate the vibe and tones of 1975 with this vast array of thousands of quids worth of gear...
WTF? 
Is this a marketing thing aimed at the middle aged because they’re the ones with (supposedly) a disposable income, or is it a form of laziness on the maker’s behalf? 
If everything is retro then I cannot really see how guitar playing can progress. No wonder teens are saying “screw that” and finding other ways to make music.
Next up - the harpsichord revival.

Sporky

The historical reenactment guitarists are very vocal. 

Danielsguitars

It's the safe way to make money from the big makers and mostly screws up the small makers imo, if it's not familiar you'll shut shop simple as that

Funny thing is bass guitarists and acoustic players don't seem as bothered  to me

mort

“The public gets what the public wants”

Freebird

I play a Telecaster, Les Paul & Precision Bass through a FX8 and Kemper amp, so I think that is progressing (a little!) 

Bridgehouse

customkits said:

It's the safe way to make money from the big makers and mostly screws up the small makers imo, if it's not familiar you'll shut shop simple as that

Funny thing is bass guitarists and acoustic players don't seem as bothered  to me

I’d go so far as to say that most bass players are quite the opposite. Browse the Basschat basses for sale and you’ll see the new, the old, the wacky, the rare and the downright odd all there. And they all sell. There’s more custom made, one off, mad stuff on there than anything else. And it’s lapped up

merciful-evans

It isnt really the industries fault IMO. Its guitarists who have their heads in the past. Innovation is not rewarded with sales. Rarely anyway.

There is a preoccupation with 60 and 70 year old designs with rock players.

Chapman guitars are a prime example. The idea was to get blog followers to vote for designs they wanted, so they ended up with more Les Paul, Tele, Strat etc. clones.

Before rock, guitarists were just the same. They ignored the radical designs of George Beauchamp's models in the 30s. They only wanted his pickups (copies were everywhere) to fit onto their archtops, which then fed back constantly. Served 'em right really. George's guitars didnt have that problem.

JerkMoans

AlexC said:

Next up - the harpsichord revival.

The kids going nuts for that gone Crumhorn sound.

mudslide73

The world is a scary place. People want familiarity... the golden olden days were safer and warmer. 

earwighoney

customkits said:

It's the safe way to make money from the big makers and mostly screws up the small makers imo, if it's not familiar you'll shut shop simple as that

Funny thing is bass guitarists and acoustic players don't seem as bothered  to me

I can't speak for bass players but a lot of acoustic guitarists are incredibly obsessed with Golden Era acoustic guitar trends, be it the 1930's. I'm not sure it's more or less than electric players but it's still a huge thing.

Bridgehouse

earwighoney said:

customkits said:

It's the safe way to make money from the big makers and mostly screws up the small makers imo, if it's not familiar you'll shut shop simple as that

Funny thing is bass guitarists and acoustic players don't seem as bothered  to me

I can't speak for bass players but a lot of acoustic guitarists are incredibly obsessed with Golden Era acoustic guitar trends, be it the 1930's. I'm not sure it's more or less than electric players but it's still a huge thing.

It’s amazing how many bass players post wanted ads with “nothing pre-1980 please”

gringopig

.

Bridgehouse

gringopig said:

space harp or neutron bassoon 

I’d so pay good money for both of those....

thecolourbox

Not everybody wants to create what's new, if you like that then great but I'd say a fair number of us play in order to recreate what we've heard

ICBM

It's also hard to sell most violinists a design that's newer than 300 years old.

One problem is that innovators very often seem to take the opposite tack and overdo it, with counterproductive results. A good example is the Parker Fly - on paper the feature set looked like it should be excellent. In practice, it was hideously ugly, needlessly uncomfortable, sounded awful and had some serious durability (frets) and upgradability (pickups) problems.

Or Gibson with their robot tuners, which might have been almost a good idea if they'd been an option, or fitted to a specific 'modern' series of guitars - instead of applied to the whole standard range, at the same time as a couple of other features which when combined, put off almost all their possible customers. And don't even mention the Firewood X... that wasn't innovation, it was a joke.

When they see things like that, is it any wonder a lot of players want to stick with what they know? Even when it's stuck in the past.

Where I think it gets ridiculous is when you get 'new' designs which are nothing but bits of various old designs stuck in a blender and finished in a way that's meant to make them look as if they're fifty years old. (Which is not quite the same as making reissues of fifty-year-old guitars look as if they're fifty years old.) The market seems saturated with this sort of thing currently.

JimmyWings

AlexC said:

No wonder teens are saying “screw that” and finding other ways to make music.

Other ways of music that involve recombining sine-waves and sawtooths in various ways, like they were doing .. er... in the 1930's.

In terms of "tone" generators, there really hasn't been anything truly innovative since sampling and it's spin offs - granular synthesis and wavetable synthesis.

The main difference between modern day EDM music and something like the first Prodigy album from 1992 is chiefly about post-processing, multi-band processing, and layering. So when you say that teens are saying screw that and finding other ways to make music... they're not exactly being innovative either.

And it's debatable whether it's even true. The guitar is as popular as ever judging by stats we've got:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/440131/us-guitar-market-retail-sales/

As ever.. this sort of topic is born out of confirmation bias and isn't terribly grounded in reality. IMHO.

pmbomb

I think the guitar industry is just obsessed with staying in business.

That and Les Pauls are cool. They just are. (Well played-in Teles are too. The jury's out on Strats).

Moominpapa

The other day a family Skype call somehow touched on conservatism in guitar design and I remarked to my two sons (17 and 21) that it was a real shame that there weren't more things like the Teuffel Birdfish. Met with incomprehension - they had never heard of it. So they immediately Googled it and were blown away: they both thought it was one of the coolest instruments they had ever seen. Although both can play instruments neither is primarily a guitarist and neither has any allegiance to the Strat / Tele / Les Paul triumvirate. I think it would be interesting to see what might happen if some more radical designs were widely and affordable available.

Funkfingers

Many people who take up the guitar or the electric bass do so because they are inspired by recorded music from the past.

Part of the quest for mimicking favourite sounds from the past is researching what equipment was supposedly used to create it. The next step is acquiring something that resembles that historic equipment in the mistaken belief that this is a shortcut to exact sonic replication.

Sometimes, there is a secondary mistaken belief that precisely accurate reproduction of favoured old sounds will bring similar levels of financial reward and groupie attention to those enjoyed by the originator(s) of the belovēd sound(s).

As long as punters want to play this game, manufacturers will happily oblige them. Ker-Ching!

AlexC

JimmyWings said:

AlexC said:

No wonder teens are saying “screw that” and finding other ways to make music.

Other ways of music that involve recombining sine-waves and sawtooths in various ways, like they were doing .. er... in the 1930's.

In terms of "tone" generators, there really hasn't been anything truly innovative since sampling and it's spin offs - granular synthesis and wavetable synthesis.

The main difference between modern day EDM music and something like the first Prodigy album from 1992 is chiefly about post-processing, multi-band processing, and layering. So when you say that teens are saying screw that and finding other ways to make music... they're not exactly being innovative either.

And it's debatable whether it's even true. The guitar is as popular as ever judging by stats we've got:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/440131/us-guitar-market-retail-sales/

As ever.. this sort of topic is born out of confirmation bias and isn't terribly grounded in reality. IMHO.

I didn’t use the phrase ‘innovation’ once in my original post. I said “other ways to make music.”
The question I am asking is - why does the guitar industry promote itself and products (not all, obviously) as being retro, grounded in the past?
I’m not asking anyone whether The Beatles are ‘better’ than NWA or Little Mix. And I’m not saying that Les Pauls shouldn’t exist either.

JimmyWings

AlexC said:

JimmyWings said:

AlexC said:

No wonder teens are saying “screw that” and finding other ways to make music.

Other ways of music that involve recombining sine-waves and sawtooths in various ways, like they were doing .. er... in the 1930's.

In terms of "tone" generators, there really hasn't been anything truly innovative since sampling and it's spin offs - granular synthesis and wavetable synthesis.

The main difference between modern day EDM music and something like the first Prodigy album from 1992 is chiefly about post-processing, multi-band processing, and layering. So when you say that teens are saying screw that and finding other ways to make music... they're not exactly being innovative either.

And it's debatable whether it's even true. The guitar is as popular as ever judging by stats we've got:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/440131/us-guitar-market-retail-sales/

As ever.. this sort of topic is born out of confirmation bias and isn't terribly grounded in reality. IMHO.

I didn’t use the phrase ‘innovation’ once in my original post. I said “other ways to make music.”
The question I am asking is - why does the guitar industry promote itself and products (not all, obviously) as being retro, grounded in the past?
I’m not asking anyone whether The Beatles are ‘better’ than NWA or Little Mix. And I’m not saying that Les Pauls shouldn’t exist either.

The entire premise of your post is steeped in the assumption that the guitar industry is failing to innovate. That's completely how it reads to me anyway. I know you didn't use the word once, but I don't think any of us are simple minded enough to require the word to be used in order for the implication to come through.