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

richardhomer

Innovations that have ‘stuck’ in the guitar world are few and far between. Arguably 80s ‘super-Strats’ were the last to exist beyond their era. There are a host of ‘innvations’ that have gone by the wayside - Steinberger, the Stepp, Casio Guitar Synth, Parkers, Variax, etc. Even innovative players (eg Andy Summers) tend to have conservative tastes in guitars....

Phil_aka_Pip

What's the attraction of the past?

Maybe it's disillusionment with the present + dread of the future.

It was about 50 years ago that I started taking notice of "pop music". As I got older I listened to blues, jazz, prog rock, hard rock, folk, reggae, as well as classical music. Looking back it has seemed that each "new thing" is a poor man's sub-standard substitute for what it has replaced - especially in terms of "chart music". Natch there are exceptions, but that seems to be the general trend.

Bridgehouse

richardhomer said:

Innovations that have ‘stuck’ in the guitar world are few and far between. Arguably 80s ‘super-Strats’ were the last to exist beyond their era. There are a host of ‘innvations’ that have gone by the wayside - Steinberger, the Stepp, Casio Guitar Synth, Parkers, Variax, etc. Even innovative players (eg Andy Summers) tend to have conservative tastes in guitars....

Which again brings me back to the bass world.. big innovations that have definitely stuck and become mainstream: 5,6 and 7 strings; headless; “stick” style; active onboard Preamp; Class D amps; fretless..

And mainstream now includes the likes of Dingwall..

Moe_Zambeek

Moominpapa said:

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.

The thing about the Birdfish though, is that it’s fundamentally an oddly-shaped Strat. It’s really only innovative in an industrial design way. The Tesla is a much more innovative guitar. The Niwa is another exercise in making a strat look funny (and I say that as an ex-owner). Real strats are actually way more comfortable than a Niwa, and you can actually operate the controls properly with human fingers.

Most discussions relating to innovations in Guitar seem to be about making guitars look different, which isn’t really innovation to me. Have a look at any historical electric guitar history and there are similar ‘innovations’ that were only really short lived cosmetic changes. You still have a fingerboard for the left hand and a picking / plucking area around the right hand, and some bits of wood to support your appendages wrapped around it.

Grangousier

Most of the records that people like were made with equipment that was cutting edge in 1952, so the best way to get to that is to use equipment that's as near as dammit identical. New stuff did get invented after that (solid state, effects pedals, WRHB, etc), but it got sort of mixed up with the 1952 tech. 

I also think that something happened to tech in the 1980s that people reacted to, and decided that the 1952 tech sounded much nicer, and we got stuck there. Thing is the tech we use is absolutely bang up to date. So much that we use it to accurately model the 1952 technology. 

The other thing is... weren't guitars like the Les Paul and the Flying V effectively long-deleted, failed products when they became iconic in the 60s and 70s? 

gringopig

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Phil_aka_Pip

Why should the guitar industry innovate anyway? Orchestral instruments have indeed evolved but having reached some kind of optimum have stayed put for decades.  Guitar evolution happened over the last 100 years and frankly I'm not surprised to see it settling down. For people that want new sounds or new ways of controlling how those sounds are made, there's always the electronic instruments. Guitars do what guitars do, violins do what violins do: if you want something different you can either try modifying an existing instrument (and risking commercial failure because players of existing instruments in general don't want them changed), or you can invent a new instrument (and again risk commercial failure if it doesn't catch on. Adolphe Sax and Leo Fender got lucky).

prowla

There have been lots of good things produced.

The good old ones tend to be remembered.

However, that does not mean that everything old was good.

Some of it was crap!

EricTheWeary

AlexC said:

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.

Well, I’m middle aged and don’t have disposable income for this stuff or am that interested. I do look at stuff on the internet I can’t afford but it’s primarily pedals that tend to be relatively modern in design (even if I want them to sound like it’s 1973). 
Innovation in musical instruments tends to be slow but the electric guitar is pretty good at incorporating new technology. The Helix and it’s variants probably take up more type on here than any other subject, for example. Some of the innovations on the guitar itself haven’t proven to be particularly viable or are just too expensive to become popular. 
And, none of this stops innovation in playing ( wether that’s new levels of technical excess or being musically inventive). The Dave Edmunds argument that the guitar stopped progressing with the invention of the fuzz pedal holds some water, you can hide a lot on the guitar behind sounds ( thank God really...). 
And, this is a guitar forum it’s the kind of stuff people talk about. 

hobbio

Some of it has to be that humans are the same shape as they were back then too. 

roberty

Guitar players are conservative, but I do think the guitar problems have been more or less solved.  The classic designs have earned their reputations.  Even in music production people use simulations of 1176 compressors and Neve EQs.  The difference with guitar technology now is midi/switching and multi-modellers.  I think audiences expect things to sound more like a production these days

Roland

The technology has moved forward. There are innovations and there are incremental improvements. Sometimes it’s difficult to decide which category they belong to.

Some of us are old enough to remember that the five way switch was introduced because players were lodging their switches on the in-between positions. Then we’ve got Six saddles instead of three, Roller bridges, Locking nuts, Locking tuners, Fine tuners (borrowed from violins),  Stainless steel frets, Carbon stiffening rods, All sorts of magnet and pickup wiring improvements, Different finishes, Locking strap buttons. 

The challenge for Fender and Gibson  is deciding which variations to push. The same is true for other industries. For example, look at M&S’s range of jeans, or ladies T shirts. One low risk approach for Fender and Gibson is to produce copies of historic models, even if those models are fictitious. They are cheaper to make because they’re using existing components, existing component designs, or minor variations on them; and unused stocks can be fed into later models.

As others have said, it’s easy to tap into nostalgia marketing for middle aged players who couldn’t afford, or even find, the real thing in their teenage years. If you use your guitar to make a living then your decision criteria, and probably your disposable income, will be different.

Danielsguitars

Bridgehouse said:

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

Well said

Shame guitarists don't see it the same way

Bridgehouse

customkits said:

Bridgehouse said:

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

Well said

Shame guitarists don't see it the same way

There’s a lot more headstock-badge-itis in the guitar world.

dindude

The electric guitar, or at least it’s hayday, is just a point in time in musical history - it doesn’t need to evolve past a certain point, like the violin, tuba, or any other instrument doesn’t. The tech that’s developed over the course of its lifetime has informed the manufacturing process rather then the core design of the instrument, meaning that we get more consistency and better value than ever before. 

Having said that, I reckon if you’re a 16 year old learning now, you probably lust after a Kemper rather than a Deluxe Reverb, so there’s some progress.

JezWynd

mort said:

“The public gets wants what the public wants gets”

ftfy

Bridgehouse

JezWynd said:

mort said:

“The public wants what the public is told is desirable ”

ftfy

FTFY 

Nikc

the public is both stupid and right

Lebarque

Moominpapa said:

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.

Is that the one that looks like a park bench?

darthed1981

Another so far unmentioned factor is that guitars (whisper it) are really not very complicated.  They are a lump of wood with metal attached to it, how much is there to innovate?

You could do things of course, but when your core target market (old dudes with money) is inherently so conservative, why bother?