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If we taste with our eyes and nose as much as with our tongue, I'd put forward that we hear guitars/amps with our hands and eyes as much as with our ears. And there are some people that swear by mushrooms and/or Rickenbackers so there's clearly room for people to have different opinions or to be wrong and insane.
Been uploading old tracks I recorded ages ago and hopefully some new noodles here.
1 - Materials
2 - Techniques
3 - Age
Materials - each piece of wood is different so you can't say all old wood is better and all new wood is bad. I don't believe that the best of the old wood will be better than the best of the new wood either.
Technique - I also don't believe they make it better than we can now, with more precision instruments, and arguably more experience now too, they barely just invented the LP and Strat back then. That is to say we haven't learned a thing in 50 years.
So that leaves age - does aging the wood make that much different? And if it is all about age then in 100 or 500 years, the percentage in age difference would be insignificant?
Of course then there is the placebo effect too.
I can't afford any mass produced guitar let alone any player grade vintage and it's this that got me making guitars and comparing to anything relative inc making my own tube amps
If i can't afford it I'll make it is my mentality, if only had the money to make a cobra replica I'd be building one of them
(formerly customkits)
Been uploading old tracks I recorded ages ago and hopefully some new noodles here.
An old friend has a 1979 Strat Anniversary - you know, the silvery green things that weigh the same as a Mondeo. I think its the worst piece of shit on planet earth... god knows, I worked on it enough but he loves it. He bought a lovely CS Strat to replace it on my suggestion (a beaut of a guitar) and he played it for two gigs, then it went back in the case under his bed. He still plays the 79 boat anchor. He makes it sing. I make it speak - it says "put me the fuck down" when I play it.
Point is, if you connect with a particular instrument thats cool. It doesn't matter what it is or where it was made or from what material it was made etc. I found this video one of the more enjoyable ones - its all about entertainment folks - and watching Mickhere connect with that 62 Strat was an abject lesson in what I'm on about. For whatever reason, he played better on that instrument than I've heard him play before - is it psychological, is is physical or is it the sound? Who the fuck cares. Its about music and if playing that guitar makes *that player* make better music or have more enjoyment from playing, then I say bring it on.
And I say the above as someone who doesn't necessarily buy into the vintage guitar thing.
It's just so happens that when that happens with a vintage one, people put it down to it being vintage, less so about it being a guitar you actually bond with.
As something of a B Setzer fan, I'm trying to play more 50s rock n roll/swing etc, so I have 1/2 an eye on a 6120 - Yet I have never found one that is close to making me think I could bond with it - Yet funnily enough I've played a few of the cheaper electromatic models that feel more than okay - I even played an early 70's Tennessean recently that was 'scorching' with regards to playability and we all tend to think of these as crap - So either of those with better pick-ups would be a better bet - So that thought process should further lead me in the direction of to buy a guitar that you can work/bond with
The first one I bought was the ‘65 Strat. It was certainly better than the 70s Strat I owned at the time - but in the great scheme of things - only marginally so. The ‘63 was ‘much’ better than the ‘65. Once I bought that, the ‘65 was soon moved on - old guitars are not consistently brilliant - though these days they are consistently expensive.
I have a CS Strat now which looks, feels and sounds great - whether it is ultimately as good as the ‘63 doesn’t really matter. Chasing the minutiae of tonal differences is an unhealthy obsession that just gets in the way of playing for me.
I don’t doubt Mick and Dan had a great time playing some iconic vintage guitars - but some of their tonal claims - bearing in mind they were using unfamiliar amps, in a room they weren’t used to - and often through a lot of pedals - are probably a tad ‘generous’. To my ears, some really didn’t sound ‘that’ great. I watched the follow-up Q & A video tonight and Mick already seems to have cooled on the idea of actually owing a vintage guitar. He talked about the ‘62 in the original video as being something he could gig. It’s on ATB’s site (marked sold incidentally) at just shy of £15,000. I wouldn’t consider something ‘that’ valuable to be a suitable gigging companion. And having reflected on it, I got the impression Mick doesn’t either....
There's a whole "playing" section with several forums where you'll likely find more posts about playing than gear.
Number of posts in Guitar forum: 526k
Number of posts in Technique forum: 14.9k
Let's be brutally honest with ourselves here. Guitar forums have always been far more about collecting and guitars as cool objects than they have playing or performing. Which is fine, collecting interesting objects is fun.
They're rather like people, some I instinctively love and adore sharing time with, and others I simply don't want to be in the same room as.
I steer to my own bearings, and don't need the approval of the informed.
Favourite guitar played to date? A 1959 Les Paul Standard.
Why? Because it made me smile the most.
This stuff is really simple, I enjoy keeping it thus.
There obviously will be some people on here who just collect them as objects but I'm sure there are plenty like me.
Might just be the threads I happen to click on but most of the talk about guitars is seemingly to do with the functionality of them as tools.
Smashed it out of the park here.
Ultimately it's about what makes the individual happy.
I've a 52 reissue tele that I've had and gigged for 10 years. Would I swap it for a custom shop version? no, and I have played many, but none have made me feel the way this one does when I pick it up.
A friend has a '74 tele that he loves to bits. Does the same for him as my 52ri does for me. Personally for me, it weighs about the same as an armchair, I can fit a credit card in the neck pocket gap (and it has room to wobble and fall out), it's been badly gouged for a neck humbucker and has had a big brass 70's bridge added at some previous point in it's life and sounds (to my ears) a bit wooly. But he loves it.
By the way, I have been lucky enough to play a few original early teles and some early strats. They were mostly really nice guitars, and will surely will have made someone very happy.
I will also admit to having a bit of a soft spot for the 56 Goldtop that was on the Haydock stand earlier this year. Didn't get to hold/play it and that's happen as well as I can neither afford that or the divorce that would surely come if I even went for a reissue of it.
I often find the word vintage is used somewhat narrowly, that is it only applies to the most prized older instruments. You can tell they're prized by the 6 figures attached to them.
I venture to suggest that a competent guitar player can get a 4 figure 50's Special well within the ball park of it's 6 figure brethren. In fact I don't suggest anything, I've done it, a number of times.
A 50's PAF 345 isn't called a 'Burst killer for nothing. Buttons in comparison to it's opponent.
I've had Historic's up against 'Bursts, the small percentile differences don't translate into the huge fiscal margins between.
I've heard fakes that are so good it makes a halfwit out of me for hating every last bloody one of them.
Having said all that, I can make every single one of them, on any given day, sound like shite.
Where the "best guitar in the world" then....?