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My First introduction to the world of Vintage guitars happened in the mid 1980’s. Guitarist magazine (back in the day when it wasn’t in the pockets of advertisers….actually gave some bad instrument reviews now and then and interviewed guitarists on merit rather than celebrity…..I mean come on…. fucking Lloyd Grossman!!!!!! Ahem) ran an article on Vintage and Rare in London. The article had some very sexy photos of some very desirable instruments, I could have happlily laminated my copy to put it bluntly.

The Vintage Electric guitar market as it was then concentrated on American Guitars build from 1950-68, basically before big corporations like CBS and Norlin got their teeth into Gibson and Fender. The market had originally spawned from a sizeable chunk of Rock musicians loathing 1970’s Fenders and Gibsons, and instead buying up old “secondhand” examples from the “Classic” era. Bernie Marsden of Whitesnake is one of these guys who plied his way across the 1970’s and early 80’s Wheeling and dealing, as is Steve Howe of Yes. Both men have considerable collections as does Dave Gilmour, Neal Schon, Steve Lukather, Warren De Martini….etc etc.

By the time the 1980’s had rolled by, the “Classic” era had truly become established. Gibson and Fender were reacting to the early Tokai copies of these instruments and we had seen the First Heritage Les Pauls and Fender American reissues along with their Japanese Squier counterparts. Vintage was in.

At this point in time a 1962 Strat would have cost you around £3000 from a Vintage dealer, but on the street probably a lot less. People were not quite wise to the value of these things pre Ebay and internet. My own driving instructor in 1987 offered me his 1963 Strat for £175 because it was looking a bit “beaten up”…in this era of relics and hand rolled fingerboards its almost comical to think he thought the guitar scruffy. I almost went to the cashpoint there and then but as Im a decent man.. relented and in a fit of honesty explained it was probably worth 20 times that. it was the right thing to do, but I do kinda wake up screaming every now and then.

Perhaps that sense of comical is now coming out for one delicious bite of the ironic cherry. Vintage guitar prices have outperfomed the Stock market almost consistantly for the last 20 years. Many pieces are now no longer played and live in bank vaults and investment portfolios.

However to a hardened cynic like me, I’ve always thought that prices had become silly once we started seeing badly put together firewood from the 1970’s going in West End dealerships for 4 figures. As the classic era stock became unaffordable, retailers were trying to sell us the shit we’d previously avoided as hidden gems.

When I was a lad a Fender Antigua Strat was a badly finished American Strat, with poor quality finish and fit seeping from its every pore. They were £250 worth of guitar on a good day, not £1800 and they were not as made as well as a Chinese Squier or Catalog guitar like a Westone Thunder 1. But in the UK in the 2000’s, they’d likely be bought by some skinny jeaned performing arts student who to be frank wouldn’t know any better. The careerist minded British indie musicians last priorities are pretty much tone, playability and quality….and Tarquin Rhodes-Deprice and his buddies in their BRIT school performing bands lapped them up. Making them fashionable.

The Truth That Dare Not Speak Its Name

The other strange irony of the Vintage guitar boom is this…there are actually more 1962 Strats in the world, than there were in 1962…..thats right…fakes….re-cut a headstock, wrap a body in bubble wrap and stick it in a freezer…let it crack…dip in cold tea for 2 weeks…gig burns….make some neck stamps. I did meet a guy at a party a few years ago who assures me that he built most of a certain Northern guitar shops vintage stock in the 1980’s out of Tokai reissues…..he might be lying, but to be honest….could you or I tell? He did have the originals to work from after all, so if one of these showed up now, how would you know. Theres always been ghostbuilders like Max and his infamous Les Pauls, but to be honest they probably play better than some of the originals anyway.

So what about originallity?

The most popular 3 guitar modifications of the late 1970’s were…

Brass Nuts: The Idea was that Mass = Sustain….look at John Sykes main les Paul…Brass nut…it went out of fashion, but for a year or 2, everyone had one.

Natural Finish….thats right, many of these ” Classic” instruments were stripped down to bare wood. Im pretty sure Ive seen Lowell George of Little Feat playing a natrual finished 1960’s Strat with a humbucker in it

Hot rodded pickups, Humbuckers: I once read somewhere that the Dimarzio Super Distortion pickup was the most popular modification for Fender Strats in 1978….anyone seen Dave Murray of iron Maidens black Strat for example. Thats right, he wasnt the only guy in England with an old Strat doing that most of them were hotrodding and chopping up fitting new pickups and tremelos….which begs the question.

Given the above information there should be loads of these guitars out there right, the vintage market would be flooded with non original instruments particulaly Fenders…….oh…there isn’t??????

When I walk around Denmark Street now much of what I see is Firewood. Snake Oil and misinformation….Ive seen late 80’s squier Strats labelled as JV era (1982-83) and a host of other guitars no one in their right mind would fucking touch labelled as “Collectable” “Classic” and “Rare”.

Some Firewood

Vintage and Rare have a couple of 1970’s Les Paul Deluxes in at the moment….and ok…people used them. Townsend, Scott Gorham and the like, but lets be honest, why buy a multilaminate fucking sandwich layered LP body thats had a new neck fitted for £1700, when you could buy a used recent reissue for about £1200 in the classified ads. It ll likely be better made and you could take the wife/girlfriend/care giver on a citybreak and maybe throw in a nice dinner too. To put it bluntly no one at Gibson in 1974 gave a shit about build quality until much later when Joel Dantzig at Hamer and Paul Reed Smith actually challenged the big two and perhaps scared them into action as they saw their market share shrink. Townsend trashed enough along the way so clearly even he wasn’t that bothered and his main guitar is a heavily modified 1989 Clapton Strat nowadays.

So given the anathema surrounding the Vintage Guitar market. I did find it interesting when I recieved an email today from Music Ground saying they had some Vintage pieces….Priced To Sell.

The Hightlights include

Please note this is another 59 335 for illustrative purposes only

1959 Sunburst Gibson ES335 for………a nudge under £16 Grand!

The last time I saw one of these it was in Cherry and they wanted close to £40K….even though this burst isnt as desirable thats still a £23K guitar on any good day.

Then there was a 56 Strat, immaculately clean for £16 Grand….didn’t they used to be £20K plus 2 years ago?

Granted the 1964 Strat they had was about £24 grand….but I do wonder, with Simon Cowells talent shows and corporate cover versions dominating the music industry….will future generations care enough about Vintage guitars to sustain such incredible pricing in the future?

Im as guilty as the next guy….my own rather meagre collection of pretty much uncollectable instruments are doing well with one guitar inparticular doubling its money….but hey Im a player….not a guy sticking them in a vault.

Other Collectables such as Wine and Camera’s seem to be doing ok, even in this digital age an old Leica M will cost you a fair bit…..if its the right model that is!

But as a final thought if the kids playing Guitar Hero never make it from plastic box to musical instrument. Will there be an adjustment the market never recovers from, or will it be the easy to fake Metal guitars from the early 1980’s that become the stock options of tomorrow?

Well

A year after the bankers collectively destroyed our pensions and forced Gordon Brown to pump about £500+ Billion into the financial system I thought we had seen the last of the City trader types and their tasteless excesses.

How wrong I was

I chanced upon Future Publishings new title about 6 months ago. Guitar Afficionado is probably the most innapropriate guitar magazine ever. As I gazed upon it in my local independant newsagents (WH Smiths seem to be steering clear of this one) I was drawn to its glossy cover.

As I tend to speed read most magazines in about 3 minutes, I almost fell over laughing, it was like a Chris Morris sketch come to life.

Guitar Afficionado is basically aimed at the well healed 45-65 year old, Ive not seen a reference to playing the guitar….just owning them, like racehorses or women I suppose. All articles are on things like Vintage wines, Fine Wristwatches, Luxury Supercars, global travel and aside from a couple of Guitar related articles, the whole magazine looks exactly like the FT’s “How to Spend it” magazine, all fine art, luxury brands and world travel. I don’t know if the suits on Dragons Den play guitar, but if they did, this would be their magazine.

Now I think their probably is an upmarket audience for a mature guitar magazine. But Germany’s guitar and Bass magazine already publish ‘Guitar Dreams’ which despite all the adverts being for expensive boutique kit is actually about music, classic artists, vintage guitars and rock n roll.

The latest issue of Guitar Afficionado includes….and I quote

Our latest issue (and hottest yet) features:

• John McEnroe’s incredibly rare Burst
• Lost Guitars of the Hard Rock
• Golfing with Alex Lifeson
• George Gruhn on the rarities no one wants
• San Francisco in a Mercedes SLS gullwing

Plus, the Fender Custom Shop La Cabronita Especial, 2010 Porsche Panamera, Mel Bay’s 1973 D’Aquisto, Andy Warhol’s favorite guitar, and more.

I love Alex Lifeson and John McEnroe for different reasons, I love the fact that both men have made successes of their lives…and more importanty they’ve made their own money…..honestly. Alex has had quite a career with Rush and John with his Tennis and now Television and the last time I looked Gordon Brown hadn’t subsidised either of them. Alex lifeson is supposedly quite a golfer although I hope he’s not been learning bad habits from Tiger Woods.

BUT!!!!!

I sort of think the target audience of this magazine are precisely the sort of people whove gotten rich of our collective misery, as our pensions erode and our terms and conditions of employment decrease in the favour of the government and big business I guess it’ll be ok as long as Miles and Charlie can do a line of coke and afford the PRS they’ve never learnt to play, but y’know £5 grand, its just a drop in the ocean….sniff.

But please don’t get me wrong.

I dont think theirs anything wrong with aspiration, theres nothing more I like to see than a self made person who’s a success story. But in the UK according to official figures actual social mobility has been at zero for the last decade. If your born poor you stay poor if your middles class, your job may become increasingly casuallised and you might not live in a house the size of the one you grew up in. These are the new realities of living in Britain now. The fact that the state had to rescue the entire financial services industry a little over a year ago leaves a rotten taste in my mouth and its not a 1945 Chateau Batailley Pauillac Grand Cru Classe either.

But theres something unreal about this magazine. The fact that WH Smiths are not stocking it, speaks volumes to me. Its almost taboo like pornography. Theres just something immoral about it. Future haven’t advertised it on any of their websites. Ive never seen this mentioned on music radar….its like a little exclusive club of (scuse my language) cuntdom.

Perhaps the real question Future should be asking of themselves is, where is the target market, does it exist outside of Surrey? I often go to London and browse Denmark St and I remember the besuited yuppies in Soho Soundhouse trying out the latest Mesa Boogie or PRS and y’know what……it didn’t stop that shop from going under. I don’t see stuff flying out of Vintage and Rare, they’ve had some of that stock for 2 years, that Tangarine American Strat Deluxe is in a different shop every time I go there, but i know the serial number and I know its the same guitar, its been passed from shop to shop like a Thai hooker when the ships come in. So the good times are not returning.

So who is buying “Guitar Afficionado” and more importantly where did they ultimately get the money from……????

I don’t know about you, but Im thoroughly sick of Ebay.

What was once a prime example of people power on the internet is now just a greedy corporation. In order to sell your musical (or non musical) kit, your subject to using Paypal, having those commision charges, as well as sales commision knocked off, then the priviledge of Paypal holding onto your remaining cash for 21 days as it accrues interest in their business account. Add to that the threat that if the buyer complains, Ebay award in their favour, so your out of pocket with a potentially soiled item to resell…. and its all a bit shite.

This has become reflected in the sites users nonsensical pricing of items in recent months, as sellers try to claw back some profit, often a used item on Ebay will be more than the equivalent used or sometimes new item in a dealership. A ridiculous situation all round.

In the UK there is thankfully now an alternative

I chanced upon a site called Guitarmart before and although the idea seemed promising, the site was badly laid out and confusing.

Now Guitarmart have recently relaunched the site, its free for private advertisers and is essentially funded by the bigger retailers such as Chandlers selling stock on there. Although its early days yet, the range of kit on the site looks promising, as do some of the prices if you look hard enough, and although the usual buyer beware rules apply (always deal in cash, face to face transactions, nothing by post and do your research before buying), anything that removes the stranglehold on used musical kit Ebay currently have has got to be a good thing.

In recent times Ive been using London Gumtree and have been managing to find choice bargains on there, but for selling, they want your postcode with the advert and if you give a non London postcode it won’t accept your advert. Gumtree is owned by Ebay and it appears that they have cottoned on to those of us in the provinces wishing to tap into a wider audience.

With VAT in the UK about to go up to 17.5% again and the threat of more job losses in the New Year, I suspect Guitarmart and sadly Ebay will do very well in the months ahead.

I recently got an email from my former bandmate, Heroes of Switzerland guitar partner and all round good egg Ian Lockwood.

Ian had contacted me for some advice on a new guitar he wanted to buy, enjoying the feel of his Gibson Les Paul, Ian wanted to find something similar in sound and feel, but with a tremelo arm for divebombing and other whammy bar madness.

Well Tremless of Nottingham and anyone else in a similar pickle, sit back and take this in.

As far as recent LP players go Alex Lifeson (Rush) & Neal Schon (Journey) both use Les Pauls with Floyd Rose trems fitted, Neal Schon did probably the earliest mod way back in the 1980’s and now has a signature model, trouble is they are all like Custom Shop stuff….with the dollar as it is, its pretty much the price of a car. The Production model Les Paul Axcess which is basically a mass produced version of the Schon guitar is like 2 Grand and Gibson are cranking the prices at the mo so christ knows what you’d pay for one…..let’s see…

http://www.guitarampkeyboard.com/en/78104

http://www.coda-music.com/product_info.php?cPath=21_22_23&products_id=4315

Gulp!

Burny (Fernandes own Jap domestic market copies) make a Korean LP copy that comes with a Floyd and a Fernandes sustainer, now I’ve played a Jap Fernandes LP before and its like a high model number Tokai (i.e. pretty much the same build and materials as a real Gibson), but these Korean ones and now some Chinese built are a completely different animal. I played one on Denmark Street years ago it was OK, but at a hot gig???

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Burny-Les-Paul-Fernandes-sustainer-Floyd-Rose_W0QQitemZ150360051240QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Musical_Instruments_Guitars_CV?hash=item2302284e28&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

A few guys on the Guitarist forums rave about these and its probably as good as an Epi LP, but from what I can gather the biggest skimp on a guitar like this… and the biggest issue I reckon you’d have is with the build of the Floyd Style trem, if the guitars that cheap (and bear in mind that in Japan a Burny retails for less than £300) its likely to be monkey metal and fall to bits. I had a Washburn MG40 Superstrat for 2 weeks back in 93, where the metalwork was like something you’d get in a pub ashtray so 4 songs in your tunings fucked. The one I had never left the rehearsal room and I exchanged it.

The whole idea of a Floyd Rose or Kahler (the other big competitor) system back in the day, was that by setting them up properly beforehand, tuning issues will be minimal. In my 80’s rock heyday I used 2 identical Ibanez RG560’s and I never used a tuner live, both guitars would come out of a cold van and into a hot gig. Id keep them in their cases to acclimatise for 20 mins, get them out and… the tuning wouldn’t move and this is at the height of my widdling powers, dive bombs, squeals, tapping whole tone scales across all 6 strings into a backwards reverb unit and getting it to glitch as it struggled to process the notes…. and the air raid siren…..Glory days…Id occasionally have to tweak the fine tuners on the third but that was it.

A replacement either by Floyd Rose or Ibanez (who I still think make the best variant of the design in the Edge Trem) is like £170+, so Id tread carefully.
http://www.guitarampkeyboard.com/en/74911

There are other options however…..

1: Buy another secondhand LP Studio and have a Floyd fitted….You’d get a Studio used for £500 ish, although the cost of getting a proper guitar builder to do this will be at least another £200 in labour I reckon….so were talking £900 ish. You need to go to someone who knows their shit for this, as theres wood to be routed out of the body etc, if they fuck it up the guitar could be unusable. Norworthys at least, maybe Rob Williams in Birmingham?

2: More realistically there is a tremelo system called a Stetsbar that just clips onto a Gibson Style bridge….http://stetsbar.com/. These are an aftermarket replacement and won’t require any alteration. Ive not heard or used on of these yetr and no one I know of has, so its something new maybe? They get good reviews, but just about anything does in Guitarist does nowadays.

From what I’ve read its for subtle trem useage, not massive divebombing so…maybe not what you want.

3: Digietech Whammy Pedal? A cop out I know.

4: An old 80’s classic with trem like an Old Yamaha SG1300T? I bought a beat up one, made mine fixed bridge. That would have been ideal, but again those old SG’s are starting to become expensive for what they are and on a used guitar the Floyd is usually the first casualty of neglect. Because everything is altered with an allen key, those areas are usually chewed to fuck and in the case of some older Japanese own brand stuff, parts are non existent, Fender have kept a lot of their 80’s stuff going and so have Ibanez post Floyd locking system, but they and most other guitar trems that were pre floyd have disappeared. I was there at the time their were hundreds of designs.

The other thing to remember with a Floyd is once you break a string live that’s it for the gig…..by the time you have unlocked and pissed about with it, the whole guitar might need a retune, with locking nuts and the like its not something you can do at the Social. I used to just swap guitars and carry on with the spare, it didn’t happen that often though.

5: A Godin? Godin are part of a massive staple of Canadian Brands (Simon and Patrick, Art & Lutherie etc etc) and they actually source their own tonewoods. There getting popular with people who need maximum versatility, as many have acoustic pickups and roland synth guts fitted… so Steve Stevens plays them as does the bloke in Elbow. There also reasonably priced, but my advice would be to look secondhand for one as they do not have the prestige of Fender or Gibson or PRS so residuals are usually shite the very rare times I see them in the Guitarist classifieds. The Godin might be the best option as they have fulcrum trems with locking machine heads

http://www.guitarguitar.co.uk/electric_guitars_detail.asp?stock=08012514290818

http://www.guitars.co.uk/acatalog/Godin_LGXT.html

That’s the pricey one, this is cheaper…

http://www.guitarguitar.co.uk/electric_guitars_detail.asp?stock=08012514592418

http://www.godinguitars.com/godinxtsap.htm

If I were you, this might be your best option as they are well made and durable guitars, and I know you like variation in sounds so there pretty versatile.

6: The only outside option is to buy a secondhand Patrick Eggle. These were a small time British Guitar company who basically tried to be a baby PRS, they changed owners several times and it all went south, but they were very popular in the guitar press in the mid 1990’s and so people bought them and in true defunct British guitar maker style, the depreciation is just out of this world, I just found this on Ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Patrick-Eggle-Berlin-Stage-T-Swineshead-PAF_W0QQitemZ350253924580QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Musical_Instruments_Guitars_CV?hash=item518cc2c0e4&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14
These were something like £1200 new when new, I suspect thats a refin though.

Not bad and not a Million miles away from a PRS Custom 24, I almost bought their Los Angeles model as it was like a Musicman Luke (very compact S-Style guitar) back in the day. Which Framus seem to have nicked the inspiration for their design for their recent Diablo pro:

http://www.thomann.de/gb/framus_diablo_custom_honey.htm

The neck will be pretty similar to Ian’s LP I should think. The Eggle has a more PRS type feel, but the mahogany body, set neck and whammy bar may be unbeatable at current prices.

So here we are, quite a few months into the “worst recession since the 1980’s” or biggest “economic crisis since the 1930’s” as described by various media outlets intent of frightening us all.

Are we having fun yet?

From this guitarists perspective several interesting things have happened in the last few months.

In terms of the wider economy and currency markets both the Dollar, Euro and Yen have risen sharply. So prices have gone up across the board, most horribly is the now near 20% rise in the value of the Yen, which has basically made grey importing a Japanese Fender or other far east exotica (ESP/Burny/Caparison etc) uneconomically viable. The unofficial Clapton type J-craft Strat I’d finally set my heart on (I was still gonna replace those nasty small frets with Dunlop 6100 fretwire though) was suddenly going to come into the UK for near £750 used as opposed to £550, so that idea was quashed finally.

It didn’t get much better thanks to the rise in the Euro, although its now dropped slightly, suddenly all thos nice deals on Thomann.de suddenly looked very unaffordable. In April a Fender Richie Kotzen Telecaster was near £1200 as opposed to just under a grand previously, its now just over a grand….ouch!

The drop in VAT to 15% seems to have made didly squat to guitar prices as many companies announced large price hikes in January 09 and the currency markets cancelled out a lot of this. So saving £30 here and there on a £600+ guitar really seemed meaningless.

What has suprised me was Ebay, the prices commanded on there seeemd fantastical, especially for used Gibsons, all of a sudden people were paying used prices that were virtually the new retail price a year or so earlier. From what I could see this was people in a feeding frenzy hoping to get a good deal, but really just supporting a fantasy land.

Back in March when I was looking to purchase a used Gibson SG I was amazed how many advertisers were trying to sell me a 2001-2005 guitar for around the £800-850 mark. At the time Gibson had raised the price of a new SG standard to £1199 and the dollar had affected this, however it soon dropped back down to £999 in most dealers. After browsing Gumtree for 3 weeks I found a totally mint 03 SG Standard in heritage Cherry for £650.00 so it appears some sellers are realistic.

In terms of Fenders though, things are now bordering on the ridiculous. American Standard Guitars have gone through the roof again and are obviously not selling as Fender are offering a free Fender Champion 600 practice amp if you buy one from them now….why not simply drop the price. Irrespective of currency values, that is the most automated guitar factory on earth. It shouldn’t cost so much.

But with Fender everything has gone up, the newish Mexican made “Road Worn” Strats are on the £800+ price point too. I tried one in Cologne in April and I thought the relic’ing was about the same standard as one of Trev Wilkinsons “Vintage” brand copies. It was ok, but not the best Strat I played, and fender have never gotten away from the “insubstantial” feel on their Mex Strats. i’ve tried the basses and they’ve always been fine. But for some reason I can always tell Im playing a Mexican Strat, whatever is missing, Im picking up on it.

So where does that leave the humble guitarist?

Well there is an upside…despite Soundcontrol going to the wall. I’ve noticed a slew of new independant guitar shops that have risen out of the ashes of the “Dixon’s of music retail”. In some cases these are new shops, in others, just smaller businesses that have expanded. But I see that as tremedously healthy for the british guitarist. As now there is less of a sense of monopoly out there,m which means shops can get on with being competitive, giving good customer service and all the other old fashioned shit that chain retailing scum like Soundcontrol tried to extinguish. In addition, not everyone is classified land is a complete idiot. There are some great guitar deals out there just waiting to be had. If you’ve got the cash now is a brilliant time to buy anything musical. Just as long as you do your research and avoid people trying to panic you.