Buying Vintage Electric Guitars
Buying a vintage electric guitar?
Whether it be for display, collecting or playing, vintage electric guitars are in demand. Like antiques, there are only a finite number of vintage guitars available. As they say - they ain't making any more of them. And the prices are rising.
It's easy to see why.
As a young wannabe guitar player I could not afford the guitars that I wanted thirty years ago, but now I can. Well maybe one or two guitars anyway. It's partly nostalgia, partly because I can now afford what I could only dream of when I was younger; but the real allure is the guitars themselves.
Vintage electrics that were made long ago by companies like Gibson, Fender, Guild, Gretsch, Epiphone....
Even the words sound magical ! Pick one up today and feel it, smell it, play it....
Guitars like that are from a different era - when rock was young, anything was possible; and craftsmen worked their magic with wood that was carefully chosen.
Nowadays a guitar that looks exactly like the Strat that Jimi Hendrix played or the Les Paul that Jimmy Page played are cheap to buy and made in all sorts of countries; probably from plantation timber.
And they are okay if you are just starting out.
Investors and collectors of vintage electric guitars need to be wary when buying - it is not difficult to build a cheap imitation that looks exactly like a genuine older model. Unless you are an expert you will need good advice - on model numbers, serial numbers, finishes etc. to determine if it is a real vintage guitar or not.
You can get lucky though - in the 1980s I was a sound engineer for a band that went to the Philippines to record an album - the studio time was cheap - and we came across a guitar shop that was selling guitars way cheaper than back home.
So the band manager got all excited and greedy and bought six guitars with the band's money at rock bottom prices without really knowing what it was he was buying.
Back home and the local guitar guy laughed as he looked at them one by one and said they were all - really clever - copies and pretty much worthless.
Except the last one.
An immaculate early sixties Strat. Not a copy, the real deal.
We never saw that guitar again...
I'm still looking for that bargain vintage electric guitar, and I hope I come across it before you do !
Recommended:
2009 Official Vintage Guitar Magazine Price Guide: The Only Complete Guide
Now celebrating its 20th anniversary, The Official Vintage Guitar Magazine Price Guide continues to be the industry-leading reference for values on vintage and collectible guitars, basses, lap steels, mandolins, ukuleles, banjos, amps, and effects.
The expanded 2009 edition spans over 500 pages and includes information on more than 1,700 brands and more than 1,200 photos, plus a detailed look at the "hows" and "whys" of the collectible instrument market.
