Vintage guitars!

playas

playas

Well-known member
How many of you guys own a vintage guitar...or more...you know what I'm talking about.


E.g. wah wah's strat..Anyone have a '54 Goldtop...'59 Standard?...etc.etc
What's the the story behind it? When / Where did you pick it up?
Was it dirt cheap second-hand when you picked it up or did you pay €50K (Do you think it was worth it if you did?)


Stories and experiences...and pics if possible.
 
Re: Vintage guitars!

'68 SG Standard
'68 ES-330
'68 Guild T-110D "Slim Jim" (thinline hollowbody electric)
'68 Guild F-50 (maple jumbo)
'68 Princeton Reverb
'63 Gibson Skylark
'76 Musicmaster Bass
'75 Ampeg V-4
'27 Martin OO-28K2

I don't really think my '83 LP Custom counts...or my late '70s Princeton.
 
Re: Vintage guitars!

I have amassed a bunch of worthless vintage stuff for some reason:

'30s ish bowl back mandolin - passed down to me from someone in the family


'50s-'60s Kay Acoustic Tenor Guitar
'60s ish Short Scale Teisico Electric
1904 violin with some *****in' flame on the neck and back

Got all of these (and tons of other musical stuff) when the crazy old hoarder living on my dad's property died. He had been living there when my Dad bought the farmland and the sale was made under the condition that Dad clean up the land and leave the guy completely alone. Which was done . . . but we kinda wish we hadn't gone along with the agreement after seeing the conditions that this guy was living in when cleaning the place up. I guess he just went to every garage sale and yard sale in the area for the last 40 odd years of his life and bought anything that looked like a musical instrument and then brought it home.

He had 60+ violins, and at least as many guitars (mostly acoustics, 12 strings, classical guitars), accordions, balalaikas, banjos, ukeleles, harmonicas, violas, keyboards, amplifiers, old radios, 30+ years of newspapers, all jammed into a tiny house. At some point he had just started throwing his garbage and waste into the garage, and it was about 6ft deep when I saw it. Stuff was haphazardly piled up in every room, mice were running through and crapping/peeing on everything, the roof leaked in several spots so there was black mold on a lot of stuff, the wiring was super-duper unsafe (bare wires in some spots, open switch covers in others).

I spent a couple days going through the stuff with my dad. Unfortunately most of it was ruined and ended up demolished when the house was torn down. Came away with a car load of crap in OK shape though, most of which has since been sold on Craigslist.

'73 Yamaki AY-331w Acoustic Guitar - This is actually a sweet guitar that I stumbled upon when I was broke in university. I wanted to play some acoustic stuff and had bought a Boss AC-2 Acoustic Simulator which really sucked. Traded the AC-2 for the Yamaki and never looked back. Worth it!


:P
 
Re: Vintage guitars!

Have owned two '56 Les Paul Juniors. Great guitars and each has had a different voicing. One had a low mid grunt that was killer and paired well with its ballsy p90. The other one was more open and had great note separation. I loved strumming chords with that one. She was also aged to perfection.

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The one junior I have left is a '59 Les Paul DC. This one more in the middle ground of both and absolutely sings in the higher frets. Highly played and shows that she was loved.
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All my Juniors ran less than any R9 on the used or new market. The '59 cheaper than a new LP standard. I think they're the best bang for buck other than the melody makers from the late '50s-mid '60s.

'59 Melody Maker: biggest bat ball neck I've had with a Gibson. It was .895" at the 1st fret. All of my Juniors have been smaller than that.

'63 Melody Maker: my first vintage guitar. Another one that I'll miss. She was a ringer and a beast. Wow. Single pickup can sound better than 2 pickup configs.

I owned a '69 Les Paul Standard. It had that classic les paul sustain and tone you hear in many records. She made her way to Yuuki from Player Grade Vintage. She'll be getting a Burst Conversion.

'68 ES 335: deep woody and airy semi hollow tone and with the right set of pickups (Rewind Electric NOS Wire LO PAFs), she thought she could pass off as a les paul. Killer sparkling burgunday finish. This one, I regret!

Both the '69 LP and '68 ES 335 were sold to make a pass at a '52-53 player grade Goldtop, but I ran into a bassman chassis and got sucked into that lol. At this point, I think I'm only going to own 2-3 vintage instruments at most. I think my tastes fall more in vintage amps.

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Sent from my LM-V405 using Tapatalk
 
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Re: Vintage guitars!

'57 Strat
'68 Sheraton made in Kalamazoo
'65 original Maestro FZ-1A Fuzz Tone (the "Satisfaction" fuzz)
 
Re: Vintage guitars!

I went to a guitar show recently and noticed most buyers were mostly just investors, not players or people with interest in playing them at all which was sort of depressing -felt like a post modern meeting about the demise of an art form readying them all for museums.

Wish I saw more people out playing old stuff out in clubs and venues -but to paraphrase Steve Albini -that kind of stuff has become historical and economic liabilities for players.
 
Re: Vintage guitars!

‘66 Hofner bass, bought for $1,100 in 1994. I’m the third owner. Second owner was the owner of Guitar Showcase in California and had Seymour rewind the pickups.

‘66 Fender Stratocaster, bought for $600 in 1994. It’s painted psychedelic, had a heavy badass bridge, was ‘hand pool routed’ and missing the original bridge pickup. But I’ve restored it to period correct parts and it sounds like a million.

Everything else I have is late 70’s to now.
 
Re: Vintage guitars!

About the only kind of vintage guitar I haven't owned is an old Martin. I've owned a few 60's Gibson flattops, several 50's Tele's (but no Strats), bunches of old Gibson electrics - the coolest of which were a '59 Junior with a ballbat for a neck, and a '62 SG Junior. Both had dogear P-90's that honked like Pepper Adams on baritone sax. Had a mid-60's SG custom that lost all the gold from the hardware, so I buffed the rest of the gold off until the stuff was shiny silver again. Had a '62 P-bass with the D neck - should have never sold it. Had a 60's Jazz bass that was so heavy I could only play it sitting down. Had a number of humdrum 60's things made by Harmony - an outstanding Western Auto Truetone hollowbody (wish I still had that one). Had a 60's Burns Bison with the vibrato that slid back and forth in an aluminum channel when you whammied it (it sucked). Don't have anything vintage now, probably nothing older than 20 years.
 
Re: Vintage guitars!

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I have a '63 Jazzmaster. It's been refinished. Thankfully, it has all of its original parts.
 
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Re: Vintage guitars!

Sprinter said:
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I have a '63 Jazzmaster. It's been refinished. Thankfully, it has all of its original parts.
Click to expand...

That's awesome.

...If vintage mutts count I can buy in. The Daphne one is a refin '66 with new pickups/pickguard/tuners (vintage body, neck, bridge, vibrato.) The Dakota refin is a '66 body with a '78/later Bronco neck (or will be- unless I con myself into an actual Mustang neck for the sake of the decal) and has vintage pickguard/vibrato, new everything else.

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I'm pretty cynical on the term 'vintage' anyway; I flipped a guitar to GC the other day (not one worth listing anywhere,) and they told me since it was a '91 it was 'vintage' and they needed to call their evaluations dept. in Hollywood. Oh well, I got a fair deal and they think they did. Anyway - if 1983 is vintage, one of the below guitars counts; the '87 is probably pushing it, but here you go regardless.

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I also have a '76 Takamine and a '68 Yamaha - but you can just imagine them, they look like acoustics.
 
Re: Vintage guitars!

Swampy - you have the MM I always wanted.... Single cut with the skinny head.... Single humbucker. What a dreamboat!
 
Re: Vintage guitars!

I have my stepfather's old Gibson acoustic, a '49 - I guess that makes me the second owner. Pretty heavily worn but this one has the best Gibson neck I've ever played. It's ladder braced and has a very different character from an x-braced guitar. Not "big" or sparkly sounding but it has really nice voicelike midrange that stands out very well in a mix. Great rootsy slide tone too. Had it refretted a couple years ago and now it plays beautifully again.



And my all-time favorite Strat. Already refinished and refretted before I bought her in '82 but she was born in October '63. Absolutely the sweetest sounding and liveliest of the twenty or so Strats I've owned over the years. Friends said it was just crazy to pay $950 for a refin when at the time you could get an all original one for around that. Never regretted it for a minute; this one has something really special and I knew it from the very first notes I played on her.

 
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