Got your eye on a vintage guitar? Buy it soon.

[charlie]

Bubble coming.

LONDON, June 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Anchorage Capital Partners ("ACP") (a
Mercantile Investment Group company) recently reported to the Financial Times
that it is preparing to launch a closed-end fund which will invest in the
rare and vintage guitar market. The US$100 million fund is to be listed on
the Channel Island Stock Exchange (CISX) in Euros for a 10-year term.

According to ACP, the vintage guitar market has comfortably outperformed
traditional markets ever since it has been tracked by an index created by
Vintage Guitar magazine in 1991. "The '42 Index' which is widely accepted as
a conservative tracking device for the vintage guitar market, has
demonstrated an average annual return of over 31% since it began 17 years
ago," said Tommy Byrne, co-founder of ACP and Chief Investment Officer of the
Fund. He went onto say, "Historically, when the major markets have collapsed,
this market has plateaued until the traditional markets picked up again."

more...

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS162068+12-Jun-2008+PRN20080612

[MilesColtrane]

1. Sadly, vintage instruments are becoming too expensive for musicians to purchase.

Collectors have inflated the prices of some of the best sounding guitars in existence.

Instruments were meant to be played, not put on the wall, under glass, or in temperature/humidity controlled safe deposit box.

[ProfessorGAC]

2. Hey. Mine Are On The Wall!

And i play them all!

Actually i have them all hanging on the wall of my rec room for two reasons:

1) It looks cool!
2) I know myself. If i had one out and the others in the cases, i would never play anything except the one that is out until i broke a string. Then i'd get another guitar out. After a couple of years i'd have 15 guitars each with one broken string! LOL! So, now i have 3 of the 5 acoustics with alternate tunings, so whatever i feel like trying, the setup is already done. The electrics are all VERY different sounding, so depending on what i want to hear, i can just grab that one off the wall and plug in!

(My amp is always out on a credenza so, all i have to do is turn it on.)

On Edit: I forgot to let you know i agree with you about them being tools not treasures. They're meant to be played, like you said.
The Professor

[charlie]

3. Yeah, I agree

The pricing on some of these instruments has gone completely whacko. And if this business of an institutional fund with $100 million worth of muscle purchasing guitars as inflation busting investments gets off the ground, whooo... the days of million-dollar Les Pauls probably isn't too far off.

I kinda disagree about the best-sounding part, though. That is, when it comes to electric solidbodies. As far as I'm concerned, their cachet comes from age and provenance, not because their quality is inimitable. They're not like Stradivarii, some mystical confluence of materials and craftsmanship. They're just historic instruments born early, when Ted and Leo were still around to oversee their assembly.

Yeah, it'll be reeeeally annoying to see the likes of say, Billy Gibbons' Pearly Gates, locked in some clueless git's vault and traded among spreadsheet mavens. But, the rest of us won't be deprived of anything but history. Solidbodies are better and more affordable today than they've ever been.

[MilesColtrane]

4. I'll take your word for it in regards to solidbody guitars.

Maybe basses are different.

My vintage Leo-era MusicMans sound clearly better than the new ones. Same for pre-CBS Fender J and P basses.

It would be interesting to get some more opinions on this.

[ProfessorGAC]

7. Sound Better?

You sure it's not the electronics? I'm surprised to read what you wrote.

When one has paid decent money for a high-end bass, the woods and hardware are likely to be of high quality.

So, sound is probably adjustable with electronics. Even if the body wood is different, different pickups will create different tonality depending upon the wood, for instance.

I have a 5 string Fender Jazz Bass (Standard). I changed the pickups to the Vintage Noiseless, and it made the bass sound more "piano-y", which is exactly what i wanted. (Of course, i'm really a piano and guitar player who was playing bass because someone needed to. Since piano players are already bass players, with their left hand, and i was a guitar player, it was a natural choice for me to do it, as long as one could live with my busy-ness.)

I've noticed the same with guitars. As long as one is starting out with a well-built guitar, you can get tonal differences to suit the ear by altering pickups. I've got two strats, both made of alder, that have two VERY different pickups on them. They really sound NOTHING alike! Now, one has a birdseye maple neck and the other rock maple, while the former has a maple fingerboard, and the other blonde rosewood. So, that probably makes some of the difference, but the electronics make them sound like the two different guitars they are.

I really like what Charlie said about electrics. I agree with him that most guitars are of high enough quality today that vintage instruments are more valuable from a collectability cache, than from some ancient playability and tonality advantage. It's really too bad, because that takes some pretty looking instruments out of the hands of players, and into vaults.
GAC

[old mark]

12. I have a 90's USA made Peavey bass that I really love. I had played a 70's

Fender Telecaster bass years ago, and my Peavey feels better to me.

mark

[old mark]

6. I agree. I owned 2 Les Paul Customs, both from the early '70's.

I have a Chinese import that sounds as good as either of them, and cost about as much as a Gibson hard case.
I also own a 18 year old Mexican Fender Stratocaster that is as good as either of the vintage Strats I played years ago.

The only guitar I really miss is my '57 Gretch Chet Atkins.

mark

[GoddessOfGuinness]

5. It's been that way for violinists, violists, cellists, and string bass players for years...

:(

[Manifestor_of_Light]

10. yep.

And bows are not cheap either.

People think about expensive instruments but not the bows.

[here_is_to_hope]

8. I did some restoration work

for a fellow a few years back. He was just getting into acoustics and vintage acoustics in particular.
By vintage, I mean pre-1934, something I specialize in.
He had money to burn and took over the 'needs work' or 'I just found this in my mom's attic' segment of ebay, I mean he bought EVERYTHING, no matter the price. I ended up getting 25 to a high of 50 guitars a month from his ebay purchases, he would buy them and just have them sent to me.
I finally said "no more" when I counted them up at 330.
He spent 95k in 4 months alone, I quit counting.
He now has 500 plus in a warehouse in DC somewhere.
He also bought me a sailboat and made my house payments for a year and half.
I still have 60 or so of his to do.
Nuts.

[charlie]

9. Gadzooks

That guy is boned if this economic cockup veers the wrong way into deflation.

Since you're a luthier, here's something that'll probably curl your toes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rstnOz1EmQ

It's a happy fool installing a FLOYD ROSE onto a Maccaferri. He plays it towards the end, with predictably weedy results. Then he whips out his drill and plants a humbucker into another one! I'd love to own a Maccaferri and it kills me to watch this. Also, about 20 seconds in, note the gazillion electric guitars that festoon the OUTSIDE wall of his house. Ai-yi-yi!

[mitchum]

11. Uh...thanks a lot, blues lawyers

[old mark]

13. I am pretty bummed about this: My first Gibson LP Custom was a '69

Black beauty, bought very used in '77 for $400 (with original case). I had to replace the pickup covers and the tailpiece due to blistering cauesd by the former owner's sweat. I had a Gibson tech do it using factory parts. Some years later sold it to pay rent, something I have regretted always, but today I just saw a similar guitar on ebay witn a Buy It Now price of $6500.
I really don't think they are worth anything near that amount, but evidently many other people do.

mark