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  • #23671
    lee_UK
    Participant

    I read an article in ‘Guitarist’ magazine this month, if you would have bought a 59′ Les Paul Standard in sunburst all original in 1985, you would have paid £6,000 for it.
    This month, one was sold by a guitar shop in Denmark St. London to an ‘Overseas’ buyer for £200,000.
    How long is going to be before they invent that bloody time machine?

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    • #65790
      1bassleft
      Participant

      The most surprising one is the ’91 Firebird given to Clapton selling for some £24,000+. Bet that buyer’s waking up with an “Oh no 😳 ” feeling…

    • #65775
      acoustica1
      Participant
    • #65794
      1bassleft
      Participant

      Guy, I think you make a strong point. How much is a “vintage” guitar worth? It’s a tricky question with acoustics, but I’ve come to a definite conclusion with solids. They ain’t worth it; except as wall-trophies. Could be an interesting thread for discussion…

    • #65788
      acoustica1
      Participant

      About absurd guitar prices ,i would like to get your opinion.
      Would you really spend $6600 for this guitar? =>
      http://www.rfcharle.com/HTML/PhotosInstruments/0018.31.html

      I found it on a french website and of course they have a shop so you can go and try the guitar before buying.
      1931…how to be sure that the guitar is still in good structural shape?

      I would probably buy that one :
      http://bdebretagne.free.fr/g_6cordes.html
      A copy by a luthier.But i know him and i like his work….a little bit cheaper than the first one…

      Another example here =>
      http://www.kleinguitars.com/luthiersgallery.htm
      …wow…Dan Peek (America) owned one…lucky man!

    • #65776
      Rawblues
      Participant

      Yeah, I marvel at the prices some people are prepared to pay for old stuff. When ah were a lad… anything half decent was completely unaffordable… way out of the range of ordinary mortals at the time. My first guitar was a Broadway, a piece of thoroughly dreadful shite which was barely playable. The cheapest Chinese plank available nowadays is streets ahead.

      On popping capacitors….

      Me and my band were playing a Saturday night town hall gig back in about 1972 and we came off for a midway break, letting some other local lads fill in using our equipment. Back in those days we improvised everything, so my amp (a ghastly 50w solid state thing) was fed through a crossover and into a selection of speakers, high frequencies to the little ones, low to the big. After about 10mins of these other lads’ playing, the crossover started to smoke profusely. I was in amongst the crowd and was having a good cackle to myself because I new exactly what the problem was… the crossover wasn’t high enough rated to take the power. The guitarist went rigid, but continued to play with his eyes fixed on the little box on the floor. Shortly afterwards, BANG!, followed by silence in the guitar department. I went on stage and hastily rewired the speakers excluding the now-knackered crossover.

      Ah, memories!

    • #65781
      1bassleft
      Participant

      😆 , Excellent story.

    • #65770
      lee_UK
      Participant

      [quote=”1bassleft”]You know me and valve-sniffing, but it is ridiculous what crops up with absurd prices and tenuous claims for amp-nirvana. I go along with Weber; it’s about the iron, the glass and the paper (IOW, the transformers, the valves and the speaker drivers). I ditched some awful Marshall components out of my CMI and don’t give a damn about the effect on its “originality value”. The impedance selector (often available on Fleeb) is a catastrophic POS.

      Another thing that makes me laugh is the money people pay for ancient resistors with lousy tolerances, especially when they stick them in places that cannot possibly contribute to any “mojo”. EDIT: and I nearly forgot weirdos seeking out electrolytic filter capacitors that have sat on a shelf for thirty odd years. Complete useless puffballs that’ll soon decorate the insides of your JTM with vile powder. I even read someone saying they’d buy new-old-stock but never risk used ones. Huh? Surely regular charge/discharge is the only chance of the poor things going some four times their envisaged lifespan?[/quote]

      electrolytic capacitors…..Dont get me started, i remember back in 1985, i was 20 years old, had some ‘light’ training in electronics and worked in a Bingo Hall in East London, my job was to maintain 40 AWP’s (fruit machines), a power cut had knocked over a PSU in a very old but very profitable fruit machine, every hour it was out of action was a loss in profit, so i took the PSU to pieces and saw a blown fuse, and a not too large capacitor had popped, didn’t have the correct fuse but shoved in an over rated one for a make do, and managed to match the filter cap.
      So i go out into the main hall, all eyes (full house of 1200 punters in) were firmly down for the last house of the night, it was the National game, a link up of loads of clubs up and down the country for a £50,000 jackpot.
      I plug in the PSU, and i can hear… four and two forty two…… one and three thirteen….. i switch on the PSU and BANG!! the replaced capacitor goes off like a 44 magnum, my head is still in the back of the machine, ears ringing, loads of fluff starts settling around me from the jetisoned capaictor, the game grinds to a halt, and i can feel 1200 pairs of eyes burning into me, so i stand up, keep my head down, lock the back door up, and skulk off.
      electrolytic filter capacitors….umm, happy days. 😆

    • #65771
      1bassleft
      Participant

      You know me and valve-sniffing, but it is ridiculous what crops up with absurd prices and tenuous claims for amp-nirvana. I go along with Weber; it’s about the iron, the glass and the paper (IOW, the transformers, the valves and the speaker drivers). I ditched some awful Marshall components out of my CMI and don’t give a damn about the effect on its “originality value”. The impedance selector (often available on Fleeb) is a catastrophic POS.

      Another thing that makes me laugh is the money people pay for ancient resistors with lousy tolerances, especially when they stick them in places that cannot possibly contribute to any “mojo”. EDIT: and I nearly forgot weirdos seeking out electrolytic filter capacitors that have sat on a shelf for thirty odd years. Complete useless puffballs that’ll soon decorate the insides of your JTM with vile powder. I even read someone saying they’d buy new-old-stock but never risk used ones. Huh? Surely regular charge/discharge is the only chance of the poor things going some four times their envisaged lifespan?

    • #65793
      lee_UK
      Participant

      http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Original-Marshall-Plexi-valve-amp-fuses-NO-RESERVE-99p_W0QQitemZ180079589737QQihZ008QQcategoryZ3278QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

      Not strictly guitar prices, but, original plexi fuses? obviously the fuses have a profound effect on the sound, the mid frequencies and give a tighter more direct bass response… but im not convinced.

    • #65792
      1bassleft
      Participant

      I remember someone on another forum saying they’d just spunked $15,000 on a nitro, single ply scratchplate. I replied that, even if the ‘guard were lying on Gillian Anderson’s navel with a line of extremely pure Charlie heading upwards, circling her nips a couple of times, and a $10,000 bill ready-rolled up and mine to keep afterwards, I’d still pass on the deal.

      Must’ve been a long time ago for me to mention Dana Scully, but I still think some people are potty for parts. I don’t think an old Tele or Strat is best broken up, but some of the lesser models like DuoSonics, Musicmasters etc regularly get the treatment. The pups, pots, neckplate – anything with a serial number that can be transferred over to the more popular models – can make it worthwhile.

    • #65787
      lee_UK
      Participant

      I saw a Telecaster black scratchplate for sale on ebay, original 1952, how much? £3,500
      http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/1952-FENDER-TELECASTER-PICKGUARD_W0QQitemZ180078817825QQihZ008QQcategoryZ42455QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

      you can buy the whole guitar for £7,000
      http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/1952-Fender-Telecaster-Original_W0QQitemZ160078387014QQihZ006QQcategoryZ33039QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

      Does it pay to break up Vintage instruments?

    • #65764
      1bassleft
      Participant

      Without going into overbore, magnets do deteriorate with time. There’s plenty of sciencey guff detailing all of this. Santana probably got the quick lowdown from the aliens when they picked him up 🙂

    • #65785
      lee_UK
      Participant

      Sultana, sorry Santana once said, ‘Old pickups just sound bad, they just die’ .
      Actualy i think i got his name right first time around.

    • #65791
      Reese
      Participant

      Now it’s all about the money. Has been for a long time wich is too bad since there really are legitimate caring people still left in the music biz. Not many left from the day, it’s all much like McDonalds now. Formula driven and sterile. No Funk no Soul, just the money and the size and, of course, the power.

    • #65772
      1bassleft
      Participant

      Certainly, the CNC routers used by any guitar maker of respectable size means that a guitar can be churned out practically anywhere to the same standards all else being equal, and to tighter tolerances than could be the case forty years ago. It’s the all else being equal bit that can be a problem. A fair amount of “things were better in the day” nostalgia gives me the 😯 . ’60s resistors found in old amps are, by any modern standards, complete cack. Massively wide tolerances.

      You then get into that circular “mojo” argument. It goes like “even though this part is inferior by spec to its modern equivalent, those very shortcomings are what gave Hendrix/Townshend/insert name of guitar legend here his glorious tone.” There’s no way to win that one (it may even be true in some cases, although people pay silly money for some cruddy carbon comps and then stick them in a part of the chain where it makes not the slightest difference).

      There are some places where it is true that old-stuff-was-better. Sticking with my amp fetish, old valves/tubes sound better (OK, that’s an opinion) but they were made better, and that’s pretty much a fact. With guitars, I don’t subscribe to the idea that some pickup made in 1964 is worth tons of money (I don’t remember Rock Gods insisting that some forty-year-old bits of wire and magnets were inserted in their guitar before they’d use it) but quality of woods used by the majors has diminished. Some of the maple necks, Indian rosewood fingerboards and alderlike bodies around, even on semi-serious instruments, look like rubbish. I can buy into the idea that wood improves with age, too – but not to the tune of $250k for a particular year of LP, no.

    • #65777
      mrblanche
      Member

      I would guess that a Samick or Cort guitar today is at least the match of quality of any Strat built in the 60’s.

      After all, you can buy all the parts today to build a Model T today, but if you did, you would have a better car than Ford built in 1927. Better steel, tigher tolerances, better rubber, etc.

      These factories that build a million guitars per year are probably doing a better job than Fender did in the 60’s.

      After all…a Chevy Impala coming off the line today is probably a better all-around car than any Rolls Royce ever built, when it comes to dependability, etc. But you would pay for it what you paid for a Rolls, even though the Rolls leaked all its fluids from the day it was made (and I have some experience with that, having driven one back in the 80’s for one of the owners of the company I worked for then).

    • #65778
      lee_UK
      Participant

      Bass, hows that time machine coming along?
      one things for sure, i would avoid any time setting between 1970 – 1979.

    • #65796
      SB
      Participant

      Hey Reese,

      Thanks for information from the source. It was all less corporate in those days, thankfully we were around to enjoy them. I think the who’s who these days are too busy flirting with the name makers to hang out. Then again, I hope I’m wrong. sb

    • #65780
      Reese
      Participant

      As a veteran of Don Wehr’s Music City from 1964 tp 1979 I can respond authoritativley to the ” any strat” was $199 in the 70’s. They were not, in fact, all $199 that was the price for Sunbursy, RW fingerboard, less tremolo (now known as hard-tail) Strats. The Strats with tremolo sold for more and any color other than the contemporary sunburst was more yet. Add the trem unit and it was even more.
      This was SEP at Don’s who was the pace setter of the day, month and for years back in the day. It was quite common to see a who’s who of Bay Area rock visiting, buying or just hangin out each and every day at DW’s. Those were the days when it was lots of fun and we were proud to represent the products we sold.
      Enter the meat market distribution scheme of today and you have a train wreck.

    • #65774
      noodle69
      Participant

      yeah , but plastic is the future , just listen to the music being produced nowadays !

    • #65784
      1bassleft
      Participant

      Doc, I agree with the remarks about a lot of 70s Fenders. I was warned off them by the veterans when I was a kid. I have since seen some on Fleeb with four-figure tags and a neck/body join you could stick a full pack of cigarette papers down. In the 90s, I tried out a ’73 Jazz that (OK, not set up) was horrible sounding and playing. It’s ridiculous to think that I should’ve bought it just to triple my money in a decade.

      200n Gibsons may still appreciate in value in future, if tree-huggers have their way. Brazilian rosewood (much nicer than Indian) is now very pricey and good mahogany will probably go the same way.

    • #65779
      noodle69
      Participant

      it may pay just as well to be able to read the future 😯

    • #65797
      docrichards
      Participant

      In 1970, Don Wehr’s Music City in San Francisco advertised any Stratocaster for $199, and at that time they were pieces of shit. Now they are selling for four figures, and are probably not much better. Two years later, I bought my first Les Paul Custom brand new for $360 with the OHSC. Of course, I was only making about $180 bucks a month at the time, so basically the Les Paul was two months wages. To give you an idea how fast prices increased, in 1978, I bought my second new Les Paul Custom from Guitar Center in San Jose for $600 with the HSC. Two years ago, I bought my third and last LP Custom for $2500. There are some economies of scale going on in addition to the cost of materials and labor. The price of the vintage market is definitely driving the prices of new instruments as people are being sold on potential collectiblity. idea

    • #65773
      lee_UK
      Participant

      Nice one Bass 😆

    • #65782
      1bassleft
      Participant

      Oh, just in case my “target practice” causes offence across the pond, you should’ve seen me racing my white Fiat Uno against that Merc through the tunnels of Paris back in ’97.

    • #65620
      1bassleft
      Participant

      I’m working on it. I can actually transport myself (did a bit of target practice on some grassy knoll in ’63) but I’m still struggling to hump back Superleads, ’59 Bassmans and trays of Mullards in my pockets 😳

      Incidentally, I’ll dig out the figures sometime but most guitars and amps etc were, in real terms, more expensive back in the 60s than they are now. That is, a Strat in 1964 sucked up more of your wages than buying a 2006 would today. There’s one exception: Gibson. You’d have spent less of your salary then than you do now buying a modern. Cheeky little burgers.

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