Vintage (musical instrument making)

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In musical instrument making, the term vintage is used to describe old, carefully manufactured and often particularly good-sounding instruments .

Use and origin of the term

The term vintage is often used as a promotional marketing term for musical instruments that were manufactured in the period after the Second World War, based on a preference for certain tonal properties. These sound properties are imprecisely defined and are often related to the musical work of popular artists from this period. As a result, vintage is a market-technical term, but it refers to purely taste preferences and often to the musical creation of a certain period.

Vintage literally means grape harvest or vintage of a wine , and vintage instruments, like fine wines, come from particularly good vintages. Not every old instrument is necessarily a vintage instrument; Even at the time of their manufacture, instruments were built that did not have any outstanding sound properties. In the English language, vintage can mean both “old-fashioned” and “top notch”.

In the case of musical instruments, vintage means specially selected old vintages or older, particularly exquisite individual instruments or series. In this context, every old instrument is often referred to as "vintage"; but this is a wrong use of the term.

Electric guitars

As Vintage apply, for example, virtually all guitars Electric model Gibson Les Paul from the 1950s. At that time, the instrument building company Gibson was working at the highest level of craftsmanship. For the construction of the instruments mostly high-quality wood was used, which is no longer available today for reasons of nature conservation ( species protection agreement) or which would result in very high sales prices. In the 1970s, the quality of workmanship at Gibson had deteriorated under competitive and cost pressure; in addition, much cheaper wood was used than before. Therefore, very few Gibson guitars from the 1970s can be called vintage. They are old, but not of exceptional quality.

As good as all Fender electric guitars and basses from the time before the US group CBS Corporation took over Fender, which rationalized production, as a result, the quality of the instruments manufactured by Fender allegedly declined as vintage.

Vintage instruments have become a fashion in electric guitars for a number of years. For the purpose of sales promotion and price increases, instruments of inferior manufacturing quality, which are 30 years or older, are incorrectly referred to as "vintage" and are sometimes traded at excessive prices. Before this vintage fashion emerged around the 1990s, it was often possible to buy old, very high-quality and well-preserved electric guitars and basses at very reasonable prices because hardly anyone was willing to pay higher prices for used instruments than to pay for brand new.

One advantage of very well-preserved vintage guitars is that in past decades it was still possible to use exclusive tropical woods with special tonal properties, the use of which would be unaffordable or illegal today. In earlier decades, industrial instrument making was also less geared towards the highest possible production figures, so that the tonewoods bought by the manufacturers could be stored and dried longer before they were used. Woods that have dried slowly and for a long time help improve the sound of the instrument. In addition, musical instruments should be able to gain in sound quality if the wood used has been "swung in" through constant playing of the instruments. The disadvantage of vintage fashion today is primarily the unaffordable collector's price for high-quality old instruments for most musicians.

Electronic musical instruments

Even with electro-speaking instruments, there are vintage pieces from the early days of electronic music . Old instruments were mostly built entirely analog . Because of this and the use of components that are unusual nowadays, such as electron tubes , these instruments are assigned a special sound characteristic that can only be simulated by digital instruments. The sometimes cumbersome operation of the old devices is accepted by some musicians for their sound. → Main article: Vintage (electronic musical instruments)

literature

  • Paul Day, Heinz Rebellius (Eds.), André Waldenmaier: E-Guitars - Everything about construction and history . Therein: Chapter Der Vintage-Mythos, p. 229 ff. GC Carstensen Verlag, Munich 2001. ISBN 3-910098-20-7
  • George Gruhn & Walter Carter: Electric Guitars and Basses . Illustrated book with numerous examples of vintage musical instruments. Presse Projekt Verlag, Bergkirchen 1999. ISBN 3-932275-04-7
  • Carlo May: Vintage. Guitars and their stories . MM-Musik-Media-Verlag, Augsburg 1994. ISBN 3-927954-10-1