vintage?

[damian]

Norlin LP's have a very distinct feel and tone, espically the 1970 to 1980 models... Plus not all 70 LP Norlins are of the pancake build.

 

Every Norlin I have owned I've had the frets replaced to what Gibson is using today, and the hump removed from the fretboard, which was a weird trademark of the Norlin builds during the 70's...

 

I would bet you $1000 if you placed a bone stock 2011 Gibson LPC and a bone stock 1977 LPC in my hands, I could tell the differance in less than 10 seconds of playing them.... And I wouldnt need to plug them in to an amp..... As a matter of fact I would just need to play only one of the guitars.

 

I could as well.......Oddly, I'd prefer the 1977 LPC......

[duane v]

.Oddly, I'd prefer the 1977 LPC......

 

I like the way the present Gibby's feel over the 70's era LP's, but I don't car much for the high output pups Gibson are using today, which is why I remove them and install either early 80 Dimarzio SD pups, Tim Shaw era, or the 70's T-Tops... IMO great bite and definition

[Andy R]

Given that a 40-year-old human is young enough to be my offspring, I guess I find it difficult to consider my 35+ year old guitars "vintage."

 

OTOH, yeah, the CBS and Norlin era instruments did not have a very good rep at the time. A pre-CBS Precision used in excellent condition would bring maybe a 35 percent premium even over a new one where I was living in the late 70s. I wasn't living where one might find Gibsons so I can't really speak to them.

 

One thing about "old" guitars of any brand or style is that one has the advantage of seeing whether or not they have improved, stayed consistent, or degraded with age. Some, IMHO, definitely have degraded with age - not through hard usage, but simply because even if well cared for, they were not made of sufficiently decent materials to stand the test of time.

 

My older guitars are all mostly in excellent condition and I still have them simply because they always offered excellent playability. Note I didn't say beans about "style" or "tone" or whatever. With an electric or AE, strings and electronic fortification handles 80 percent of tone anyway, and "style" of appearance always was secondary to me compared to appropriateness of the type of guitar to what I wanted to use it for.

 

... Oh, and if a "vintage" human is 40... Sheesh, I guess I'm an antique.

 

I had a talk yesterday with the guy at the Legendary Buffalo Chip campground talking about the Epi sponsorship there and special Chip edition of Epi they're doing there. He was talking about watching a Les Paul vid where in spite of severe arthritis, Les showed incredible technique and talent. And Les was a lot older in that vid than I am now - and one heck of a lot better picker.

 

m

 

 

No Milod you have just moved from "Vintage" to "Classic" You're a pure class guy to me.

[milod]

Andy...

 

<blush>

 

m

[Andy R]

E.g, about 25 years old ......

 

This is what I find odd about the whole "vintage" obsession

 

[1] when this idea stared in the early 70's, the great vintage instruments ( 57-62 strat, 57-60 Les Paul) were only 10-15 years old....

 

[2] I started buying instruments in the 70's, and ANY Fender made after the CBS takeover, and ALL Noriln Gibsons were consdered by the "vintage" crowd to be of very poor quality

 

[3] Those same instruments are now fetching premium prices are "vintage" instruments.

 

[4] Have they magically improved by sitting around for 30-40 years, or do some players allow their impression of an instrument to be swayed purely by it's age?

 

[5] I don't belive the "old wood" theory. The first issue Les Pauls started to make a reputation when the wood was less than 10 years old.

 

I think once Gibson and Fender made changes to the look ,feel and build process of their "Staple guitars" The guitar players of the time didn't like it and began seeking out the pre-cbs and pre-norlin era stuff. I know I am a "I like what I like" kind of guy and if I played something I liked for 10 or 15 years and went to buy something new and there were differences I probably wouldn't like ( at least some of them)

 

So while you guys were hating on the CBS and Norlin guitars in the 70's Us 80's guys were buying and getting used to them so I happen to like some of the Norlin stuff. I remember after the switch to the Nashville factory it seemed liked every LP I played at least for the first few years had problems or things about them I didn't like and that turned me off the newer Gibson stuff for many years.

 

As far as wood goes there was a lot more "Old Growth" wood around in the 50, 60, 70's and early 80's. Old growth is usually more dense and has tighter growth rings and grain. Usually producing a heavier instrument ( which I happen to like) This is just me but weight in a guitar makes it feel solid and "seem" better built. I think the effect on tone and sustain is probably negligible over all and comes down to the guitar being the sum of its parts and the person playing it.

 

I like guitars after they have been played for 10 or 15 years ( or at least played a lot for a few years). Almost any "new" guitar feels like a new pair of leather shoes to me. They feel sterile. It takes years for nitro and glue to completely "cure" and it never really ever stops curing to some degree. New finish and glue joints have a bit of a "Wet blanket effect" on the tone and sustain.

 

The more a guitar is played the more the body vibrates which will speed up the curing of the finish and settling and drying of the glued joints. I also believe it has a "tuning" effect on the wood and the guitar.

 

That said does that automatically make a "Vintage" guitar a better guitar? or better sounding? Not necessarily, obviously no 2 pieces of wood are identical so there is potential that 1 body/neck blank was made from a piece(s) of wood that might by chance have naturally better or worst acoustic and resonant properties to begin with.

 

I think an older guitar has more potential of sounding better due to the curing time. I think that an older guitar that has been played a lot has even more potential of sounding better. ( notice i said potential)

 

So I think you end up with a few types of "Vintage is better" (or not people). There is the "Vintage is better" guys like me that can feel and hear the difference in a guitar that has aged and been played ( Again I will reiterate it is based on "potential" not that every guitar that is old or from a certain era is) . And then you have the guys that are "It's vintage so it must be better" regardless.... and then you have the guys that didn't like the transition era changes and like the way things "used to be".

 

 

There are so many factors in what makes a guitar sound, feel and play the way it does that I don't think that any guitar wins by default due to when, where, how, and from what it was made. As I said earlier it is the sum of its parts and the person playing it. As far as hearing it we only scratched the surface as now we are hearing a guitar and have to factor in pickups, effects, cables, tubes, amps, mics, mixers, etc... It gets mind numbing.

 

The funny thing is that in the end all the old wood, vs new vs old finish vs new, vs this that or the other is translated through 4 screws holding on a plastic bezel with a pickup connected by 2 springs and 2 screws translating the vibration it is picking up from what is translated through steel strings.

 

In summary I think it all comes down to how a guitar sounds and feels to you personally and how it inspires you to play. I played a brand new traditional the other day that I really liked. I could go and play another one and hate it.... Ya never know.....

 

The End.....

 

 

 

Andy

[stein]

ANDY:

 

That is a good commentary. I feel the same way about a lot of Norlin 70's LP's. When I was younger and had only been able to play some, I thought the way they were built then was what an LP was SUPPOSED to be like, and I have a soft spot for a good heavy goldtop with those super easy necks.

 

The specs and build were very different from the "vintage" 50's and 60's guitars, sure. But I think it is also worthwhile to question what makes a guitar "better" than another more than just "different".

 

I remember that weight used to be advertised as a good thing, and during the late 70's it was thought that it contributed to sustain. In the past 5 or 10 years or so, I have been more attracted to light guitars having discovered there ARE differences related to weight.

[Andy R]

ANDY:

 

That is a good commentary. I feel the same way about a lot of Norlin 70's LP's. When I was younger and had only been able to play some, I thought the way they were built then was what an LP was SUPPOSED to be like, and I have a soft spot for a good heavy goldtop with those super easy necks.

 

The specs and build were very different from the "vintage" 50's and 60's guitars, sure. But I think it is also worthwhile to question what makes a guitar "better" than another more than just "different".

 

I remember that weight used to be advertised as a good thing, and during the late 70's it was thought that it contributed to sustain. In the past 5 or 10 years or so, I have been more attracted to light guitars having discovered there ARE differences related to weight.

 

Thanks... As far as weight I agree totally not that by default one will sound better or have more sustain based purely on its weight but that there will be a difference.... Again... the Sum of the parts and player will be involved.

[damian]

I still find it a bit odd that the Les Paul was discontinued for as long as it was.....

 

And odd that Fender in the sixties planned to discontinue the Stratocaster.....

 

I don't find it odd that the Firebird X will always be NOS......

[milod]

To an extent the fact that the LP and Strat weren't popular when they came out, I'm not at all surprised. In fact, they were among dozens of designs and models - even companies - that disappeared in the 1950s and 1960s, especially electrics.

 

The bottom line is that they didn't appeal enough at the time in a marketplace that saw little or no need for them in the music they were playing and the way they were playing it.

 

The LP, for example, had Les himself to consider as the kind of music the guitar was designed for. It was going out of style, to put it bluntly. And why would anyone want a heavy chunk of solid wood when the designers saw that a lighter instrument would obviously do better in the marketplace - hence the SG.

 

As for the Strat, obviously (at the time) the Jag and Jazzmaster were the wave of the future along with the Tele that had rapidly become something of an immediate classic.

 

Tastes change among musicians. I think there also were some other 50s and 60s guitars that might have made it were they part of a bigger or more solvent company.

 

One of my favorite Gibson designs, for example, isn't made any more - the old original early 1950s florentine cutaway acoustic with a single pole pickup at the fingerboard. It actually sounded quite good, but as with similar instruments with that price tag, it didn't sell well enough to make a diff. Instead, "we" came up with a dozen sound hole pickups that did the same thing on less expensive instruments.

 

As for the Firebird X... I'd love to have one; I just ain't got the cash and likely won't. I'll admit that design-wise I'd prefer something that looked more like an ES175. But the bottom line is that there has to be some experimentation or we'll never find anything that the marketplace determines at a given time has a value to it.

 

One reason, for example, you're not likely to see it as widely used as it could and perhaps should be, is the same reason I dumped my nice orange Gretsch in the 1970s when I was in a country band doing Merle Haggardish stuff. It didn't fit aesthetically with what was thought to be that style of music. So it got dumped. At another point so did the Hagstrom solidbody 12 for the same reason.

 

<sigh> I think sometimes we guitarists are our own worst enemies and have some subconscious prejudices on what guitar suits what style of music that are extremely difficult to overcome. But heck, I got the same sorta looks when I played an early AE Ovation at fiddling contests.

 

m