Calling all guitarists...

by **Howard Jones** » Mon Apr 02, 2007 9:16 pm

I have a question for the electric guitarists on the forum: is it received opinion that the very first generation of electric guitars e.g. as made personally by Fender, Rickenbacker etc are the best sounding ever made?

Or are more recent guitars regarded as better? Or is the question irrelevant - both modern and old guitars have their strengths and weaknesses and one type is not to be regarded as being intrinsically better than the other?

by **davemc** » Mon Apr 02, 2007 9:47 pm

Depends on the guitar and manafacture.
I have had some magic vintage guitars I recorded, also some which were kept stock and needed work.
New I have a nice G&L Z3 which I think is fantastic, same as I have seen PRS, Musicmans etc which were first class..
I have recorded newer US Fenders and Gibsons which I did not think were that great. I think sometimes name sells things more now then actually quality control.

by **Martin** » Mon Apr 02, 2007 10:05 pm

i think luck comes into it a little, i have two of the same basses and one massively outshines the other in tone and playability...

sorry if that doesn't answer your question!

by **jkhuri44** » Mon Apr 02, 2007 10:40 pm

i would be tempted to think that the first lines of rickenbackers/fenders and so on are so great because of their attention to detail and the love put into them, being made by hand and all...

and i suppose the same could be said for modern guitars made by hand by good luthiers...with custom wounded pickups, beautiful woods, and so on...

Modern electronics are getting "better"...or more "perfect" i suppose..so modern factory line guitars would sound good i suppose...but these guitars would sacrifice design for economy...

just like everything else i suppose...

(note...i have not heard the afformentioned older guitars, so take my statements with a hint of salt :P)

by **Jeremy H** » Mon Apr 02, 2007 11:06 pm

I believe one shouldn't under estimate how much the timber used contributes to the tone of electric guitars.

So it also follows that like many timber instruments - the tone can change (improve?) with age - as the timber ages. (When the guitar forgets it was a tree and starts to believe it is a musical instrument!) I guess with electric guitars this may be a little more difficult to assess - as in maybe the "tone" of the timber has improved but the electrical side of things may have degraded with the passing years?

Just a thought.

by **wez** » Mon Apr 02, 2007 11:19 pm

my very subjective observations on Strats That I Have Owned Or Played...

can't say anything about original series ('54-'59) as i've never seen one, let alone played one. i've played a couple of '63 strats that were both magnificent in different ways. my '73 strat is totally not what you would expect, it's gorgeously light, neck is awesome, 3-bolt system is tight and solid. but it has 57/62 pickups so sounds a lot different to stock... much better i think. people bag 'CBS' strats but mine is a gem. late 70's strats were a bit all over the shop. actually come to think of it so was fender at that time, almost out of business and with nowhere to make guitars for a short while. which brings us to...

... the early Jap Fenders (not the squiers, although they weren't bad at all). they would be next in line to the pre-CBS guitars - there's a reason they are now worth more than the equivalent vintage US instruments. Best necks i've ever played - 1) 1984 Jap tele (long gone now), and my current fave tele which is an 80's US body with a 1983 Jap Squier neck. absolutely craps all over any current US neck.

only other fully original strat i have is a 1991 strat plus, which is heavy and hates me but the gold lace sensors sound fabulous, the most strat-like sound of them all to my ears. but some people really don't like them so who's to say. hate the long lasting polyurethane plastic finish on post 1969 (?) instruments, pahhh yick. give me nitro any day.

what i do know is that every fender i have picked up and played built after about 1995 is rubbish. i think they are more consistent than ever - just consistently bad, boring and bland. and maybe i'm being too harsh, but i've just never seen anything new that spoke to me like guitars - old guitars - do... you know, "you must have me. you are not walking out with me". probably just as well.

for better or for worse i am a fender dude through and through, so i have no meaningful experience with Gibsons, rickys etc.

by **kassonica** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 1:08 am

my view is left of field but if you gave jimi hendrix a 1954 strat and a a 2007 jap or mexican one he would make them all sound good. There is no doubt that the wood ages and mellows the sound but i think any player worth there salt can make almost any guitar sound good.

Best

Kassonica

by **davemc** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 1:14 am

kassonica wrote:my view is left of field but if you gave jimi hendrix a 1954 strat and a a 2007 jap or mexican one he would make them all sound good. There is no doubt that the wood ages and mellows the sound but i think any player worth there salt can make almost any guitar sound good.

Best

Kassonica

I do not doubt that one bit..Tone is in the fingers, although a nicer guitar will give them better tone.
I know I had a few 2 guitar bands where one guitar sounded like crap. So after trying stuff the other guitarist picks up the guitar with a problem and all of a sudden it sounds good he he

by **chris p** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 9:08 am

I'd agree that its in the individual guitar rather than (necessarily) the vintage or name - but that said, there is a reason we do not record with (the B-word) preamps, and the same goes for guitars. Tone is in the fingers, yes, but even the best fingers can't get blood out of a stone (unless you staff the Red Cross mobile van in Notting Hill). The basics of good manufacture and good hardware (tuning mechanisms, bridge / whammy gear, etc) do mean you get what you pay for to a certain degree.

My most recent buying experience (acquiring axe No.5) saw me not in any amp room. I stood in the showroom with my ear pressed to the wood, tapping the body and plucking the odd string, listening for the natural tone and resonance of the body/neck. I must have gone through about 50 before I got one that really stood out as being full and rich, and had already done about 10 others of that brand and a couple even of the same model. I then relistened to some of the same model to make sure I wasn't kidding myself, but the difference was there, chalk and cheese. This one had balls, the others (including some BIG names) were wimps.

Now here's the thing. This axe cost just $600. Which meant that the electronics in it were going to have to be replaced, but that was on the cards anyway. Its a dual humbucker, so I stuck in a couple of Seymour Duncans (Jazz in the neck, Distortion in the bridge), replaced the tone and volume pots with better pull on / push off pots, star grounded the earth wires and upgraded the tone cap. The switched pots mean that I can single coil tap the neck pickup for more strat style sound, and switch the bridge pickup between series and parallel configurations.

Its now a guitar I'd be proud to lend to Jimi.

The good news is that guitars still have much the same electronics in them as they did in the 60's, so I can still do this sort of thing. I dread the day that guitars just come with an embedded silicon chip and an SP/DIF out.

by **Martin** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 9:19 am

i saw one with an ethernet-style port in Aus Guitar mag!

by **Kris** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 10:08 am

I think the point about giving Jimi Hendrix a 2007 strat and it still sounding good is a great one. At the end of the day, the "tone" is in a guitarists fingers. I can play a guitar and then give it to someone else to play and it sounds different.

I think vintage guitars are revered beyond logic sometimes but yes, most guitarists do perceive them to be better. Whether they are or not is like arguing analogue vs. digital. We could be here forever!!! Having said that, there is no way I will drop $30k on a vintage guitar as a friend of mine has done recently. I spend way too much of our income on magic beans as it is.

by **HA_DA_JA** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 5:54 pm

Here is my 2 cens worth while everyone else is at it and I guess the guitar wasn't worth too much more han that.
I have owned about 60 guitars in my short 35 years of livig. I currenlty have honed it down to about 20 with various USA 60's, 70's 80's, 90's and 2000 Fender, Gibsons, Matons, Guilds, Talyor and some other one off special cheaper brands.
Dont be fooled with Vintage guitars, I have had a few 60's Fenders and Gibsons over the years that were absolute dogs. When I replace them with a better guitar they get sent straight to that famous Sydney Vintage shop and there they get consigned and sold for $4k and over for a guitar I would be ashamned of selling for $1k.
Dont let the year and price of the guitar be your sole indicator in buying something special. Take a trusted guitar friend with you when testing them out.
Thats my 2 cents worth.
B.T.W. anybody want to buy a 1972 Fender Jazz?
Cheers
Dale

by **Kris** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 6:06 pm

hehe, more like "infamous vintage guitar shop".

by **Henry** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 6:56 pm

There's alot of crap going around about vintage guitars. They can sound better because the timber has aged and hardened etc but not always.

1980's CBS Fenders are awful and sound awful for example. The best Strats i've ever heard were 80's Tokai's, great pickups, well made identical copies of 50's vintage Fenders. Even the Les Pauls are excellent. Fernandes made good Strat copies too so much so they were sued.

Stevie Ray Vaughn would find Stats with less windings on the pickups, like Jimmy Hendrix did because they were hand wound and sometimes they would be wound with less by mistake. Why?, because it was better impedance match for the foot pedals. Not because of the guitar tone!! Alot of guitarists don't get it. SRV could play a Korean Samick and it would still sound like SRV. The sound is in the playing not the guitar, it's the least important component when going for that killer guitar sound!!

by **Simon B** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 7:01 pm

I have heard stories of guitarists being able to have any guitar they want because they are good and well known, and they have found guitars in secondhand shops that have the thing, the vibe and a price tag of $300 and they wouldnt swap it for anything.....

I think when the electric guitar first came out it was like a novelty..... the pro tools of the nineties I guess...... it was somethig new received with alot of sceptism by tradionalist but needed alot of finishing touches and fine tweeking..... and something for the next generation to embrace and stick it to the people that preceeded them. It took about 10 years before it became a revolution..... and was helped by the times being changed by a young lad named Elvis.....

think by the mid sixties they had the electric guitar design right, with evolution sounds constantly need to be different

I feel though that stringed instruments have been around centuries.... the elctric guitar has been around for 60 years it is realy hard to OBJECTIVLY decide whether over time these electric instruments have matured for better or for worse. the fact that electronics are involved means that there are many influences on the sound more then just the wood which really makes me question the prices wanted for "vintage" electrics.... considering orchestral instruments that are centuries older do not demand those prices.... and the sound comes from th wood along not electronics...

I personally feel that the electronics available today for the elctric guitar are better then 40 years ago, so comparing an L series strat with standard pickups forty plus years old to an L series with brand new pickups and electronics played by the same guitarist to give the representation of sound I would be more inclined to like the sound of the new pickups.

most older guitars if treated right could feel better but not sound better, and most new guitars could sound better but not feel better.....

I guess it comes down to the fact that it is really hard to be objective when dealing with how it sounds because the history and the money paid becomes an underlying factor. I think the evolution of the electric guitar combined with todays technology should dictate that it only gets "better"....

I wouldnt mind hearing an SG the way Les Paul said it needed to be improved....

by **-Dave-** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 8:21 pm

I think the general rule about vintage guitars being "better" than modern is all based on the origins of the brand.

Using gibson and PRS as examples - they were great guitars that were lovingly hand made when originally produced that became popular because of their fantastic tone, playability and quality.

Unfortunately, popularity invariably leads to supply not meeting demand, and mass production is required to keep up with the market and make bigger dollars. In the case of guitar manufacture, mass production generally leads to a reduction in quality and workmanship, and loss of many of the things that made the brand great in the first place.

The original or vintage guitars are what gave a brand it's reputation. If those guitars weren't fantastic, would the names of Gibson, Fender and Paul Reed Smith be as synonymous with tone as they are today?

Obviously there are exceptions where modern can be exceptional quality and price (custom shop guitars being one of many), and you wouldn't buy a guitar on year of manufacture alone, but in my opinion, there's a very good reason vintage guitars are so highly regarded and desired...

by **rick** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 9:27 pm

i have had more guitars then i care to admit to and many more then i could afford to have at once.
among them a 50s nocaster ( as in the first telecaster and actually made by leo fender ) which was amonst if not the best tele i have ever heard but probably not the best playing vintage guitar ever . which is why i sold it
( besides being broke)
so for what its worth on a sound note
a leo fender made no caster versus a new telecaster is no contest at all

i have had for years the last fender i will ever own it is a black 61 rosewood neck pre L strat
if i EVER sell it - thats it for me , i consider it to be non replaceable so this is the guitar thats beats them all for me.
and probably answers the original post from my point of view

there is a world of books and net sites about this stuff , what makes you asks such a question howard ...?
downing the soldering iron and opening a guitar shop...?

the prices for vintage guitars are like the prices for anything considered cool its just fashion.
i have always paid more then i could afford at the time for a guitar only to find out ten years later it was an absolute bargain .

i will not buy a new guitar ever again but i am sure there are plenty of guitars being made today that will just be getting good and ripe in about twenty years time.
maybe we should all start "investing for our childrens future"
what does a new samick cost anyway ...? less then the bag it comes in ?

by the way i have never actually seen an original rickenbacker ( built by the made himself) outside a guitar book and i doubt if anybody else on the site has either, they only number about 10 or so

by **Howard Jones** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 10:26 pm

To know the reason I ask is to learn something about the convoluted way my mind sometimes works... Here goes.

I heard an item on the news about a Stradivarius violin. Stradivarius are regarded as being pretty much the 'ne plus ultra' of violins. I didn't check the dates, but I would imagine that Stradivarius instruments were being made not very long after violins themselves were first invented.

That in turn lead me to wonder whether there is an effect whereby a new technology can inspire such achievement in an inventor or developer that they basically set the benchmark for anyone who comes after i.e. nothing that comes after is actually any better. A parallel to consider might be Bach writing for the piano.

And so, then, I wondered about Leo inventing the electric guitar (or was that Les?) and started to wonder whether early Fenders are actually the best guitars and the later ones no better?

Told you it was convoluted...

by **rick** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 11:49 pm

i thought you might being trying to see how many guitarists lurk about in the forum looking for a safe and easy post
to get them started and i wonder why you did not make it even more tempting - like free beer for the best answer !

fyi i think you will find that there were several generations of the legendary strad family violin makers and the guy that got good ( and famous ) at building them was following in his fathers footsteps. there are also many violins in the same league that historically can not be linked to the master but have all the same attributes so it may be that his sublime skills were somebody elses ideas - perfected.

i was always told by my dad "never buy the first generation car type , wait a few years untill they have ironed out all the bugs"

by **Ausrock** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 1:54 am

Howard Jones wrote:I heard an item on the news about a Stradivarius violin.

Stradivarius also made guitars, from memory, there are at least two in museums.

And so, then, I wondered about Leo inventing the electric guitar (or was that Les?) ...

The electric guitar is attributed to Rickenbacker although most of the development was by George Beauchamp one of Rick's friends and business partner, again, from memory, 1931 is when patents were initially applied for, although they were apparently developing electric instruments some years prior. The company was originally known as Ro-Pat-In Inc, in '34 it became the "Electro String Instrument Corp" and began referring to instruments as "Rickenbacker Electros".

by **Jeremy H** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 8:57 am

I have a boomer brother who has a nice collection of vintage Martin guitars.
He considers it part of his superannuation plans.

And when I think about it - CF Martin - started with violins and have been making guitars since 1831. A family business, where I presume the skills were past down through the generations. I think they have always had to adapt to the times and currently make a lot of "funky" models that must make CF Martin the first spin in his grave. However, I don

by **Kris** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 10:47 am

I always thought Les Paul was responsible for the electric guitar pick up... is that correct? I also thought he invented the first multitrack tape head too.

Anyone?

As for not buying the first generation of a product. I couldn't agree more. iPod anyone????

by **chris p** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 11:48 am

Kris wrote:Pod anyone????

FWIW, I own iPod serial No.9 from the 1st batch landed in Australia. Its still going as strong as ever. Beware the "perception is reality" myth, my friend.

Oh, and a friend at the time told me it would never catch on.

by **Kris** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 11:58 am

lol... then you are a lucky man!!! I had to replace my wife's ipod the day we bought it!!!

by **chris p** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 1:22 pm

To be fair, Kris, I've heard a few similar stories myself. Hope they did the right thing by you.

by **Kris** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 2:26 pm

yeah, it was all good.

Speaking of guitars with exorbitant price tages....

http://cgi.liveauctions.ebay.com/ws/eBa ... 0097597021

or this

http://cgi.liveauctions.ebay.com/ws/eBa ... 0097596656

by **toddd** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 2:45 pm

this whole topic got me thinking of something slightly off the topic...

can a 'bad' amp make a 'good' git sound bad, or would it still shine through the murk...

can a 'good' amp make a 'bad' git sound good...

it makes me think of running an sm57 through a neve pre - that can sound killer at the right time and place (bad analogy maybe, since mics and pres have a different relationship, but you get the picture).

by **heathen** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 10:24 am

To me every single guitar sounds and plays differently, I think playability is number one when it comes to performance, that said I think some guitars which cost a fortune sound terrible, some $50 guits can sound awesome, as long as you have a great amp. I've got a $50 onyx which sounds huge, go figure. Sometimes prefer it over my Les Paul.

Some of my favourite guitarists sounds/tone are as follows, Dave Gilmour, Steve Vai, Eric Johnson, Angus Young, Toni Iomi,Jimi Hendrix, Iron Maiden , Frank Zappa and Santana. Also a local fella called Jamie Wilson who used to play at our "local" every Thursday night around the mid 90's,also was Richard Claptons guitarist, this guy was a freak, won the Rebel Yell guitarist of the year competition when 17, I think.

He won an Eric Clapton signature Strat, I swear that was one of the best sounding Fender guitar and amp rigs I've heard consistantly sound superb. Now he was an incredible player had a superb rig and sounded awesome every single time. I think the active pickups he was using captured all the subtleties of every nuance of the fretboard, in the hands of a hack it would sound awefull, but this guy is a master of technique. Was one of the fattest and richest and biggest Fender sounds I've heard, sustain went forever.

Old or new I don't think it matters as long as the instrument feels like a part of you and is extremely playable, tone comes 2nd IMO, unless for investment purposes in which case older/rarer always rules.

A good dose of "FAST FRET" always helps too.

by **scott** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 4:41 pm

I don't know if you guys have seen these

35 thousand year old Kauri. It would take a long time to 'forget being a tree' one imagines.

http://www.langcaster.com

by **scott** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 5:33 pm

I have a book called STRADIVARIUS: five violins, one cello and a genius
by Tony Faber that I think everyone here would enjoy. It

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