What are Vintage Guitars?

We have all heard the phrase "everything old is new again".. Same applies for vintage classic guitars. These guitars are in hot demand. Lets look into what a "Vintage Guitar" really is. To do so we must break down the meaning of "Vintage".

The term "Vintage" is a term that has acquired a new meaning apart from its original usage.

Originally the term "vintage" is a combination of vint (of the vine) and age (time of creation). Vintage is most commonly used in the wine industry to indicate a wine's harvest date.

The use of "vintage" has been modified by antique collectors to mean old eg. Vintage car, vintage clothing etc. Naturally the meaning is used in guitar terminology to mean an "original", older guitar."

Most collectors value guitars from the mid 1920's to the 1970's. Guitars prior to the mid 1920's are too primitive in design and materials used for most collectors to define any value to.

Guitars after 1970, which are now 30+ years old generally do not have a great collectible appeal. All the U.S. guitar manufacturers were facing desperate times during the 1970's. These companies were either bought out by larger companies looking to make guitars cheap and as quickly as possible, and/or their quality and choice of materials had become sub-standard. Classic guitar manufactures of the time were Gibson, Fender, Eastwood, Airline, Supro, Mosrite, Burns, National etc.

So what makes guitars "Vintage"? The materials, environment and society of pre-1970 was much different, thus producing different instruments which can not be duplicated even with todays technology. A classic example is the wood the guitars were made of eg. Brazilian Rosewood (used on even cheap guitars till the late 1960's) can not be legally imported into the U.S.