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When is a bass "vintage"?
- Thread starter H K
- Start date
Teijo K.
Commercial User
Vintage is the grey area between new and antique. Invented for commercial needs. It can be defined to whatever is needed basically.
Is it true at you can get “Vintage” license plates for your car or truck at 25 years old ? Don’t know if it’s still done ??? I just remember from when I was buying an old 68 Porsche 911.
So, if that was true I’d go with 25 years old. I think you got a break on taxes and not having a catalytic converter….. anyway ??
So, if that was true I’d go with 25 years old. I think you got a break on taxes and not having a catalytic converter….. anyway ??
My take is that in the case of Fender, basses built between 1951 and 1959 had so many major revisions and redesigns, that Leo inadvertently created a small number of basses that had unique body shapes, neck profiles, fingerboards, pick guards, tuning gears and pickups. This is the kind of lore that
musicians (me included) love to obsess over. By the time Leo sold his company to CBS The common Precision Bass was
a sunburst body, tortoise shell pick guard, rosewood fingerboard, split pickup bass. Just my take of course.
musicians (me included) love to obsess over. By the time Leo sold his company to CBS The common Precision Bass was
a sunburst body, tortoise shell pick guard, rosewood fingerboard, split pickup bass. Just my take of course.
You'd think so right?
But alas!EDIT: I had to do a double check just to make sure, and there was actually a lawsuit or two. The one I found was about the headstock only tho. So many people have told me there never were any suits, like, real professional collectors etc. Maybe they dont count it unless its the body..
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Yes. A 1978 fretless 4001. This was bought sight unseen online a few years ago because it was my dream bass. I didn't even know if this combination was offered. Aside from the truss rod Ooops adjustment crack, the bass is great. Sounds more DBish than a lot of other fretlesses do.
Sick! I've got 3 Ricks atm, all 4003 variations. Had a 82 4001 for a while tho. Amazing bass.
And yeah about the sound. I dont remember what thread but this somehow came up the other day, about how very few or noone plays "soft" rickenbacker. And someone linked a video to a guy playing a defretted rick with flats, sounded incredible.
Is yours all original?
I think so. I know the fretboard is. The side dots (all three hundred of them!) are on the binding and the fingerboard dots are right. The tone cap has been removed. I cut a new pickguard out of cream-colored ABS and moved the neck pickup as close to the neck as possible without removing any wood. It's now sort of halfway between the '60's 4001 placement and a modern 4003. There was quite a bit of rust on the hardware when I bought it and I replaced some of the screws that wouldn't clean up. The bridge isn't too bad and isn't lifting. Thanks for your interest. I have a 2004 FireGlo 4003, also. The two are like night and day.
I know a few but they are outside of the franchised contex referred to, i.e. SW, LPFM, dx SSB, streaming, bootlegs, frathouse LPFM...
In the wacky world of guitars it is quite tightly defined and even more aggressively gate-kept, whenever money is involved.
Vintage electric guitars are like Star Wars toys or Baseball cards. The big money is tied up in box-fresh originality, regardless of how unrealistic or irrational that happens to be.
The Antique business seems to be more forgiving of repairs, refinished and replacement parts to some degree, depending on the type of object.
I'm beyond suspicious of any custom colour, solid-colour Gibson basses from the '60s that turn up in dazzlingly condition. How better to disguise a headstock repair and litany of holes left by half the Dimarzio catalogue? Likewise Fenders are just too plug 'n' play for me. Im triple suspicious of any instrument supposedly made out-of-hours by a worker that has the wrong inlays or weird oversized pickguard, but is supposedly original.
The real grey area is dealers and 'authenticators' buying into this weirdness or overlooking obvious issues. Everybody from Gruhn down has missed refinish work, replacement plastics etc. Meanwhile Denmark Street in London was an entire cottage industry of fakery and fraudulent activity.
There is a fantastic movie on this subject, by Orson Welles. It's called "F for Fake". A "documentary" about Elmeer, a famous art forger. The whole movie is itself a fake in a weird way.
The trouble is “vintage” infers special or collectible somehow. If we go with 30 years as a minimum, 1992….. a bass from that time generally seems similar to new and goes for similar prices, depending more on quality and reputation. So there really isn’t much point to calling it vintage. But a 1980s Steinberger or BC Rich is a different story, more tied to the time period.
I have a 1980 Ibanez Blazer, but it doesn’t go for a premium price on Reverb, it’s just a common cheap Japanese guitar, so there is a lot of variation there. It’s your basic superstrat type thing. Stuff from the 1970s or earlier especially is more likely to have some vintage premium to the price.
I have a 1980 Ibanez Blazer, but it doesn’t go for a premium price on Reverb, it’s just a common cheap Japanese guitar, so there is a lot of variation there. It’s your basic superstrat type thing. Stuff from the 1970s or earlier especially is more likely to have some vintage premium to the price.
Nothing new under the sun. The story of Han Van Meegeren should be required reading for anyone venturing into collectible stuff of *any* kind IMO.
As for Denmark Street...I used to frequent it when I lived in London back in the '80s. While some fakes certainly did show up over the course of time, there also was credible expertise shared at no expense by some folks over there. Without naming names here, I would have known where to buy and where not to buy stuff back in the day...so it was nowhere near as bad as some may portray it.
Your definition (yes) of vintage, and your understanding of antiques should help.
Over 30 years is a safe guess. Those that arbitrarily use the word vintage to help sell their gear on popular sites may not care about accurate descriptions, or actual characteristics.
Over 30 years is a safe guess. Those that arbitrarily use the word vintage to help sell their gear on popular sites may not care about accurate descriptions, or actual characteristics.
