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When is Vintage Vintage?

groucho

groucho

Commercial Seller
Sep 28, 2005
467
356
Ringwood NJ
www.zero-mod.com
#1
Question for the assembled wisdom -
I am an old phart bassist (52) "in my day"
vintage meant 1960's or older...(pre CBS) Now it seems to
mean much more recent gear. In particular the Fender products,
I am surprised to see stuff from the 1980s talked of as "vintage".

I have a set of 1981 P bass pickups I am selling, should
I list them on Ebay as "vintage Fender"?

Anybody here willing to venture a guess about the price of
1980s parts, compared to the 1970s and 1960s parts?
I must say I am taken aback a bit, when I see what some of
even the "odds n ends" (strap buttons etc) can go for.
 
#5
Vintage isn't really an adjective. It is pretty much useless as a descriptor on its own. An instrument can be a 1959 vintage or 1999 vintage. Knowing what vintages are valuable is what's important, not the mere age of an instrument. There are no magical qualities that suddenly inhabit an instrument upon its survival to see 10 or 20 or 25 planetary revolutions around the sun.
 
#6
I think there's something to a piece of gear being 30 years old; at that point 45-50 year olds dealing with midlife crises can reminisce about the gear they looked at new when they were teenagers, but can now afford that same gear.
 
#7
lunarpollen said:
Vintage isn't really an adjective. It is pretty much useless as a descriptor on its own. An instrument can be a 1959 vintage or 1999 vintage. Knowing what vintages are valuable is what's important, not the mere age of an instrument. There are no magical qualities that suddenly inhabit an instrument upon its survival to see 10 or 20 or 25 planetary revolutions around the sun.
Click to expand...

Of course they do, 30 years of baking under the various rays of the Sun gives the bass some serious mojo. :D
 
#9
lunarpollen said:
Vintage isn't really an adjective. It is pretty much useless as a descriptor on its own. An instrument can be a 1959 vintage or 1999 vintage.
Click to expand...

The word comes from winemakers. Not all bottles are marked with their vintage - only bottles the vintner expects to improve with old age. Some will be terrible after 2 years and are best at 6 months, but the ones that are to be aged are made that way from the moment they pick the grapes.

i.e. - you'll never see a vintage SX
 
#11
It depends. Warwick basses from the early 90's are vintage. Fenders are not. Sometimes it means an era when this particular bass was of exceptional quality. Also, any musical instrument made before 1980 may be called vintage.
 
#20
"Vintage" is what you call old gear when you're trying to sell it.;)

It's funny, the idea that something gets better automatically with a certain amount of age seems largely a crock to me. Yes, there may have been eras when a line of instruments was made better, and that's worth noticing, but age by itself means little. In the wine analogy, some wines do get appreciably better with age, and some (perhaps most, if you look at the whole picture) don't--they just get older.

The idea that a '70s Fender is considered vintage now is comical to me. When I was coming up, everybody dumped on them and considered them vastly inferior to the pre-CBS Fenders. I don't believe anything magic has happened with those basses; they haven't suddenly become wonderful. Either they weren't that bad back then, or they're not that good now, or both.

If something was a dog when it was made, chances are that 25 years later, it's just an older dog.
 

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