Your first vintage.

[howdo3313]

Hi everyone:)

Has there ever been a thread here sharing the story of how each of us got into vintage guitars?

I’d like to offer mine...because it was an offset;)

When I was little(pre grade school) there was a Black late 70’s musicmaster bass in our house.
A musician gave it to my Daa as a gift...felt he should be a bass player, etc.

My Daa enjoyed playing Louie Louie on it here and there and that was about it.

But I futzed about with it a lot as a kid.

Flash forward 20 years, and I’m walking through my neighborhood in Toronto, and I poke into an antique shop that I visit semi-regularly.

Talking with the shop owner about stereos...there was a nice old turntable I was looking at, at that moment.

And then I glanced to my right and peeking out from under a pile of miscellaneous brikabrac was a Fender headstock. So I dug around a bit and pulled out all the parts to a well yellowed daphne musicmaster dated 1964. Was an A slab neck. And the body had a bit of crack that was opening up on the upper horn. All the electronics were there, tuners, etc. Only thing missing was a neckplate and knobs.
She was gorgeous.

I spent the next 5mins or so pestering the shop owner to sell it to me as is. I walked out with it for $250cad.

I don’t have her anymore. Life, bills and all that.
Kinda wish I still had her. But I am also happy at the thought that someone out there has her...hopefully a kiddo who is learning, or someone who loves and respects the old gear.
I miss her. But I’m happy I got to know her for a little while:)

What was your first?

[marqueemoon]

My first vintage guitar (and first guitar that was worth a damn) was a 60’s Harmony Rocket. I wanted a Country Gentleman like John Squier’s, but this is what I could afford. It fell off the strap onto my (concrete) dorm room floor. It survived, but had a big crack. I eventually sold it to a roommate because I was moving and the crack severely bummed me out.

[zhivago]

I don't really consider it to be vintage, but I bought my first old guitar when I was 17. It was a 70s Mustang...most likely a '74.

this is the only photo of it that I have:



I got it for £299 back in June 1995...it was just before moving to London to study. I flew over to do my college interview and in the meantime saw this advertised in Guitarist magazine. The shop was up in Walthamstow somewhere. Total trek to get there, especially as I had never been to London before and there was no Google Maps.

A part of me would like to have it back one day, but I never did get on with the narrow neck.

cool guitar.

[bterry]

I was 16, bought a '58 Gibson ES-125 from a guitar store called 'Somewhere in Iowa Used Guitars' which was basically an old dude in an old house filled with vintage guitars and mutts. I think it was $275.

My first JM was bought off Ebay in the very early days, a '63 refin. I think I paid $1k or a bit less...

[debudavid]

This was my first vintage offset which I bought from a Jackson's Rare Guitars back in 1994. It was a 1963 Duo Sonic with a white refinish and modern repro tuners. I couldn't afford what I really wanted and didn't have the patience to save up for a jag, jm, or electric xii but I loved it anyway.

[gishuk]

I was 16, bought a '58 Gibson ES-125 from a guitar store called 'Somewhere in Iowa Used Guitars' which was basically an old dude in an old house filled with vintage guitars and mutts. I think it was $275.

My first JM was bought off Ebay in the very early days, a '63 refin. I think I paid $1k or a bit less...

That sounds like the greatest guitar store ever to me.

My storys not as interesting as some. After I started building guitars, maybe around 2008ish, I would browse ebay for parts and came across this 1961 Jazzmaster body and impulse bought it. Being a huge Sonic Youth fan I had wanted a proper vintage JM for a long time. Its a refin and the price was good so I had figured I would refinish it in Daphne blue and build a guitar around it. Once I got it the colour grew on me and being an old nitro refin it has some really nice aging, so I decided to keep it as is and over the next few months bought the other parts to finish it.

Didn't go vintage on everything, but got a 1962 slab board neck (easily the most expensive part of the whole thing), a lovely 1963 tort guard for an amazing price as the guy had made a terrible ebay listing. I think this guard cost me about £70! A 1963-ish tremolo and shielding plates was the other vintage parts I bought. Then added a Mastery bridge, some reliced modern tuners, Pickup Wizard JM pickups and wired it without the rhythm circuit.

It turned out to be by far my favourite guitar I've ever owned and has been my go to guitar ever since I finished putting it together. Will need a refret at some point in the not too distant future though as they are pretty low and have clearly been leveled as far as possible. Still not a job I feel confident tackling myself despite building 7 or 8 guitars from scratch though, will have to take it to a good tech or luthier at some point.

Bad photo photo but heres how it looks now, all the good photos of it have different knobs on that I switched a while back.

[Squirrel]

Fuck, I've gone through so many guitars that I can't even remember at this point. I think my first old guitar was my 1966 Baldwin 601 prototype, which I got from my step-uncle. I think he bought it from a sleazy-ass Exchange & Mart type shop in 1973 and had the fretboard replaced later that year, as the original was warped. He played it until the 1980s or early '90s before storing it in his garage until 2010, when he gave it to me for free after the local music shop only offered him £45 for it. It was only after a lot of online research that it was finally revealed to be a prototype model that was never put into full scale production or officially offered for sale. Fuck knows how it found its way into the UK, must have fallen off the back of the proverbial lorry or something.

But if we're talking "proper" vintage guitars and not just old, it was probably my 1937 Epiphone Electar. No interesting story behind this one, I just bought it on a whim off ebay from someone in America in 2012. It's never been playable since I bought it as it needs some fairly major work, which I'll get around to eventually. I've just got a billion other projects to get out of the way first.

Anyhow here they both are. Baldwin's in the middle, Epiphone's on the left.

[gishuk]

Nice Eko Ranger as well, I have one of those too

[howdo3313]

Maaan, these are some awesome replies. And beautiful guitars. I love that purple on that old JM.
I liked mine the way I found it too, and decided against to refinishing it.
I wish I had some pictures of the daphne musicmaster though.
Oh I might have one or two kicking around..but they're on paper and never got brought to digital.
I'll have to have a look. In the meantime, please share moar:)

[Larry Mal]

I guess my first vintage was my old Gibson SG from the Norlin years. I wish I still had it. I hated it, though, at the time. Super narrow nut on there and I couldn't play it for shit.

I'm not sure it was considered vintage then, either. The Norlin stuff was kind of fresh in people's minds.

[UlricvonCatalyst]

I started buying guitars before 1980, so I guess they were all vintage by the above criteria.

I've had a few guitars I just thought of as 'old' rather than vintage, but my main (bass) guitar for a few years was a Kalamazoo-era Epiphone Rivoli which is sadly gone now, without even any decent pictures remaining. The one below is all I could find.



Don't have much that's proper vintage at the moment - just a Japanese 335 copy from the (mid-'70s) 'lawsuit' era and my parts Mustang which is largely '65/'66 with modern-era electronics. I also have a weird Serviceman's Tele of indeterminate vintage which I won't make any spurious claims for, but the Rivoli is the fairest of them all in my eyes.

[oid]

It would be an old Silvertone 1479, a 68 if memory serves, it was my dads guitar when he was in highschool, bounced about the family for a couple decades then dug out of grandmas basement when I wanted a guitar. Still have it after all these years along with his old Airline amp. I learned to fix amps and guitars on them and they both show it, the amp has been gutted and redesigned more times then I can guess, the guitar has a new pickguard and different bridge pickup right now. Been thinking about digging out the parts for both of them and returning them to stock lately.

Apparently I have either too much or not enough coffee in me to get a decent photo.

Definitely needs a polish, wall could use a fresh coat as well.

[sookwinder]

Back in the early 2000s I was doing some recording with a friend (guitarist) and we obviously needed to add a bass track. Although he was happy with the keyboard bass I had done I felt a real bass would give it more punch. So we borrowed a bass from another friend who had a second hand / vintage guitar store. After a couple of weeks I just decided to buy it ... for about 10 years the sticker with the details and price stayed on the bottom edge of the body! $2.2k . After that I was hooked with the vintage bug.

It is a 75 Jazz bass and is still thumping along quite nicely.
Note: I have always hated with a passion those mid 70s Jazz basses with the black binding and black block markers - to me it just looks like pieces of gaffer tape stuck to the neck - so finding a mid 70s jazz bass with white binding and pearl block markers as my first in roads into vintage instruments was perfect.

[sookwinder]

My first vintage guitar was from the same store a few months later ... it was a case of not even thinking about buying a vintage strat and I walked in and said wow that one plays and sounds great ... I'll have it!

If I was to look for one locally these days I'd be hard pressed to find one ... you have to grab them when the opportunities come by.

[PorkyPrimeCut]

I still own my first vintage guitar, a 1959 Jazzmaster I bought in the early 90s.