So, when do Performers, Jag-Stangs, Supersonics and Toronados qualify as vintage Offsets?

[Larry Mal]

reminds me of something my bandmate said once in a guitar shop "i don't want to sound vintage, i wanna sound like me"

No doubt! And it makes you wonder why the biggest guitar companies have by and largely come around to selling you on the idea that you can sound like someone else.

I mean, they didn't use to do that. The Telecaster was certainly not sold as anything other than a brand new instrument that you could sound like yourself on, the Jazzmaster was sold with the idea that it would be popular with jazz players but it was also a direct alternative to the guitars those guys had been playing.

Electric guitar companies used to have the idea that there was a market that would accept new things in a pursuit of originality, and now they have the opposite idea, that originality would be a liability in the marketplace.

So, one could point out that Fender is still kind of pushing the design of their instruments a little bit, they are still putting some updates out to the things.

But I wanted to take a look at a modern updated guitar and then report back at how many times the text featured things like "vintage" or "classic" or all the other bullshit that is supposed to reassure a market that has been taught to uncritically accept the idea that older designs are better.

The first one I clicked on, though, was the American Performer Stratocaster, and it has this text:

Fender introduced the Stratocaster in 1954, but it was Jimi Hendrix who, 13 years later, put the sleek, contoured solidbody on the map as the 6-string object of desire for generations of guitarists to come.


So I guess I don't know what else I can say about that, then. The motherfucker has been dead longer than most people here have been alive- including me, but there he is anyway. This is the state of guitar marketing in 2021.

You can buy this guitar and sound like Jimi Hendrix, who died in 1970.

[Larry Mal]

Frankly, I like talking about this stuff here, because those of us that like offset guitars can often deal with the fact that those guitars didn't get to have the "vintage" label and marketing, so many of us have seen firsthand that "vintage" does not mean classic or historic necessarily, it's just marketing bullshit to sell old guitars to old guys for a lot of money.

And don't get me wrong- buy old guitars! I do. They are fun to collect, it's part of history, and the guitars can be different and interesting.

But just remember that the difference between a 1950 Gibson ES-125 and a 1960 Stratocaster isn't necessarily the quality of it or anything, it's just that one particular demographic is very nostalgic about the one and not the other.

[cestlamort]

The whole "vintage" thing seemed to have been a differentiator between "what was" and "what is currently available" as well as a way to justify/explain using old, used guitars, basically as people began looking back at the history of pop music and the industrial history of the electric guitar, rather than constantly looking forward. (The whole folk revival may have anticipated all this, too, especially in its focus on "authenticity" etc.). Add in a dose of hero-emulation and surplus spending power, and you get "vintage"

For guitars, "vintage" essentially means that era when the buyers (and dealers) starting looking backwards based on what the then-current guitars were "not": construction, parts, style, aesthetics, etc. They've since moved into investment pieces, recently joined by the weird offset cousins.

I think, however, that once we move beyond that era of the great vintage guitar awakening (tm), I'd suggest these categories: vintage, old, recent, and current. Dealers (and buyers) tend to shift "old" to "vintage" whenever possible. It gets skewed some when the prices of new increase as well. Heck, AV65 guitars are selling for more than they did for new, so who knows.

For example, I have a 1982 Rickenbacker 330. Is it vintage? Will it ever be? (It is pre-CNC, so maybe. Same model and features as Marr played, so it has the "hero emulation" factor). I also have a 1988 or so 330/12 that will probably at best be "old" someday. I also had an early 80s G&L F-100 which had a ton of the qualities of a vintage fender (finish, playability, sound, feel – but didn't have a pick guard, so it was aesthetically "wrong" somehow, so I sold it to fund a Marr Jaguar -- my subconscious is shallow and superficial, I suppose).

As far as Toronados et al go, will there ever be a "that dude in Kula Shaker played a Venus XII" upcharge?
(Sidenote: I *just* received a Fender email about the KC Jagstang reissue as I was typing this, so that may have just made the original ones $___ more valuable).

[Flurko]

Larry, the Duane Allman pic in one of your posts makes me think about something : I was recently on a random wikipedia rabbit hole and found myself on his page. I didn't realize this guy died aged 24 in '71, as I've always thought about his whole thing as "old dude music", the mutton chops on his face didn't help my mental image.

Then again, I couldn't name an Allman Brothers Band song, the only song with him i can recall is probably Layla, and everyone knows how awful Clapton is these days (and has arguably been for a very long time).

I just talked about something similar with my bandmate the other day, we were laughing about a band he shared a bill with who played Southern Rock, which is a pretty weird concept in its own way but even weirder coming from Strasbourg, so far from the actual US South..

And to be fair I'm also starting to be an old fuck at 30, I was complaining about every hip young guitar player showing up with a brand new store-bought Jazzmaster, when I had to go online and find a CIJ partsmater for sale on a forum to be able to find this mysterious offset guitar

[s_mcsleazy]

honestly, i kinda agree with what larry was saying about osg being different from other guitar communities not getting caught up in "vintage accuracy" as much as others. hell, i feel on a forum like here, crazier ideas are just as valued. hell, i still get people asking about my "yanderemaster" a lot. not in a "why did you do that, it's horrible" way but more "that's really interesting" kinda way.

[Larry Mal]

Larry, the Duane Allman pic in one of your posts makes me think about something : I was recently on a random wikipedia rabbit hole and found myself on his page. I didn't realize this guy died aged 24 in '71, as I've always thought about his whole thing as "old dude music", the mutton chops on his face didn't help my mental image.

Then again, I couldn't name an Allman Brothers Band song, the only song with him i can recall is probably Layla, and everyone knows how awful Clapton is these days (and has arguably been for a very long time).

I just talked about something similar with my bandmate the other day, we were laughing about a band he shared a bill with who played Southern Rock, which is a pretty weird concept in its own way but even weirder coming from Strasbourg, so far from the actual US South..

And to be fair I'm also starting to be an old fuck at 30, I was complaining about every hip young guitar player showing up with a brand new store-bought Jazzmaster, when I had to go online and find a CIJ partsmater for sale on a forum to be able to find this mysterious offset guitar

That's funny!

Yeah, Eric Clapton is fucking awful, he's an awful human being but I could overlook that to a degree if his music wasn't so God damn boring.

The Allman Brothers are good, though. Very of its era, but good. They were a little more than the Southern rock boogie that followed in their wake.

I mean, I like to listen to music of all eras, I'm definitely calcifying these days, though, and trying to resist that. But it happens to everyone I guess.

People here might notice a certain level of animosity that I have towards the Baby Boom generation, and I don't deny it. They were the generation right before my one and frankly I've felt smothered by these people my whole life.

Basically they were a huge and cultural behemoth and have always celebrated their own past- I mean, why on earth to you as a thirty year old guy in Europe even know who Duane Allman is? He's not that interesting, he only did so much music with pretty limited impact in a subgenre of rock and roll and he died over 50 years ago at age 24.

If a guitar player from your part of Europe and your generation was on a guitar magazine- which she wouldn't ever be- no American Baby Boomer would have any idea who she was and they wouldn't care.

It's never been a two way street, culturally, and that generation's age, wealth and size has had huge impact on day to day shit. Don't believe me, try and buy an old guitar that was played by a well known Boomer guitarist and get back to me.

I feel I need to make it clear that I don't dislike Boomers on any kind of personal level, not at all. I mean, my mother was one, my father is also, right? I just kind of resent the cultural smothering.

[Embenny]

I mean, even me! I ordered some Kinman pickups for a Telecaster yesterday, and I am going to pull out the "vintage" type pickups that I had in there. I felt I had to have that "vintage" sound, you know?

"If you have a Telecaster," I would have said. "You really want to nail that vintage sound."

Why would I feel that way? Why would I have said that?

That's much of the reason I'm so thrilled with the Fishman Fluence pickups in my purple Tele. They do all the Telecaster-y things you might hope, but they're totally silent, and they've got a little button that gives you a whole second guitar's worth of tones by changing the output and resonant frequencies from whiteguard to blackguard. Plus, you can roll down the perfectly smooth volume knob to any level, and have it sound exactly the same, but with less gain. So...what a volume knob was always supposed to do but never exactly did.

Does it sound identical to a vintage Tele? Nope. Do I care? Nope. I've had the chance to play it next to two other Telecasters back to back now, and the two passive ones (both with "vintage style" pickups) sounded as different from each other as the Fishman did from either one of them. They all just look and sound like Telecasters.

I don't care about the stigma of charging a battery every 300 hours of playtime. It does what a guitar is supposed to do, better than most other guitars. It makes music without blaring hum, buzz, and various other random noises, which themselves are only lovingly tolerated because Boomers remember how much their teenage garage band's amps and guitars buzzed back when ROCK AND ROLL DIDNT NEED NO SIGNAL TO NOISE RATIO!

[Larry Mal]

honestly, i kinda agree with what larry was saying about osg being different from other guitar communities not getting caught up in "vintage accuracy" as much as others. hell, i feel on a forum like here, crazier ideas are just as valued. hell, i still get people asking about my "yanderemaster" a lot. not in a "why did you do that, it's horrible" way but more "that's really interesting" kinda way.

I think that's fucking wonderful is what that is.

[s_mcsleazy]

honestly, i kinda agree with what larry was saying about osg being different from other guitar communities not getting caught up in "vintage accuracy" as much as others. hell, i feel on a forum like here, crazier ideas are just as valued. hell, i still get people asking about my "yanderemaster" a lot. not in a "why did you do that, it's horrible" way but more "that's really interesting" kinda way.

I think that's fucking wonderful is what that is.

i've got a picture of my 5ft 2 bandmate playing it and it's bloody huge on them.

[CivoLee]

I have a book from 2001 about electric guitars and it is very boomer-focused. It praises the original 1950s Fenders and Gibsons, has a "cool but junk" attitude toward lower-end brands like National and Valco, and while the chapter on the CBS/Norlin/Gretsch-Baldwin era (called "Sordid Seventies Samples and Early Eighties Oddities") doesn't completely trash them - I mean, they couldn't, as the book had input from Jeff Carlisi of 38 Special, who played a Les Paul Deluxe - they aren't kind to them either, putting down Antigua Strats, L6s and Gretsch's "Beast" series. Personally, I love 70s guitars, because a lot of classic punk/post-punk, metal and early indie/alternative rock was played on guitars from that era, even into the 90s; just look at Adam Jones of Tool and James Iha from the Smashing Pumpkins with their silverburst LP Customs (which are cool but not for me). But I think the boomer generation would rather pretend the 70s never happened, though; at least in the US, you had the post-Vietnam era, higher gas prices and disco.

I slightly disagree about the numbers not being there for Toronados becoming desirable/valuable, though; the Millenial generation is the largest since the Boomers. If there's any guitar that screams early 2000s rock, it's that one.

[Larry Mal]

I slightly disagree about the numbers not being there for Toronados becoming desirable/valuable, though; the Millenial generation is the largest since the Boomers. If there's any guitar that screams early 2000s rock, it's that one.

That's my understanding also, that the Millennials are a larger generation than the Boomers were.

I also don't really think all that highly of the concept of "generations" but I'll leave that to the side.

Regardless, though, the reason I say the Toronados won't have the same impact is because guitar based music simply isn't as dominant, and within the scope of people that like guitar based music there's further fragmentation.

[Larry Mal]

Also another reason I like this forum is because we can talk about such things without having to hear how great the tone was with the famous bluesman Blow Job Willie* and how this inspired Peter Green and shit.










*He was a harmonica player, you dick.

[Ceylon]

Also another reason I like this forum is because we can talk about such things without having to hear how great the tone was with the famous bluesman Blow Job Willie* and how this inspired Peter Green and shit.










*He was a harmonica player, you dick.

You can't get the true blowjob tone unless the flame maple cap is made from Lester Polfus's 1947 sex rack

[JSett]

Funny, I always thought of my parents as being in the Baby Boomer generation when actually, they were probably just prior to the Baby Boomers - Dad was born in '39 and Mom was born in '40. I never thought of myself or people my around my age as Baby Boomers. I assumed I was in some group sandwiched between Baby Boomers and Gen X.

I just found another list via Google (I guess I can now start calling it "The Google" like other old fogeys) - I don't know if it's the end all, be all of generational classifications but it seems about right:

The Depression Era. Born: 1912-1921. ...
World War II. Born: 1922 to 1927. ...
Post-War Cohort. Born: 1928-1945. ...
Boomers I or The Baby Boomers. Born: 1946-1954. ...
Boomers II or Generation Jones. Born: 1955-1965. ...
Generation X. Born: 1966-1976. ...
Generation Y, Echo Boomers or Millenniums. ...
Generation Z.

Based on this, my folks were actually pre-Baby Boomer known as Post-War Cohort and now I'm in the Boomers II or Generation Jones(?), which I've never even heard of before. If I'm understanding this chart correctly, I guess I'm part of the bland & inconsequential generation...yay?

Unless the goal posts get moved, I humbly resign myself to being a Boomer II (Electric Boogaloo!). Not gonna lie - still wish I was in Gen X.

I wouldn't sweat any of those lists or dates...there's hundreds of them and no definitive authority on it either.

It's a commonly held belief that anyone born right at the end or beginning of any of these 'generations' tend to feel confused as to which they feel they belong to. Either by upbringing or location in the world. Often they're referred to as 'cuspers'. By most lists, born in 1982, I'm a Millennial but - by one or two rogue lists - I'm Gen-X. I've seen the end of Gen-X defined anywhere between 1977 and 1984. They've even given alternative names for the 'cusper' micro generations (The Oregon Trail Generation and Generation Catalano are two I can remember of the top of my head).

I remember before the internet, and mobile/car phones. I had a record player in my bedroom and not a CD/cassette player. I remember the Berlin wall falling. I have nothing in common with 99% of most 'Millenials' so don't abide by some irrelevant list trying to define and lump me in with them.

[Surfysonic]

Funny, I always thought of my parents as being in the Baby Boomer generation when actually, they were probably just prior to the Baby Boomers - Dad was born in '39 and Mom was born in '40. I never thought of myself or people my around my age as Baby Boomers. I assumed I was in some group sandwiched between Baby Boomers and Gen X.

I just found another list via Google (I guess I can now start calling it "The Google" like other old fogeys) - I don't know if it's the end all, be all of generational classifications but it seems about right:

The Depression Era. Born: 1912-1921. ...
World War II. Born: 1922 to 1927. ...
Post-War Cohort. Born: 1928-1945. ...
Boomers I or The Baby Boomers. Born: 1946-1954. ...
Boomers II or Generation Jones. Born: 1955-1965. ...
Generation X. Born: 1966-1976. ...
Generation Y, Echo Boomers or Millenniums. ...
Generation Z.

Based on this, my folks were actually pre-Baby Boomer known as Post-War Cohort and now I'm in the Boomers II or Generation Jones(?), which I've never even heard of before. If I'm understanding this chart correctly, I guess I'm part of the bland & inconsequential generation...yay?

Unless the goal posts get moved, I humbly resign myself to being a Boomer II (Electric Boogaloo!). Not gonna lie - still wish I was in Gen X.

I wouldn't sweat any of those lists or dates...there's hundreds of them and no definitive authority on it either.

It's a commonly held belief that anyone born right at the end or beginning of any of these 'generations' tend to feel confused as to which they feel they belong to. Either by upbringing or location in the world. Often they're referred to as 'cuspers'. By most lists, born in 1982, I'm a Millennial but - by one or two rogue lists - I'm Gen-X. I've seen the end of Gen-X defined anywhere between 1977 and 1984. They've even given alternative names for the 'cusper' micro generations (The Oregon Trail Generation and Generation Catalano are two I can remember of the top of my head).

I remember before the internet, and mobile/car phones. I had a record player in my bedroom and not a CD/cassette player. I remember the Berlin wall falling. I have nothing in common with 99% of most 'Millenials' so don't abide by some irrelevant list trying to define and lump me in with them.

I can live with Cusper! I like how it's multi-generational.