Vintage Guitars
Welcome to our Vintage Guitars advanced search facility. The purpose of this page is to help you quickly and easily find Vintage Guitars items you're looking for. As you can see below, there is a vast array of items that we found for you already, and more are often available.Click here to see the available merchandise.
Vintage refers to a product being old. However, just being old doesn’t make a guitar a vintage guitar. Age combined with quality is what defines a vintage guitar. A pile of wood that was once a guitar does not qualify as part of the vintage guitars category of collectibles. However, a guitar made a hundred years ago that is still being played with clarity of sound and accurate tone is a vintage guitar.
Vintage guitars are sought after by many people simply because of their age and the history of that particular guitar or brand. Often times, the wood used in the construction of acoustic guitars especially will enhance the tone of the guitar as the wood ages. This makes vintage guitars have a better tone and sound than a fresh off the production line guitar.
The cost of vintage guitars can vary greatly. When determining an accurate and fair price for a vintage guitar, a person must consider all of the variables for that guitar, such as the manufacturing company, style, series, construction materials, age, quality and quantity produced. For instance, Ovation guitars manufactured a limited number of electric guitars over an eight year period. This has put Ovation solid body electric guitars into the vintage guitars category for collectibles.
Martin guitars are also known for being quality vintage guitars. Steel string flattop acoustic guitars made by Martin over one hundred years ago are still being played today and can retail for dollar amounts that reach into six figures. The cost of these vintage guitars comes from the high quality and durability that went into the manufacturing of the guitars making them last over a hundred years while retaining their playability.
Some guitars are considered vintage guitars because the same style and brand of guitar can change over time. In the 1970s, Gibson and Fender guitars seemed to suffer in their quality and the reputation of the companies suffered. During that time, Ibanez guitars made copycat versions of the popular styles of Gibson and Fender guitars. An ensuing lawsuit put a stop to the Ibanez copycat productions after a couple of years. However, the “lawsuit” Ibanez guitars are now considered vintage guitars and are highly collectible.
Signature series guitars are also often considered vintage simply because of the musician that they are named for. This is especially true of musicians whose bands are no longer together or were extremely popular during their musical era. Signature guitars from musicians in popular rock bands such as KISS, Metallica, Poison and Bon Jovi qualify as vintage guitars because of the popularity of the bands and the musicians.
Vintage guitars are often purchased second hand from auctions, pawn shops and even garage sales. However, many guitar manufacturers sell vintage guitars from their retail outlets or factories where the guitars may be kept in storage. Rare, old and signature guitars are most commonly found in vintage guitar collections. The history of a particular guitar, such as past owners of notability, can also make a guitar a vintage model, though.
