The concept of a vintage guitar plays a large role in today’s guitar market – not just in replica-level reissues, not just in regular-production models with vintage features, but in the overall marketing message of the companies whose guitars provide the foundation of the vintage world – Fender, Gibson and Martin.
It’s been over 50 years since the demand for vintage guitars first appeared and over 40 years since the demand for vintage reissues appeared, so for most of us the vintage element has always been a part of the guitar world. Everything the major makers did to create the current market for vintage-inspired guitars seems obvious in hindsight, but there was a time when this vintage business was a whole new world. No one in the 1960s or ’70s wanted a 1950s television or automobile or refrigerator or air conditioner. Guitarmakers – like any other kind of makers – had always tried to make their products better and better. The problem was cost – balancing quality with affordability. When you don’t have any technological improvements – and by the end of the 1950s, electric and acoustic guitar designs left virtually nothing to improve upon – your new guitar is not as good as your old one. Hello, vintage market.
Recognizing a new market was hard enough. How to maintain a presence in a vintage-oriented market was a bigger challenge. The typical sales pitch for any maker of a consumer product is: “You should buy the new and improved version of our product.” But for vintage reissues, the sales pitch is just the opposite: “Our new product is just as good as the old one.” How could that possibly work?
The three major makers whose guitars were driving the vintage market – Gibson, Fender and Martin – went at it each in their own way.
At first look, Gibson appears to have been ahead of Fender in responding to a demand for vintage guitars, having reintroduced the Flying V in late 1965 and the Les Paul Standard and Les Paul Custom in 1968. Despite Gibson’s claim that the two Les Pauls were “exact duplicates of the original Les Paul models,” the larger headstocks belied that claim, and the goldtop finish and P-90 pickups on the Standard showed that Gibson didn’t have a clue as to which version of the Standard that players wanted. These models were not so much vintage reissues as they were simply reintroductions of the model names. Even though Gibson quickly offered a sunburst Les Paul, they unashamedly eliminated the Standard from 1972-76, replacing it with the mini-humbucker-equipped Deluxe. The few Standards that made it through production during that period had the same three-piece maple top and four-piece “pancake body” as the Deluxe.
Gibson didn’t really take notice of the growing demand for vintage until the beginning of the 1980s – concurrent with Fender. Gibson’s eyes were opened by dealers – four in particular, Strings and Things in Memphis, Jimmy Wallace in Dallas, Leo’s in Oakland, California and Guitar Trader in Redbank, New Jersey – who in the late 1970s began asking for Les Pauls with highly figured maple tops, uniform-depth binding in the cutaway, and any other vintage spec they could get from Gibson. In 1981, Gibson responded with a limited run of a “reissue” sunburst Les Paul Standard, followed by a catalog model, the Les Paul Reissue, in 1983.
The vintage influence immediately made its way into Gibson’s regular production line. The 1983 catalog did not include the reissue, but it noted changes in the specs for the regular-production Les Paul Standard, including a return to the smaller headstock size and 17-degree headstock pitch of the 1950s models, and a revival of the patent-applied-for pickup. A page in the 1983 catalog was devoted to Gibson’s Custom Shop, which in those days was not formally organized but was a first-call group from the various factory departments who would be called in according to their various specialties – the exact opposite of the individual Master Builder concept that Fender would promote. The photo in the catalog shows two workers with a flametop Les Paul on their bench, but their attention is focused on a circuit board control assembly – which was no part of the vintage world.
By 1986, Gibson was catching on, with a Reissue that differed from the Standard not only with a flamed top, but with “aged” binding, PAF-reissue pickups and nickel-plated hardware. The growing demand for accurate reissues led Gibson to establish the Custom Shop as a standalone division in 1993, with the ’59 Les Paul reissue as its flagship model.
Unlike Gibson, who had abandoned its 1950 Les Paul line, Fender continued making the Telecaster and Stratocaster through the 1960s. Although they were pushed down in the line below the Jazzmaster and Jaguar, the Tele and Strat of the 1970s looked at first glance like their earlier versions. However, differences in the quality of components and – with the Strat – the move from a four-bolt to three-bolt neck, were significant to guitar players, particularly followers of Eric Clapton and, to some degree, Jimi Hendrix.
Fender entered the vintage reissue market with a Telecaster, announced in 1981 but not produced until 1982. It had a black pickguard like the early ’50s Teles but was still a far cry from an accurate reissue – among its options was a rosewood fingerboard. At the same time Fender introduced two vintage versions of the Strat, one based on 1957, the other on 1962. Among the vintage specs were a four-bolt neck, staggered pickup polepieces, a smaller headstock, and vintage-style hardware. Among the shortcomings were a white pickguard on the 1962, noticeably different from the green-tinged guards of the originals.
Fender had bigger problems than the accuracy of reissues. The company was going downhill, and the owners, CBS, brought in Bill Schultz from Yamaha to try to turn the company around and get it in shape for a sale. Schultz brought in another Yamaha man, Dan Smith, to fix the model line. Smith immediately brought the four-bolt neck (now with a tilt-neck capability) back to the Strat. This version, called the Smith Strat today, was made in 1982 only.
Then in a last-ditch effort to reduce costs, Smith moved the Strat’s input jack to the third-knob position. This two-knob Strat lasted from mid 1983 to late 1984. In 1985, CBS sold Fender to a group led by Bill Schultz. The sale did not include production facilities, so Fender was temporarily shut down.
Martin had a different set of problems with its two signature models, the D-18 and D-28. One of the features that distinguished its most desirable vintage models was scalloped top braces, which went out in late 1944. That was easy enough to fix, and Martin did it on a vintage-style D-28 in 1976, called the HD-28. The H announced another vintage feature, the herringbone top border, which Martin had discontinued in 1947. On the D-18, the scalloped braces returned on limited-run models beginning in 1984 with the D-18V – V for Vintage – which became a regular model in 1999.
Scalloping the top braces and, for pre-1939 models, shifting the bracing pattern, were the easy part of re-creating older Martins. The biggest problem was material – Adirondack spruce for the tops and, for the D-28’s body, Brazilian rosewood.
At Martin, the current vintage offering is limited to the D-18, D-28 and D-45, organized under the Authentic Series, with the sales pitch “The Golden Era is back” and “Built like it’s 1935.” Brazilian rosewood is still hard to come by. The D-45 is offered in Brazilian but the D-28 has Guatemalan rosewood. Each is offered in a 1936, ’37 or ’39 version. The tops are Adirondack, aged with Martin’s Vintage Tone System so that they more closely replicates the sound of vintage Martins. The body shapes, according to the descriptions, are now “more accurate.” And as with Fender and Gibson, the vintage concept extends to the non-vintage line. The Modern Deluxe line, for example, is “a new take on Martin Vintage.”
The dust finally settled in 1987 at the January NAMM trade show, where Fender introduced a new Strat called the American Standard. It differed from older models – and from the reissue models – in several ways, including a new two-point vibrato, reverse-wound mid pickup, and tilt adjustment for the four-bolt neck. The vintage-inspired Strat models, the ’57 and ’62, which had been the only constant in the Strat line through the ownership change, emerged with their own identities, distinct and different from the American Standard.
A second, equally important announcement at the 1987 NAMM show, was the formation of a Custom Shop. While a Custom Shop would imply a shop that made one-offs or limited-run guitars with non-standard, custom features, the first orders were from Japanese customer for reissues – accurate reissues. The vintage factor dominated the Custom Shop. By 2004, when Tom Wheeler published The Stratocaster Chronicles, John Page, head of the Custom Shop, told Wheeler that the Custom Shop was 95 percent vintage.
Vintage-inspired instruments also held an important place Fender’s regular-production lineup. By 1990, Fender had organized the two vintage reissue Strats, along with a ’52 Tele, Precision basses from’57 and ’62, and a’62 Jazz Bass, into a Vintage Series. The sales slogan for basses drew on vintage appeal: “Feels like yesterday, sounds like tomorrow.”
Gibson’s solution has been to improve the basic reissue model. Every year, some detail in routing, electronics, finish, etc., makes the new reissue more accurate than ever. To make reissues look more like the real thing, Gibson developed relic finishes and promoted those, along with finish expert Tom Murphy, to a premium level.
Even though vintage features have trickled into the regular production models – such as the choice of ‘50s or ‘60s neck, and models such as the Les Paul Traditional – Gibson has protected the value of the vintage appeal by keeping the reissues in the Custom Shop. That line includes most variations of the four 1950s Les Paul models (Custom, Standard, Special and Junior), plus some SGs, Flying Vs and Explorers, along with limited-run reproductions of famous guitars.
In Gibson’s regular line, vintage-inspired models are organized under the Original Series. Currently thirty-two models are, in Gibson’s words, “Faithful tributes to another golden era,” most of them with a decade as part of the model name, and such finish names as Vintage Cherry and Vintage Tobacco Burst.
Fender’s approach has been to expand the vintage-influenced line to include models made in Japan (designated by decade rather than by a specific year), along with popular mods, such as the Vintage Hot Rod Strat, and three levels of relic finishes. Vintage reissues are part of the regular production offering, which includes the American Vintage Series of year-specific reissues, and the Vintera I and II series, which according to Fender, “boast era-correct features that deliver the vintage tones of the 50s, 60s and 70s.” Together these lines represent almost one-quarter of Fender’s 235 electric models.
As far back as the 1980s, Mike Longworth, longtime Martin employee and the author of the first book on Martin guitars, was telling people “The biggest competition for new Martins is old Martins.” That’s still true to some degree, for Gibson and Fender as well as for Martin. Fortunately, these companies have been able to capitalize on their history, to make their vintage legacy a vital part of their identity and their future success.
Walter Carter
Founder of Carter Vintage Guitars
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