The $500,000 guitar

Every time I read a guitar-porn article like yesterday's piece on Les Paul sunbursts in the L.A. Times, I'm reminded of the scene in Spinal Tap when Marty DiBirgi (Rob Reiner), the "documentary" maker, gets a guided tour of Nigel Tufnel's (Christopher Guest) guitar room. At one point, Marty notices a guitar that has never been played, and Nigel quickly shoos him away from it: "Don't touch it!...Don't point. It can't be played."

I'm sure these original sunbursts sound great, but I'd never know--I've never seen anybody play one live. (Jimmy Page's sounds pretty good in the Led Zeppelin DVD.) The folks who are rich enough to collect them aren't gigging musicians, I guess, and the musicians who have one are probably too afraid to get them ripped off on the road.

I think of instruments the way a wine collector once explained expensive wines to me: a $500 Bordeaux might not be objectively "better" than a $100 Bordeaux, but each is unique, and sometimes you can only get that exact taste from that exact bottle. With guitars, the price disparity is even greater: I've seen hacks try to work their way around brand new $3,000 axes at Guitar Center, and one of the best guitarists I've ever played with coaxed remarkable sounds out of a 40-year-old Danelectro Silvertone. Those guitars were considered cheap starters, and originally sold exclusively through Sears, and they go for about $300 on eBay these days.

[grissomb]

The tone is in the player

I agree- a lot can be said for electronics and how components change sound but the tone is really in how the player plays.

However.

40 year old Danlectro probably has better caps and resistor types that give a better sounds and signal. Kind of an analog vs digital thing. Germanium caps sound better than the new stuff used-- but the new stuff is cheaper so guitar makers use it.

But ya- you can only get that taste from that bottle. I played a $150 Squier Telecaster in a shop once and it sounded absolutely amazing. But I didn't but it- I play the exact same Fender version and it just wasn't there.

[MARxaTax]

This ain't rock'n'roll

The distorted prices for vintage guitars make such instruments inaccessible to the average player. Doubtless this is a nice instrument but give me Dan Forte playing 'Walk, Don't Run' on a Teisco with a baseball bat for a neck anyday.

[MattRosoff]

And the wood

A lot of those old guitars' sound seems to be in the wood as well. There's not much Douglas Fir left, and what you can get is really expensive.

[boopiejones]

i'm not a musician, but....

are guitars really made out of doug fir? is doug fir really hard to come by? i have enough doug fir sitting in my garage to make about 20 guitars, and it cost me about $20 at home depot...