There are different reasons that somebody may want to buy vintage acoustic guitars. One of these reasons may be the maturing of the wood that a guitar is made from. Wood expands and contracts as it is exposed to different degrees of heat or cold and it is subtly affected by humidity and light exposure over the course of decades, so that anacoustic guitar today doesn’t sound exactly the same as it did 40 or 50 years ago. A vintage acoustic guitar will sound “mellower” than it once did and may contain added subtle overtones that weren’t there originally, just as a wine takes on hints of new flavors as it is allowed to age, and some people find it fascinating to compare and contrast, say, the sound of an 1833 or 1933 Martin with today’s D-5 Dreadnought.
Other people may want vintage acoustic guitars in their collection because they are guitar players looking to add different musical shades to their present collection’s palette. Advanced guitar players outside of the Classical guitar sphere rarely try to get all of their musical expressive range from just one instrument, especially if they are recording an album or on tour. They will look to a handful of different guitars, some electric and some acoustic in most cases. Vintage acoustic guitars can offer them timbre possibilities that newer acoustics and electric guitars don’t.
And still other people may be taken by the sheer artistry of the guitar itself and want to have a few to put on display. If this is the case, vintage acoustic guitars are often looked to as examples of the works of “great masters” of bygone eras as certain artists’ paintings and sculptures are in the visual arts world. There may be a fascination with what types of woods and make of fittings a guitar maker tended to use in the past vs. what they use or what the luthier industry as a whole uses today.
For instance, 30 years ago and farther back mahogany, rosewood, and maple were the most prominent woods of choice for guitar makers. A mahogany-built guitar “peaks” (that is, gives the loudest, brightest, or deepest resonance that it ever will) anywhere from 25 to 30 years after it is completed; and maple and rosewood-made guitars will reach their peaks anywhere from 35 to 50 years later.
Another instance is collecting vintage acoustic guitars made from Brazilian rosewood, such as the famous 1958 Martin D-21. This wood cannot be used today make guitars because those trees have been put on the Endangered Flora List and are untouchable for any commercial reason. This means the value of any guitars made from Brazilian rosewood is going up and up.
Except for Classical guitars, most acoustic guitars’ tops are, however, made out of Adirondack, Appalachian, or Sitka Spruce. This further subtly affects a guitar’s sound.
And that leads us to yet another reason somebody may want to collect vintageacoustic guitars: they can give a large ROI and become worth a lot of money. In fact, a lot of times these instruments can be bought at auctions or basement clearing sales for only a fraction of their true collector value as people either don’t do their research or just don’t care and simply want to get rid of them.
And still other people will seek vintage acoustics that are in need of repair because they love fixing up old guitars and giving them a new life.
Typically, somebody buys a vintage acoustic guitar for some personal combination of the above reasons.
When it comes to vintage acoustics, the most sought-after guitars are Martins and Gibsons. However, Bourgeois, Collings, D’Aguisto, D’Angelico, Epiphone, Gallagher, Gretsch, Guild, Larrivee, Santa Cruz, Stromberg, and Taylor have also producedvintage acoustic guitars that collectors and players have found very valuable.
If you’re considering buying a vintage acoustic but you are not a guitar player or an experienced collector, don’t rush in where only fools tread. Do your research first, or take an experienced person with you to check out the guitar with you. Guide books, magazines, the Internet, knowledgeable individuals, and luthiers can all be of great help in determining whether or not a vintage acoustic guitar is in good or bad shape and what you should or should not be willing to pay for a particular one.