Age does qualify as vintage. The term “vintage” is well defined, but it’s from the French wine industry … just refers to the year in which the grapes were harvested (this year, last year, any year), and implies nothing about quality … some vintages were good, some were bad.
There is no such definition for guitars, players & collectors have just adopted the term. Here, it’s taken to mean original models made from 52 to 60 …but it’s just an arbitrary choice made by those that run the Forum. A 69 Std/Deluxe is an old guitar & if you want to call it vintage then I expect most would agree it’s a fair description …but not here, because that’s the rules.
More generally (outside this Forum), I think the only logical position is to say that “vintage” means from the first few years of production, say the first quarter of a models history…that would currently make Les Paul’s vintage before 1965,… & in 20 years time they’d be “vintage” before 1970. PRS might be “vintage” as recently as 1985-90 for example, because PRS only started in 1985 (officially). Landmark changes such as Norlin or CBS can’t strictly affect the vintage, because they don’t change the age of the guitar. Again. “vintage” has nothing to do with “quality” (subjective), it just refers to date of production. :2cents as always.
Ian.
There is no such definition for guitars, players & collectors have just adopted the term. Here, it’s taken to mean original models made from 52 to 60 …but it’s just an arbitrary choice made by those that run the Forum. A 69 Std/Deluxe is an old guitar & if you want to call it vintage then I expect most would agree it’s a fair description …but not here, because that’s the rules.
More generally (outside this Forum), I think the only logical position is to say that “vintage” means from the first few years of production, say the first quarter of a models history…that would currently make Les Paul’s vintage before 1965,… & in 20 years time they’d be “vintage” before 1970. PRS might be “vintage” as recently as 1985-90 for example, because PRS only started in 1985 (officially). Landmark changes such as Norlin or CBS can’t strictly affect the vintage, because they don’t change the age of the guitar. Again. “vintage” has nothing to do with “quality” (subjective), it just refers to date of production. :2cents as always.
Ian.