The Gibson Les Paul Heritage Series Standard 80 models – Finding that 1959 Burst tone on a budget. Guest blog by Henrik Berger.

It can haunt you in your dreams, and follow you around the entire night and day, it can drive you into countless hours of searching the internet, daydreaming, while listening to Youtube- clips, finding articles, talking to friends.. What am I talking about?…… I am talking about the 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard.. Unless you are very wealthy, or extremely lucky, you will not be able to claim your 1959 Burst, since prices are in the big boys league, and have been rising for quite some time. But today´s economy on the other hand, suggests that now, it would be a good time to invest in one, if you have around, 100.000 – 400.000 $ (depending on the condition & originality) to spare for a 1959 Burst.

But!…… If you (like me) don’t have that kind of money, what do you then do?

Since the age of 5 I have played guitar, but at the age of 16, I started to have a great interest in vintage guitars, and  I have always been on the look out for that special guitar. At first I only looked for vintage Fender Stratocasters because Jimi Hendrix, Eric Johnson, Eric Clapton, John Norum and Yngwie Malmsteen played on those beat up Strats. But several years later I got turned on to Gibson. I had read up on the Gibson Les Paul history and of course stumbled upon the 1959 Burst…. The holy grail of guitars. So I set out to get myself one of those;). Not surprisingly that did not happen or should  I say, has not happened yet. But I came across this series of guitars that apparently should be very very good. And they were affordable!

The Gibson Les Paul heritage series standard 80!

Starting the 59 reissue era

It all started back in the late 70´s when different shops requested Gibson to make a guitar that had the same features as the 1959 Les Paul Standard, the first models that Gibson attempted to build were far from the real deal. But at some point the Nashville factory set out to release the Heritage Series 80.

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I am what you might consider a newcomer to the vintage guitar scene, but I’m a fast learner. In the time it has taken me to amass a collection of books and to strike up friendships with various dealers, different guitars have passed through my hands and back out again. Very few have stayed.

For those that do still have a home, I have some criteria that I can`t overlook. Out with anything with a crack in it, out with anything with non-original parts and out with anything built after 1969. This might seem harsh but I did not get into the vintage guitar world to own masses and masses of guitars.

I got into this world because I don’t trust banks and I don’t have a pension. What I do have at the ripe old age of 37 is the money to invest in something that brings me happiness, is of historical interest, has unsurpassed design quality and will hopefully never depreciate. Of course, all markets are fickle but with the rising interest in the sub-culture of anything ‘vintage’, I think it’s a safe bet to say that I won’t lose money in the long term.

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Like most Vintage & Rare fans, Lindsay Morrison, one of our guest bloggers, has tried out a few different instruments over his career. Here is his very honest guitar history, where he describes the good, the bad and the plain dangers.

Back in the 60′s, when I started playing in Canada, we had Grestch, Fender, Rickenbacker and Gibson with a number minor player. I remember well that Stratocasters, SG, Telecaster, ES-335 models were what we lusted after mostly, but we would find the odd Stratocaster that we didn’t like. The reason was that they were much more handmade back then, and there where some that just didn’t play well.

I had a friend that had a 1962 or 1963 black Stratocaster that nobody wanted. It was awful, the neck was not comfortable and it sounded dull and lifeless. There was also another one that I wasn’t super keen to play. Another friend had a Gibson ES-175 with P90 pickups that was just horrible, and again it was not a nice guitar, it played like a truck. Les Paul jr. was another guitar nobody really wanted, and we could get those used for $75 bucks all day long. Telecasters were nice for the most part, but Mustangs were not great.

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Maybe those people under the impression that traditional record sales are doomed, because of the Internet, are wrong. It seems that what we know about vintage and rare instruments, it also applies for vintage and rare vinyl records. People like the collectability appreciate fine work and the need and desire for personal ownership is still strong amongst music fans. We are proud to introduce you to a new V&R guest blogger from the United Kingdom, Sylvia from vinylrecordsearch.com. She gives us a great guide on how to find Vintage and Rare Vinyl Records.

Finding Vintage and Rare Vinyl Records

Finding vintage and rare vinyl records these days requires some research. Although in the UK there was a remarkable small revival in record stores last year (http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/apr/15/independent-record-store-increase), overall record shops have been at a slow decline for the last decade or more. This has meant that record lovers sometimes have to turn to other sources for those vinyl gems. For many collectors, the hunt is as much fun as the find, and finding a rare record in a used book store or thrift and consignment shops can bring great excitement. Alternatively, if you are looking for the true international market price for a record, then it can be better to look online.

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By Mike Ippersiel

So what’s the big deal about boutique basses? Perhaps this is something that you’ve thought to yourself as you’ve looked at high resolution images of handmade or highly customized basses that cost $3,000 and up.

Are they worth more than triple what you can spend to pick up a decent bass off the shelf at your local music store? Do all those exotic woods do anything besides look, well…exotic? Are they really just over-priced pieces of furniture fashioned into the shape of a bass guitar?

Yes and no.

You see, any particular bass guitar is going to be worth more or less money from one person to another. Some instrument collectors will pay outrageous sums of money for rare instruments because they happened to be owned or even were only played a few times by someone famous like Paul McCartney or Jaco Pastorius.

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Our own piano enthusiast Ric Overton is back with his second blogpost for the Vintage & Rare blog. This time the main focus is Collard and Collard pianos. Enjoy.

Collard and Collard

Among the pianos that I love and adore Collard and Collard would be one of my favorites, mostly because of the absolutely exquisite cabinetry and design. Collard and Collard are certainly among the nicest pianos with the most respected name in the industry world-wide.

F.W. Collard was baptized in 1772. The actual year of his birth is unclear. In or around 1786, he moved to London and at the age of fourteen he began working for a music publisher and pianoforte builder known as Longman, Lukey and Broderip.

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At Vintage & Rare we are not just into vintage guitars. We’re also into other instruments. Therefore we are lucky to have the piano enthusiast Ric Overton write guest blogs for us. He has been so kind to share how he fell in love with the piano and what he is doing today. We welcome Ric in our community and look forward to his many blog post in the future.

Passionate about the Piano!

It’s hard for some people to understand how I could have fallen in love with an instrument, but, I am in love with the piano. Of course, I like piano music and I enjoy practically every style of music under the sun, but, I love the piano itself. Let me explain:

Several years ago I worked for Baldwin Piano Manufacturing in Arkansas, United States. My first week of training I was asked to work in the factory so that I could capture the story of how Baldwin pianos were made and the steps that we went through to get the finished product and that is when it all began. I was instantly smitten with the process of how it started all the way to the finished product. There are an incredible amount of hours of labor that go into the making of the piano, the hardwood cabinets, the action, stringing, plate, etc. and to think that a person and not a machine actually has to touch each and every part made me realize that what I was playing on would have been touched by perhaps a hundred people or more. These people had families and lives of their own and while they would most likely never be heard of outside of their community, the world would hear their work.

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Meet John Dutra. He has been drumming for fifteen years and making custom drums for the last ten. He’s the owner and creator of the world renowned Guerrilla Drum Making DVD, which helps the average Joe build his own professional custom drum set with no tools and no experience. He’s also heavily involved with live gigging, studio gigs, and teaching drums. Lastly, he is the newest addition to our rooster of competent guest-bloggers, and this is his first contribution. Enjoy:

The minimalists guide to knowing your drum shells and designing the perfect sound.

Let’s jump right in and start talking about the most important factor in the sound design of drums: drum shells!

Any drummer who’s played a variety of drum types knows that the shells are the meat and potatoes… the heart and soul of the drum. It’s where the true sound of the drum comes from. Other factors like heads, snare wires, hoops, bearing edges and tuning styles affect the tone of drums as well. But remember… with good shells those factors help boost your sound and with bad shells, you’re dependent on those things for a good sound. I’ll take the former, thanks.

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Guitarz.blogspot.com was the first guitar-blog on the web. Thus, we here at Vintage & Rare.com figured that it would be a good idea to have founder and writer Gavin Wilson write a couple of guest-posts on our blog. Below is the first one:

Yamaha SG-3 from 1966

As the author of the internet’s longest running guitar blog (at guitarz.blogspot.com – started in August 2002 – seriously there were NO other guitar blogs then) I am of course a keen guitar enthusiast, even if I do tend to find myself writing about guitars more than actually playing them. Over the years I have bought and sold many guitars; I have owned well over 50 guitars over the years, and currently have a modest collection of approximately 20 instruments. Of these I have three that I would call vintage guitars. Obviously this would depend on your definition of “vintage”; such instruments need to be of a certain age, but also there should be an element of desirability.

In the summer of last year I decided that rather than put some of my savings into a supposedly high interest savings account (not that the banks were offering very high interest rates at the time), I would instead go out and buy a cool old vintage guitar; not necessarily as an investment, but certainly as something that should at least keep its value. So, I planned a trip to London’s very own Tin Pan Alley, Denmark Street, which has a number of guitar shops all squeezed into one small area. The night before I planned to go, I was watching a TV programme on BBC4 called “Guitar Heroes” featuring clips from the BBC’s archives of various legendary guitarists doing their thing. One clip was of the late Link Wray performing the song “Midnight Lover” from his “Stuck In Gear” album (which sadly has never been re-issued on CD, but it is well worth tracking down on vinyl). You can view this 1975 clip, originating from the BBC’s late night music show “The Old Grey Whistle Test”, here:

Aside from Link Wray’s wonderful playing – his segment was the only thing on the programme that had really grabbed my attention – I was also drawn to the red guitar he was playing. Just what WAS that guitar? It was Jazzmaster/Jaguar-like but with much pointier horns. My initial reaction was that it was probably Japanese, maybe something like a 1960s Greco or Guyatone.

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Have you heard of Figment?

It’s an online game where users can create their own, non-existing bands with whole albums with track lists, album covers, and long descriptions of how this band would sound – if it was real! The most creative and interesting bands and albums get the most fans and attention, and are rewarded with ‘lucres’, the Figment game money users can buy stuff with.

On Figment, it’s “All bands, no music“.

Figment decided to give their users a challenge and promised a bucket full of lucres for the winner:

“We’ve noticed that many of our players are musicians in real life.  We’ve also noticed that many of you are great writers, who can easily and concisely write about your love of music, real and fake.  So for our first Figment Challenge we’re looking for one player who owns a vintage instrument and is willing to write about why they love that instrument, and how playing it has inspired the bands they create on Figment.”

The winner of the challenge is formerwageslave aka Remy Brecht.  He owns this 1971 Gibson SG: