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tegs07
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Fairly mediocre instruments from your youth are seen as desirable collectors items.

Some of the prices on eBay and Gumtree for old no-brand MIJ and Korean guitars are madness. Particularly when companies like Harley Benton are nearly giving away some pretty decent instruments.

For example my mate had one of these https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/174209968564

From memory it weighed a ton and the electrics sounded like trapped bees, but maybe he had a duff one?

 

 

 

Edited by Rich
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To be fair there are some gems out there. My favourite bass is a late 70’s MIJ Hondo Professional (No sniggering at the back). It’s a 3 piece body with Dimarzio pickups bought for £28 ten years ago. Once I had stripped the lacquer off the neck ( it had been applied with a mop by the looks of it) and replaced the wiring, it is a joy to play and sounds great.

Edited by tegs07
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I had a godawful plywood Satellite short scale bass back in 1986. Cost me £60 at the time which was £60 too much. 

Around 2000 I remember seeing it in a secondhand shop - my actual bass with the same strings on it - and the geezer wanted £120 for it. Swore it was a cool old Japanese thing. It really really wasn’t... 

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This Antoria is for sale near me. It looks lovely but £550?

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/205914214547293/?ref=facebook_story_share

I had one given to me in pieces 20yrs ago. I put it together apart from a missing pickup and sold it to cash converters for £50 and thought I'd got a result. 

If everyone kept their old tat, old tat wouldn't be valuable. 

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47 minutes ago, tegs07 said:

To be fair there are some gems out there. My favourite bass is a late 70’s MIJ Hondo Professional (No sniggering at the back). It’s a 3 piece body with Dimarzio pickups bought for £28 ten years ago. Once I had stripped the lacquer off the neck ( it had been applied with a mop by the looks of it) and replaced the wiring, it is a joy to play and sounds great.

One of my favorite basses is my Matsumoku built Rick 4001 copy, it's an Aria but could've had any name trussrod cover screwed on. 

I also spent a serious amount of time doing up a 70s Kay. 

Some of us are weird. 😁

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Any of those godawful guitars of the 70’s which people try to sell for unrealistic prices - Satellite, Audition, Kay etc. I would imagine anyone who buys these at seriously inflated prices are just trying to recreate their happy youthful memories when presumably they knew no better. They were sh*t then as they are now, really doesn’t make them worth £200. Same goes for those woeful cheap Les Paul copies people try to pass off as being as good as the real thing, despite the bolt on necks and single coil pickups under humbucker sized covers etc. for £400. Just buy a new Harley Benton / Vintage etc model and save your money.

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Makes you wonder if this is all a bubble (no, not that sort) and, like any other inflated market, there will eventually be a crash.

It's not just the tat that's gone crazy. In 2005 I was routinely buying beautiful vintage Hofners for less than £200 a piece, occasionally pushing the boat right out and investing £300 or £350. Those same basses now sell, equally routinely, for £800 - £1500. 

Mind you, in 2007-09 I was also routinely swapping vintage Wal basses with @Clarky and, whilst prices varied of course, we were typically looking at £1800 - £2000. Seriously. Look at them now.

And, picking up on the comment from @casapete, new stuff just keeps getting better and cheaper. Even some of the big names. The best Rickenbacker I've ever owned wasn't my 1983 4003 or my 1974 4001 fretless, it's my current 4003s5 which I bought new last year for less than £2k.

 

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27 minutes ago, Happy Jack said:

And, picking up on the comment from @casapete, new stuff just keeps getting better and cheaper. Even some of the big names.

 

I had this discussion a short while back with someone who was going to pay £380ish for a (far from pristine) Squire Silver series MIJ jazz and wouldn’t have it that the MIM Squire classic vibe that was nearly the same price new was a decent buy. He was adamant that Squires now were all cheap junk and CV’s, Vintage modified etc all fit in that junk category.

I had a MIJ silver series back in the day. Nothing wrong with it but nothing spectacular either....

Edited by tegs07
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54 minutes ago, Maude said:

I also spent a serious amount of time doing up a 70s Kay.

 

34 minutes ago, casapete said:

Any of those godawful guitars of the 70’s which people try to sell for unrealistic prices - Satellite, Audition, Kay etc.........They were sh*t then as they are now, really doesn’t make them worth £200. 

I'd just like to add (to save any scrap of integrity I might have) that I bought and did my Kay for very little money as a fun project. I'd never expect anyone to pay sensible money for it and I quite like just how bad it is, in a macabre sideshow kind of way. 

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5 minutes ago, Maude said:

I bought and did my Kay for very little money as a fun project. I'd never expect anyone to pay sensible money for it and I quite like just how bad it is, in a macabre sideshow kind of way. 

That’s OK I am currently trying to complete a project build that marries a Hondo2 neck to a Schecter Omen body but with Jazz. Pickups.. totally pointless ...

The result of being unable to resist sub £40 items on eBay!

Edited by tegs07
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Remember when 70s Fenders were considered the absolute nadir of Fender's production history?

When I stated playing in the late 80s they were so badly regarded they were almost like the bogeyman of musical instruments.

Look at the prices they get now though.

Edited by Cato
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Values almost seem meaningless at the moment, and bottom line of course is that something is worth exactly what someone else is prepared to pay for it.  It’s not just instruments; if you go into any “antique” shop you’ll see tat that a few years ago would have been considered only fit for a skip described as “vintage kitsch”, and in the car world of course any shonky old 1970’s rustbucket is a “rare and desirable classic” o.O

The trick is of course to buy something that appeals to you that is also deeply unfashionable at the time (so salt away a few Warwicks now.....).   I’m lucky enough to have acquired most of my vintage gear that way.

Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be........B|

 

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1 minute ago, Cato said:

Remember when 70s Fenders were considered the absolute nadir of Fender's production history?

When I stated playing in the late 80s they were so badly regarded they almost like the bogeyman of musical instruments.

Look at the prices they get now though.

It’s fascinating isn’t it? 15 years ago I’d pay £500 for a precision and break it down for parts. Never had a decent one of that vintage.

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3 minutes ago, Cato said:

Remember when 70s Fenders were considered the absolute nadir of Fender's production history?

When I stated playing in the late 80s they were so badly regarded they almost like the bogeyman of musical instruments.

Look at the prices they get now though.

When I started playing in the late ‘70’s I remember the local secondhand music shop usually had a few 1960’s Fenders in, sub £200.   Needless to say, I only wanted an Ibanez the same as Sting’s.    If only....

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As I mentioned on the thread from the other week about Squier JV's, everything second-hand is either 'rare' if it's no longer in production, or 'vintage' if it's much more than 10 years old. 

As I also said on that thread, most of this is because the internet gives everyone a view of the whole market but they only look at the highest prices being asked and so expect the same, rather than taking time to assess each item on its merits. Not that unrealistic prices weren't being asked in pre-internet times but most people were a bit more realistic and everything wasn't hyped to within an inch of its life/penny of its price.

The 1970s is generally regarded as not being Fender's finest period of craftsmanship: sloppy neck-fitting, thick poly finishes etc. Now, whilst this won't apply to everything made throughout that decade, I've noticed that any 1970s Fender being sold by a dealer is always 'a good one' (even if they acknowledge that there were lots of 'not good ones' from then) and is, of course, 'vintage' with a price to match. It wasn't that long ago that you had to almost give-away 70's Fenders. Just seen @Cato and @Burns-bass have said this same thing.

As @tegs07 says, there are some gems, it's a case of taking each instrument on its merit. Yes, a lot of the 'beginner/student' stuff from a while ago was fairly rubbish and the standard has really picked up now. The level above this is where some good stuff can be found: I picked up a Maison (Korean brand) LP copy for not much and it's really good quality: all-solid woods, well made. OK, the pickups and tuners could maybe benefit from being replaced but it's not essential. Out of interest, I'll have to look if anyone is asking some outrageous price for these. 

As a few others have said, are people paying these asking prices? 

 

Edited by KevL
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A lad I went to school with c1990 had an Aria SB1000 that he'd picked up for pennies as his first 'starter' bass.

I always liked that guitar but I'm genuinely surprised to see them go for four figures these days.

I wonder if he's still got it?

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A year or two back I saved one of those early 70s MIJ Epiphone EA260 hollow body basses from going in a skip. I thought it would make an interesting project but it was an absolute dog. It was almost unplayable whatever I tried. Additionally half the binding was missing and the body was split & warped.

I stuck it on ebay for a £20 start price, spares or repairs thinking it might make £20-£30 I didn't have before.

It sold for nearly £300 😲

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2 minutes ago, fretmeister said:

When you forget the difference between "you're" and "your"?

 

Sorry. I'm not normally a grammar nazi but that was too easy. Right in the title as well.

Sorry that’s what happens when you type on a small phone...

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Reading this thread reminded me of the Shaftsbury Les Paul copy I purchased second-hand in the 70’s, I paid £50 for it at the time.

About ten years ago I donated it to a local charity shop, the following morning it was in the window for £80 and when I looked later that day, it was sold, I was pleased at the time because I didn’t want it any more, and the charity shop made a some money from it.

But then I started googling Shaftsbury guitars and I came across this, whether it sold for £899 I will never know, but maybe I should have held on to it a bit longer. 🤔

What makes it worse is the fact that the guitar pictured looks very much like the one I had, the reason I say that is because when I bought it, the jack socket wasn't the original, it was a homemade oblong silver one, exactly like the one in the picture, the rest of the hardware was gold.

Shaftesbury Guitars

12 October 2017  · 

Check out this vintage 70's Shaftesbury Les Paul we've got in stock! 

Produced in Japan within the ibanez factory this guitar features:

-Traditional style double binding

-Original 70s pickups 

-Bolt on neck (Unique for les Paul shape)

-Rose wood finger board

-Block inlays 

This guitar screams and has similar tone and characteristics of an old Les Paul however you won't have to sell your kidney to take this one home! 

Grab yourself a real vintage guitar for just £899!

Shaftsbury Les Paul.jpg

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