Underappreciated
This 60 Gretsch 6120 is a great player that will do just about anything a 335 will do except intonate properly. That’s really the only weakness of this “second tier” vintage guitar. Buy one for around $10K but don’t expect it to appreciate like a Gibson or a Fender
As a dealer, I get to play a lot of guitars. Most of them are Gibsons and Fenders which shouldn’t be surprising as these are the brands that lead the vintage market for electric guitars. Most players understand that there are many guitars that are every bit as good as these but they just don’t get the love and appreciation (both kinds) that these two companies get. You can add Martin to this category if we include acoustics.
Gretsch is a great example. Many guitars get their cachet from having been played by a revered player. Eric Clapton played a 335 for a very important part of his career, so the 64 ES-335 (especially in red) became a very desirable vintage investment and collectors piece. Oddly, the 63 Gretsch Country Gentleman as played by George Harrison during a very important part of his career, isn’t considered a good investment and, by many, a good player. I think they are decent players but they don’t really come close to a 64 335. That said, there are Gretsch’s that are deserving of a place in any vintage collection. They are not, for the most part, great investment pieces. The best example of this (in my opinion) is the 6120, especially those with the trestle bracing. I’ve had a number of ’60 and ’61 6120’s that have been as good as any guitar I’ve owned. Unfortunately virtually all of them have a Bigsby which is not something I’m fond of and they have a bar type bridge which is impossible to intonate. These 6120’s are not cheap but compared to a 64 ES-335, they aren’t exactly pricey. A clean Bigsby 64 ES-335 will cost you around $25,000 to $30,000. A 59 to 61 6120 will cost you less than half that. I also like the Duo Jets with the DeArmond pickups. I like the 6120’s with DeArmonds as well. I don’t like anything made by Gretsch after 1962. The quality suffered from 62 on probably due to too many orders and not enough skilled workers to fill those orders. After the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, the sales of Gents went through the roof. Today, a 63-64 Gent will cost you anywhere from $4000 to $7000 depending on condition (bindings are a big problem) and which pickups it has (two Filtertrons-like George’s- is more desirable than one Filtertron and one Supertron). Build quality after 65 gets inconsistent and somewhat dicey.
One of my favorites of the “second tier” vintage guitars is the Epiphone Sheraton from 1959 to 1965. Until recently, you could get a blonde for around $10K. The later ones with mini humbuckers are less expensive and great guitars. Still a bargain if you ask me.
There are a lot of other American brands that were popular and highly regarded during the 50’s to mid 60’s. Guild, Rickenbacker, Epiphone (USA) and even Harmony for those with a limited budget. There were also non American guitars like Vox, Burns, Hagstrom and Hofner that were popular but perhaps not considered, in hindsight, as particularly good players. Vintage Guilds from the late 50’s like the Aristocrat, the Duane Eddy and the Thunderbird can run with the big boys for a fraction of the price. A Gibson made Epiphone made from ’59 to ’69 is nearly identical to many of the Gibsons built by the same workers in the same factory as the Gibson we all love. I’ll take a Sheraton from 59 to 65 over most guitars other than a 335, 345 or 355. I’ll take an Epiphone Wilshire over any P90 guitar made with the Gibson name on it.
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Rickenbacker is kind of a special case because they owned the 12 string market during this era but only had a tiny portion of the six string market. It always shocks me (yes, shocks) that a Ricky 325 isn’t a much more valuable guitar. They are rare, it was played by John Lennon (and John Fogerty) and they are really good players if you can manage a short scale guitar. I bought one not too long ago for $8000. There are a few on the market now at $10,000 to $13,000. I’m surprised they aren’t five times that much.
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Simply having been played by a famous guitar player isn’t enough by itself to place a guitar into the vintage stratosphere. It seems you have to be a Gibson or a Fender and have a famous player on board to get there. There are holes in that theory. Les Paul wasn’t a guitar hero to my generation. Three Beatles played Epiphone Casinos and they have, to an extent, reached rarefied vintage status but the other Beatle guitars simply have not. Hofner basses were popular for a minute in the mid to late 60’s. But it didn’t last. Same with Country Gentlemen. Ricky 325’s were never all that popular. A famous surf band called The Ventures played Fenders until they made a deal with a little company called Mosrite. The Mosrite guitars were prominently displayed on every Ventures album after the deal was made. They were very expensive (more than the equivalent Fender) and never gained the following that Mosrite surely hoped for. I played one from 1969 until 1974. The neck is so slim that it’s nearly impossible to play without altering your fingering and hand position. But they sound great and look cooler than almost anything out there. I still have one. They are not expensive. You can get a 64-66 Ventures Model for $4000 to $6000. An early one (set neck, side jack, body binding) will cost you twice that but the cool factor is even higher.
This is my personal Mosrite sidejack from 1963. My short, stubby fingers are ill suited for this guitar but the cool factor, in my opinion, is off the charts.
You have a lot of good points in this post just as usual. But I do not agree about your thoughts about the Rickenbacker. Many years ago, I owned a Rickenbacker 1996 (The export version of the 325). It was around the same time I bought my first Les Paul, a 20th anniversary Custom in black. All I wanted to do, was to become Jimmy Page. That never happened, and I don´t want that anymore. But if you want that, or if you want to sound like any of the classic Les Paul players, like Peter Green og Paul Kossoff, a 325 is NOT the instrument you need. Yes a 325 can be fun, but it is VERY different to a Les Paul, and switching between the 2 was not easy for me, due to the very different necks. So although the 325 was nice, it had to go. Also iI believe a factor in vintage Rickenbackers not being that expensive, is that you can still buy a brand new Rickenbacker, for a resonable price, and get something that is very close to the quality of a vintage one. So why pay way more, to get an instrument that is not clearly superior to a new one. With Gibson I´ve found it to be very different. With even the best Custom shop guitars, I´ve found it impossible to find one, that matches even an average fifties Gibson. And the best vintage Gibsons are just in my opinion wildly superior to any modern Gibson. And thus you have to get an old one, if you´ve gotten to know a good vintage Gibson well. In the late eighties-early nineties I was lucky enough to own a 58 burst for around 4 years. That is the reason I can´t imagine ever getting a modern Gibson.
I don’t think I compared a Rickenbacker 325 to a Les Paul. Don’t make the assumption that everybody finds the Les Paul to be the pinnacle of electric guitar goodness. Not everybody wants to be Jimmy Page or Paul Kossoff. Certainly not me. I’ve owned plenty of Les Pauls both vintage and new and they are clearly nothing like a Rickenbacker. They are also nothing like a Stratocaster. Still excellent guitars-you just have to judge them with a different set of parameters. I do agree with your assessment of modern Rickenbackers being very close to vintage ones. It’s a very astute observation and I should have made it myself in the post. I wonder if the same could be said for modern Fenders. I know it can’t be said for modern 335’s.
Modern Fenders – IMHO – are really quite, how shall we say it nicely, not very good. They seem to use poor quality nitro / poly which makes it feel like a toy. I tend to think the 7.25″ radius was never a good idea and the same with thin frets. And if you look closely at Fenders, soooo many have the E strings super close to the edges where your fingers want to push them off over the rounded radius.
I’ve had a Strat style guitar made for me and requested a flatter radius and 1.69″ at the nut with medium frets. It works and plays fantastic.
The handmade guitars by Danocaster these days are also killer.
@Lars Andreassen While I agree that the 325 is a polarizing funny little guitar that is only known because of John Lennona and is diffcult to play, I’m going to strongly disagree with your take on vintage Rickenbackers vs. modern examples. Have you sat and compared the two? The only thing I collect as much as Gibson ES 3x5s are vintage Rickenbackers, they are drastically different from modern equivalents. Play a 60s 330 and it’s a resonant, chiming delight and a brand new 330 feels a lot clunkier, with high gain pickups and dead sounding tops. And a vintage 330 is around 3.5K in great condition, barely twice the price of a brand new 330. I think if you had a vintage and modern Rickenbacker side-by-side it would surprise you how different they are
While there is no doubt a difference between a vintage 335 and a custom shop reissue, Gibson has closed that gap more than any point since the golden era. They’re building fantastic guitars right now that do a great job emulating their vintage counterparts at attainable prices.
Good article, Charlie. Things like Rickenbacker and Gretsch were my gateway drug to vintage guitars in general because they were relatively affordable. That kicked the door open for Gibson and Fender later. There’s an even lower priced vintage tier than the ones in this thread, such as Guild semi-hollows and the Ampeg Dan Armstrong model (4K all day long), excellent iconic guitars made in the U.S.
OK: I didn´t mean to imply that you said that a Rickenbacker 325 and a vintage LP is the same. But I think it is very commeon for us, at least in our formative years a players, to want to play what our heroes played. And while a 59 burst is certainly not the only guitar that is worth having, for many a LP is the ultimate, and the vintage ones just have that little extra magic that no modern guitar have. I believe that the only reason that vintage 3×5 prices are less insane than vintage LP prices, are that fever of the big guitar heroes played them,
But I doubt that the same goes for the Rickenbacker 325. Yes John Lennon was a hero to many, and so was John Fogerty. But were they heroes because of their guitar playing?. To me their vocals and songwriting is far more important than their guitar playing. And most players are not into the extreme short scale guitars. I don´t think I´ve ever seen anybody play a 3/4 LP Junior, and although a 3/4 Junior would look funny on Leslie West, I can´t really imagine it. I´d say the 325 is “cheap” because it´s a flawed design.
Collin: I´m not an expert on Rickenbacker, although I´ve owned a few vintage ones, and I´ve played quite a few newer ones. In my opiion a new one would be just as good as an old one, if they would just give us the toaster pickups and 21 fret necks. But yes, if I had to buy a Rick, I would probaply go for a vintage one, if I could find one for 3,5K (But that not gonna happen i Europe where I live). But we very much disagree on Gibson, I have tried very few Gibsons made after 1965 that I´d like to own
I’m thrilled to have some controversy here (we so rarely do). I’ve played Rickenbackers from the 50’s and 60’s and while I don’t feel that they are great guitars from a players standpoint, I do think the designs are quite beautiful. I think the Ricky 360 is one of the prettiest guitars ever made. Where i yield to you and others is in evaluating newer Rickenbackers. I simply haven’t played that many. I had a Hoffs 350 that I really liked. The overwound single coils and the humbucker in the bridge sounded wonderful. The guitar was comfortable to play but would I play it every day and gig with it? Probably not. No Rickenbacker that I’ve ever played stands up to a vintage 335. That goes for Gretsch and Guild as well. I don’t count the Gibson Epiphones because they were built by the same people (and they are great). I don’t play many modern Fenders either. I had a Custom Shop Strat perhaps a decade ago and it seemed pretty good but, sure enough, the high E string kept slipping off the side of the fingerboard. To be fair, however, some of the vintage ones do that as well. Keep disagreeing with me. This is great.