Lately I’ve been captivated with vintage music equipment. As I expand my limited collection, I’ve come to understand that certain equipment, such as amplifiers, were built better before we learned how to integrate everything into a computer chip. What is it that accounts for this gap in quality? In the 80′s and 90′s, as manufacturers looked for new solutions to drive costs down, the use of printed circuit boards and integrated circuits became commonplace. Classic tones to spacey echoes and other additional features could be added for relatively little and at a touch of a button; a nice trade-off. For better or worse, what was lost along the way was high quality transformers and point to point hand wiring of the circuits, amongst other things. These days, the cost to build a piece of equipment in its original form is considerably steep and would need to sell for a price that the marketplace is unwilling to pay.

So what differentiates a vintage item from junk? I can’t imagine doing design work on an Apple IIe and I wouldn’t trade my lightning quick workstation for one. But I’ll gladly trade a shiny new guitar for a dinged up, belt buckle rash, worn out, crackly input ‘72 Fender!