by cheepaxes » Wed Mar 17, 2010 1:20 pm
My standard answer is that the term comes from wine making and refers to when the wine was made. Applying that to guitars, a guitar becomes vintage as soon as it's made. You could have a guitar that's of a '60s vintage, or '70s, or 1897 or 1997 or 2010. Using this definition, the term vintage doesn't reall mean anything without knowing the actual year (or at least the rough time period). Or, put another way, the actual age of the instrument is what has meaning, not whether we can apply the (somewhat arbitrary) term "vintage" to it.
That's my answer and I'm sticking with it. :)
-Scott