if it's 30 years old it is vintage. Some people will pay a lot of money for vintage stuff, in good condition. If it's not in working order, it's worth far less.

 

if it's 30 years old it is vintage.

Where did you come up with that number? As far as I'm concerned there has to be some intrinsic value to an item either by superior performance or different characteristics or by its rarity before an item becomes vintage. Otherwise its just old.
I wonder what I could get for 70's Jen Crybaby or my 80's Boss CE-2?

 

Yea, it's crazy, but it's vintage and people are paying that kind of coin for it. Does an eighties DS1 sound different then an off the shelf , new one? WTF do I know.

 

Cups, I was wondering the same. I know I read a few years ago that the MIJ vintage ones were a collectors item of some sort, but I haven't taken the time to try out a new model with my old one. One thing I can say, I haven't used it much over a number of years, but I kept it around because I absolutely love the sound of it. I plug it in every 5 or so years and it sounds wicked every time...... in multiple different amps. I deemed it a "keeper" a while back (probably 20 years or so).

 

All I know is that a vintage rat sounds much better than the new or modded one- vintage chip or not.

That 85 Whiteface doesn't sound as.nice.as the 81/82 big box ones.

 

My strat is almost 30...still not worth what I paid for it new...probably never will be

 

as soon as you swap anything on a vintage item, the value drops - even if it's a good upgrade.

 

Yeah. I've spent many years asking guitar tech to give the LP a paint job. They have always nixed that idea. Right from the get go. Even when I got the PUP changed years ago he gave me the old one that didn't work and told me not to lose it. I got the hint.

Re: the Boss ds-1 MIJ. I found a chart of serials and figured out that mine was made in August of 1986. So it won't be vintage till next year. But I'm a geek about this shit and had to figure it out. For those who want to know, They started the serials in July of '72 with 00, went up by 1 every month, and ended back at 00 in November of 1980. So I counted from Nov 1980 to 69 (the first 2 #'s of the serial on the battery compartment), and ended up at Aug 1986 for the number 69. Initially they started at 4 #'s but later (mine) had 6 numbers. The last 4 #'s are the number of units made.

My serial is 691600.

 

If they are stock and in good condition, you'll get some coin from a collector.

20-30 years is what vintage price guides go by.

 

If they are stock and in good condition, you'll get some coin from a collector.

I know the Jen is worth some money. However I have no intentions of selling it. It was a Christmas present from my father back 1974 or so. I'll be buried with it, and my Ovation Breadwinner.
The Boss Chorus is my second one. I sold the original and couldn't find anything I liked better, so I went "vintage" and bought another when I got the chance.

 

Dorian, as long as it's made in Japan it's collectible. Isn't there a thing about the colour of the screws that add to the collectibility?
Also, new ds1 are available for about 40$ aren't they? Might be worth an experiment?

 

The color of the screw is what gave me a kick to check out the actual date. I was reading about the DS-1 on a bunch of sites, and it became apparent that a much lauded one was what they called "the MIJ silver screw" and the "MIJ Black Label". I had just checked the back of the pedal, and it was MIJ and had the black label (entire bottom of pedal-had to research that a bit too), but mine didn't have the silver screw.....it was a black screw. So that left me scatching my head as the silver screw ones were the first ones made. Of course curiosity took over, so I had to find out what I actually had. I'm not sure what year they stopped the metal screws and went with the black ones. I'm thinking perhaps that November of 1980 date when the serials went back to 00, but I'm not sure.

There was also something about the length of the dash between the DS - 1....I think the dash was longer in the 1st ones or something.

 

Based on interactions with customers and musicians, I always assumed "vintage" meant pre-80's gear in the music world. No real reason, other than that seemed to be an imaginary line where people considered anything post-1980 to be too "modern" sounding. The only explanations I can come up with for why "vintage" is generally sought after is that the buyer is a collector, or the gear has some sort of sentimental value. I've tried mega expensive vintage gear and it didn't sound or feel any better to me than something new off the shelf. It was just, different.

Find gear that inspires you and play through it. Doesn't matter when it was made.

If you want to get technical, "vintage" is just a term used to define the original date of manufacturing. You can buy a wine that is 2010 vintage. The term doesn't necessarily mean "old". But, like most subcultures, musicians have their own unofficial definitions of words.

 

Reverb calls 'pre-80's' vintage. That makes sense to me.

Recently, I noticed sellers on eBay calling 3 year old Muff Pi's 'vintage' because it was a model that has been updated or replaced. That doesn't make sense to me.

 

Here's a cool video on the Vintage Proco RAT and the late 70's DS-1 (silver screw). Both sound amazing IMO.

 

For me, the Rat is nicer than the DS-1.

 

IMO, 'vintage' has become a new marketing term, like 'virtually'. These words, in a marketing context, seem to have changed their original meaning and now are seen as very positive attributes. Doesn't matter if its true or accurate, as long as someone thinks its better than the alternative. If offered two choices, the buyer will always buy the 'vintage' or 'virtually spot-free' version of the product. "Oh yes, we are the sheeple, running in the race, buying up the bargains in the ol' marketplace....."

 

Eh, blanket generalizations don't really work...

 

Think of pedals like coin-collecting. Certain coins have value not just because they are old, but because there is something unique about them. That uniqueness might be that there was an error in their production that was quickly caught and fixed, or it may be that there simply weren't very many of them made. (a strategy that the Canadian mint seems to be employing...they seem to change the quarter about every 3 weeks as near as I can tell).

So, "vintage" stuff, for me, is something that is rare, by virtue of small-scale production, or may have been produced in reasonably large quantities but either used components that are no longer in production, or employed a design with quirks that are no longer part of the stock version.

For instance, the earliest versions of the EHX Small Stone used the same chips that were used in later versions, well into the 90's, but had a certain design quirk/difference that altered the form of the sweep as you turned up the rate. The specific year when that quirk disappeared is not some magic cutoff date, like "anything made in the 70's or earlier", but specific to the product. The Boss OD-1 (a decent overdrive and the precursor to the SD-1) was designed one way early on, and then the design was changed. I made myself a clone of the first issue and quite like it, though I've never compared it directly to the 2nd version. I don't know what year Boss made the change in the design, but both versions are well over 30 years old, and scratched up, when you can find them. I suppose they are both "vintage", but one is more vintage than the other.

If "Japanese" Boss pedals were made differently or used different components than non-Japanese, then that might make a difference. F'rinstance, the DM-2 was produced in two versions. One used the MN3005 delay chip (and MN3101 clock driver), and the later version used the MN3205 delay chip (and MN3102 clock driver). The MN3005 was able to run off a higher supply voltage than the 3205, although the pedal itself was set up to run off 9v so the potential of the chip was largely untapped. Some folks claim to hear differences between the two chip versions, though I have no idea if they are comparing the two chips at the same lower supply voltage, or listening to an MN3005 run at +15V and a 3205 run at +5V. Certainly the rest of the DM-2 circuit (including the Waza-craft version) is largely identical. Is the Japanese version the one with the 3005, and non-Japanese the one using the 3205? I have no idea. But certainly being made in this country or that has no bearing on the sound of something made on a printed circuit board using industry-standard components if it uses the same general design and components.

 

Thanks mhammer. Good rundown there. I read that the chip in the original (highly vaunted) DS-1's were one of the ways of telling the difference. Not sure when it changed. Apparently the originals (MIJ), and maybe later, were the Toshiba single Op-Amps. The later ones (MIT) had dual op-amps in them. I guess some people MOD the newer ones by disabling one of the op-amp's to make it vintage sounding. Keep in mind I just dug this info up in about 5 mins, so I might sound totally out to lunch to you..Haha

 

No, it's relatively accurate. The earlier DS-1 did have a different (and now harder to find) chip. Whether it was the chip that made/makes any difference is a whole other thing.

In some instances, the entire character of a distortion pedal rests on the clipping threshold of the specific diodes used, and whatever tone-shaping was applied prior to and following the clipping. HOWEVER...a few things to keep in mind.

All chips have a limit to their "voltage swing". So, for example, many chips can only provide an untainted output that "swings" within 1.5V of the power rails. A pedal powered by 9v - whether battery or high-end power brick - is generally only able to provide an output that swings between 1.5V and 7.5V, essentially 3.0V either side of the mid-point of 4.5V. If I take an input signal of 150MV peak-to-peak (not unreasonable for a humbucker) and multiply that by 46x, I will have reached the maximum voltage swing of the chip. Any additional gain applied simply flattens the signal against that ceiling. Most overdrives and distortions will have maximum gains WELL in excess of 46x. Even the rather tame Tube Screamer tops out at 118x. So part of what you are hearing from the pedal IS the clipping diodes. But another part may also be the manner in which the chip itself clips when it runs up against headroom limitations. I know that folks who make themselves an MXR Distortion+ clone will often comment that there seems to be no way to make the damn thing sound clean, even if they remove the clipping diodes.

So chips changes can make a difference. On the other hand, sometimes the characteristics of a chip stem not from what the chip does, but what it doesn't do. The classic Rat uses an LM308 chip. The max gain for the Rat is in the thousands...really. When the 308 is pushed that high it runs out of the ability to reproduce high frequency content. It'll manage low frequency stuff fine, but asking it to do anything over 1khz-2khz is asking for the moon. That's part of what gives the Rat its characteristic sound.

Just how much of the DS-1 comes from the TA7138, and how much comes from other parts of the circuit, I have no idea. My own view tends to be that even when there ARE differences, they tend to disappear when the volume knob on the amp goes up. At that point, separating speaker properties from output transformer properties from tube properties from everything else becomes near impossible.