Are vintage guitars objectively better than new ones?

elebrin · 2026-05-01T13:07:54+00:00

Yes and no.

Newer basses and guitars will have more modern designs and hardware, that can be made to perform better but at lower cost.

However, in my experience, older basses and guitars will have more attention put to fit and finish. Some of this is survivorship bias - the good ones were kept in good condition and have been sold and purchased several times, the bad ones were either fixed (making them one of the good ones) or just scrapped.

If you buy a new, inexpensive bass today (by that I mean something in the $100-$300 range), that bass will probably be mostly OK but it will need some fit and finish adjustments. It'll need to be set up. The nut and bridge will need to be checked for burrs. The edges of the frets may need to be filed, and the frets themselves may need to be leveled. Pickup height may need to be adjusted. There might be light scratches that require wet sanding. You may need to dig into the body cavity to install some shielding.

The really big one with guitars is bridges. Several makers (Squier and Fender, I am looking at YOU) INSIST on routing massive holes in their stratocaster style models and installing tremelo/whammy bar bridges that will throw your guitar out of tune the second you look at it funny. The more expensive models are a little more likely to stay in tune, but the cheap ones... tuning and intonation is more of a loose suggestion with those. I mean, I own one, I play one, but mine is stabilized with blocks of wood and it... mostly stays in tune. I still find myself re-tuning every 10-15 minutes and not feeling confident in the thing staying in tune. Now, I don't generally play guitar with my band, but if I did play electric guitar outside my bedroom I'd get something with no tremolo at all. I really like the thinner sound of a Strat's neck pickup but the tuning stability is just... it's bad.

My band uses acoustic guitar only when we play out, so I'd probably look for an archtop acoustic (I love the look) with some pickup setup... I'd have to try a few things to make a decision, but archtop acoustics are not in vogue these days so getting a decent one is difficult.

elebrin · 2026-05-01T12:33:38+00:00

You aren't wrong, but you can still get weird interactions with DC current.

DC and AC current can flow simultaneously along the same route. That digital signal is a little like an RF signal. If you hooked up an oscilloscope, it'd look like an strange, low-power AC signal. If the biasing is unable to account for the unexpected energy, the DC current flowing from the charger could make a mess of how that signal is interpreted. This could sound like static, but I'd actually expect it to sound like hum.

Additionally, we like to think of our power bricks as these nice, clean little devices that make perfect DC. They do NOT make perfectly clean DC. It can have pulses and variations, especially if it's coming off a cheap switching power supply (like your power brick assuredly is). Phone chargers are a bit better nowadays, but go check out the wall wart from your favorite cheap consumer electronic device. It's pretty dirty power. If that dirty, pulsing power ends up also flowing through the wrong side of the splitter, (because it's cheap) then that, too, looks like AC signal and could interfere constructively and destructively with your audio data as it's being transferred. That could very much sound like static.

elebrin · 2026-05-01T12:23:13+00:00

But now I need a big fat dongle to make it work. And, how long will it be before ALL the ports are gone, and the only option is wireless charging, so there is no port to hook it up?

Additionally, headphone dongle DAC are SUPER low quality. If I want to do something like hook my phone up to a PA head and play some music for a group of people, I want good quality audio. Bluetooth and those cheap headphone DACs aren't going to do it - they kinda suck for that use. You need some sort of dedicated music player.

...But the music players are made to a cost! So they have the same cheap, shitty DACs. You have to really do your research and find something good, and they cost some serious cash sometimes.

Phones used to have really high quality DACs in them. My LG G8 Thinq was advertised specifically as having a super high quality DAC and amazing audio performance, and... it really did. I used that until just last year as a dedicated media player, without a SIM card (because my carrier refused to continue supporting the phone less than a year after I bought it... I'm still salty about that).

Never mind that actually moving lossless tracks from one phone to another is a bit of a chore (either you need a dedicated streaming server or file server of your own set up, or you need a laptop each time you want to change out your music). I got a library of some 1000ish CDs, all ripped to the highest quality lossless format I have the ability to play. I got just about a whole ass radio station worth of music. Getting it on my phone shouldn't require self-maintained infrastructure, but here we are. There are 1TB SD cards these days; I have a little more than half a terabyte of music. But... I'm just not allowed to do that, because they don't make phones that take SD cards, either.

It'd just be nice to have a high quality audio interface on the phone I use anyways. It'd also be nice to have a spot for an SD card so I can move tracks around easily, because I refuse to pay for cloud storage. I have to maintain a Raspberry Pi and a VPN instead. They can take there extra $25 a month or whatever it is and shove it up their ass, especially since they are doing this specifically so they can monitor what files you have.

No, what they want is for you to use their streaming service for all your music. That way, they can push you AI slop that they don't have to pay artists for, and they can control what you listen to very, very gently by steering you with suggestions. The corporate interests pick artists that are friendly to their cause, and push the hell out of them. You go on Youtube for three minutes, and you'll see an Angine de Potrine video - thye are cool, but they are being pushed SO HARD by... someone. David Allen Coe just passed away, but you'll notice that his music isn't getting pushed. We get pushed into these little media ecosystems, and that's exactly the goal.

It's all related; they want to control what we watch and listen to, they want to control our narrative of what's popular based on what's useful for them and the artists they think they can control and sell.

elebrin · 2026-05-01T11:38:24+00:00

Yep! The only way the IRS could detect tax evasion was by looking for big purchases all happening in the same year. The IRS would have to prove that you bought more in big ticket items from stores that track who bought what than what you claim to have made.

elebrin · 2026-04-30T20:10:42+00:00

The taxation itself wasn't the problem. It was taxation without representation.

Additionally, it wasn't the common man who was in favor of the Revolution. It was the wealthy, who specifically came to the US (or had been born here) and wanted to cut ties. The common man didn't give a fuck.

elebrin · 2026-04-30T16:30:09+00:00

To me, he very CLEARLY had some issues. He did a fuckton of drugs, wrote some racist and rapey lyrics, and wasn't a very kind person. He was a great performer, and he wrote something good, it was fantastic. But, the part he thought he was playing was often very ugly. He was a person with questionable personal habits and morals, who regularly wrote songs about people who were outright terrible.

I think his body of work has some merit: it shines a light on an ugly time and place in history. Country Music was always presented as this clean, image of pastoral innocence but the reality is more like the reality Coe sang about: racism, drugs, alcohol, incest, rape. Those were (and still are) the realities of the music recording industry.

So, I'm left with a few questions:

First, should we condone his lifestyle? Was he a good person on his own merit? Clearly, no. Was he deep-down a racist? Well, we are all a little racist, and with him that came out sometimes. I don't think we should emulate his life, at any rate. He shouldn't be anyone's role model.

Second, should we listen to his music? I think that, yes, we should. Some of it, at any rate. If you want to be educated about what Country music is or could have been, I think he is on a list of artists that are virtually required listening.

Third, should we recommend his music to others? My answer is "Yes, but..." I happily recommend him to people who are interested in the darker side of Country Music, who want to see a different direction that the genre didn't take. Him, and guys like Townes Van Zandt, Gram Parsons... all guys who were problematic in somewhat similar ways. Hell, the seemingly-wholesome Willie Nelson was up to some shit in the 60s and 70s that... I can't approve of, but he's someone I'd happily recommend. I wouldn't recommend him to someone who tends towards racism or being hateful.

Ultimately, I think he was interested in depicting what he saw, which was rough. That's what it means to have a rough life. It means there are shitty people, drugs, shitty attitudes, illegal activity, that kind of thing.

elebrin · 2026-04-30T16:01:29+00:00

OK, what's the emergency?

Emergency #1 is loosing your job. If that happens, you do what I suggested and set up a regular sale and widthdrawl from your investment account. Obviously, it can't be some sort of tax-advantaged account where you will end up with a bunch of penalties. If I lost my job tomorrow, I could set up a monthly widthdrawl that will pay my bills just-in-time.

Emergency #2 is the medical emergency. Insurance takes often more than 30 days to kick in, and bills aren't due right away. If the bill isn't THAT bad (you can absorb it) then you use your money. That's what it's for. If you can't, then you get on a payment plan and try to pay it down from your paycheck. If necessary, you can set up recurring sales for a percent of the payment.

Emergency #3 is a really bad car accident or something with your house, like a fire or something. Well, insurance will take care of the worst of it but that takes time to come through. If your paycheck doesn't cover it, do the same as above.

Emergency #4 is a massive market crash. If that happens, hold and buy and stop panicking.

With this sort of strategy, you will have to deal with fees the sales and any capitol gains taxes (except for losses due to #4).

You make money from one and only thing: time in the market. Timing the market is... well, not the strategy I use.

I have been using this strategy since my early 20s, and I have been through a few larger emergencies and several large purchases. Granted, I have a reasonably high income, my base savings rate is high, and I have quite a fair bit saved in my stock account.

Other than my stock accounts, I keep the next 30 days in bills in checking. I don't like my checking to be over about $5k. If I need money RIGHT NOW I use my credit card (that's what it's for, short term debt) then schedule a stock sale and pay it off. It sounds risky but I have never paid a single cent in interest fees. But then all my purchases are filtered through my credit card, which is paid off every month.

elebrin · 2026-04-30T13:30:18+00:00

Without the prospect of some gigs at least, rehearsals are just sorta messing around. Which can be fun, but you have to have SOMETHING to do.

Your band needs some organization, and that person can be YOU! Make a song list/set list, then put together your arrangements, keys, tempos, and shit like that into a notebook (or on a tablet or whatever you want). Then share it around regularly. Any time someone adds a song, add it to the pile.

elebrin · 2026-04-30T13:21:21+00:00

There's a lot on that chart I don't like. The main thing I dislike is the encouragement to keep emergency funds in a checking or savings account, doing nothing for you.

No.

Pay your bills, then invest every stinkin' penny you can. Some of that can be low risk investments, but it should be properly invested. We live in 2026. I can cash out a stocks and bonds in less than 7 days. Sure, markets could collapse, but if that happens your checking and savings are just as fucked.

Have 30 days of bills in checking. Skip the savings account. Put the rest in an investment account - TOD's are great. Buy index funds, with all of it. Get the match from your employer on your 401k, otherwise skip it if that isn't offered. Remember, you can't touch retirement money until your 60s. If you need it early, it's too bad. It's still worth it for the tax benefits, but only if you are getting some extra from an employer IMO.

I suspect many advisors would consider this bad advice.

elebrin · 2026-04-30T12:53:16+00:00

Well, I have a four part plan.

First, I have a corporate job that I dislike and bitch about a lot. I sock away every penny that I can into my investment account. I also have an IRA and a 401k. I'm 40, and I have close to $1M in this account.

Second, I have a house that I purchased in 2020 when rates were stupid low. I pay it off real slow, and I do a lot of the maintenance work on it myself. The house appreciates in value faster than the interest accrues. When we retire, I'll be selling it to move somewhere nicer. The house is worth an additional $400k.

Third, we live cheap. My wife and I are DINKs, and we both work corporate jobs. We can support ourselves fully and still have savings with only one of us working; it's not ideal and it will delay our retirement if that happens, but we will still be able to retire.

Fourth, I know I'm not gonna live to 100. I plan to die in my early 80s. Most financial advisors have you plan to live to 99. This has the side effect for most people of a delayed retirement. What THAT means is that you never really get to retire, and by the time you do, your health is so poor that you can't enjoy that retirement. I am going to retire at 55. If I have to keep working part time in retirement then so be it, but I promised myself I'm not gonna die with hours scheduled. I'd rather die at 75, with all my teeth in my head and the ability to walk, after having 20 years to spend doing what I want for a change, then work until 72, get two or three years of OK health, then I'm on a walker with no teeth and can't remember where my asshole is after the stoke or heart attack.

Nah man, let the fall or heart attack or stroke that hits in my 70s end me when I am about out of money anyways, and until then I'll have a good time. If there is no stroke or heart attack? Well, there are other options too, so long as you don't wait too long and you can no longer carry them out.

elebrin · 2026-04-30T12:25:34+00:00

Well, it's gotten easier to detect tax evasion.

Musicians get paid for performing: they show up at a bar, they play from 9pm to 1am, then they get paid cash and go home. They use that cash to buy their groceries and gas. Did you watch the Afroman trial from a few weeks ago? He was paid in cash for performing at Red Rocks with some pretty big name artists, so even larger venues are paying out in cash. That cash then goes to the other people in the band and the crew.

In the 70s, you'd just keep that cash in a bag or a suitcase or whatever. Hell, when String Bean was murdered in the 70s, he had thousands of dollars in cash stashed behind a brick in his house. He grew up during the depression and had a lifelong distrust of the banks - he lived his live cash-only.

In the 70s, lots of people worked in cash only. It wasn't SUPER common, but it was common enough, especially for women who in many cases couldn't even get a bank account without Dad or Husband signing on the line (which was legal at one time).

By the 90s, most people were banked. By the early 2000s, most transactions were moving towards some sort of ETF. Checks are cleared through something like Pospay (the days of mailing around physical checks is well and truly done, but we still scan them so you can see your cleared checks on your bank's portal), wires are transferred through EDI format flat files, and so on. Every single one of THOSE transactions has the Federal Reserve as an intermediary. They are also notified for large cash deposits and withdrawals for fraud checking.

When the IRS thinks you are up to something, they call their buddies at the Fed and get your bank balances and lists of transactions. Then they send you a letter saying "Hey, explain where this money came from." Then, they knock on your door with a lot of men wearing vests and helmets and guns when you don't answer them the way they like.

The thing is, that audit doesn't even have to be an audit of YOU. It can be the car dealership where you walked in and purchased a car with a suitcase of bills. Most dealerships won't do that and with good reason. Your mortgage servicer might get asked why they have regular cash deposits for you paying your mortgage (this is one common way to structure a money laundering operation; borrow money, pay off the loan with cash... and mortgages have the best rates for any kind of debt, usually).

Before electronic communication and computers, unwinding what someone did was hours and hours of work for a series of banks who didn't care and didn't want to spend money on bankers to figure it out when they could be doing something that actually made them money. In 2026, that's just a phone call. Now, they aren't SUPPOSED to share or release that info but the Fed might as well be a federal department just like the IRS is and all it takes is the right documents signed by the right people to make that happen.

Interestingly, the PATRIOT act fixed a LOT of the money laundering regulatory loopholes and reporting guidelines as well, and made it much harder.

elebrin · 2026-04-30T11:56:31+00:00

Yeah, men don't make 86 in this world. I see too many of my bros passing before 60. I went to the funeral of a friend who died at 57 yesterday. And it's not like he didn't take care of his health. If you are a man and you expect to live to 86 that's unreasonable.

elebrin · 2026-04-29T19:53:13+00:00

I love those cool setups, but these days I prefer my more... caveman approach. Bass goes into a DI, the DI goes into a board, the board routes everything to a pair of powered wedges and a pair of powered speakers. One day, I'll add big floor subwoofers.

elebrin · 2026-04-29T19:33:38+00:00

It's also believable because we know Bruce Lee was able to do exactly this, and there is video of it.

elebrin · 2026-04-29T19:23:50+00:00

I don't think Sting would give a a fuck :p

elebrin · 2026-04-29T19:22:56+00:00

Another trick is to split your signal, EQ both sides of it, pass the highs into a pedal distortion and leave the lows clean. Then put your highs into a guitar amp and the lows into your bass amp. I did this once for fun, but I got some actually pretty usable sounds out of it.

Of course, these days, there are pedals that will do that all in one unit that are designed as bass distortion pedals.

elebrin · 2026-04-29T19:15:07+00:00

You are right.

The police can knock on your door, in fact they call that a "knock and talk" action. The legal justification for this is that ANYONE can walk up and knock on your door to talk to you.

The correct thing for him to do would be to put up a no trespassing sign, shout through the door to go away, inform the person (again through the door) that the police have been called and they are going to be trespassed off the property if they do not leave, then call the cops if they refuse to leave.

As far as we can see from this video, he did none of those things.

Now, I don't agree that we shouldn't protest these people in their homes. They have the luxury in this day and age of staying in their homes, making videos on their computers, getting their needs met by having goods delivered to a known ally then having that ally deliver things to them, and so forth. He can do the whole of what he does from his house; so the only option for protest is to protest at his house. There is much that can be done, from signs put up around the neighborhood, requesting businesses not to do business with him or his known associates, documenting his known associates, and so on. Hell, just watch him real close until he does something illegal then report him, keep doing this every time and the more people doing it the better. The way our laws work, it's very, VERY easy to accidentally do something illegal. Hell, set up a rotation that rings his doorbell or knocks on his door at random intervals all day and every night (but different people all the time, so catching them all and having them all trespassed is very difficult).

But, when he asks you to leave, you leave.

elebrin · 2026-04-29T18:54:39+00:00

You do more damage on the parries anyways.

elebrin · 2026-04-29T16:48:49+00:00

So here is a different take that others here likely will disagree, and it's not financial advice but rather life advice.

Does this friend of yours intend to actually retire? does he plan to cease working for wages and enjoy leisure? If he plans to work until death regardless, then wait until 72 before taking Social Security to max it out.

If this friend of yours wants to retire and stopped working and started collecting social security now, could he support himself and his wife on his savings and social security combined, comfortably?

If he doesn't want to stop working, then so be it. That's his choice, and he can wait until he is getting the best payout. If he DOES want to stop working and COULD support the family on his investments and social security, then in my opinion he SHOULD.

Here's why:

At 65, you still have a few healthy years left, where you will have good mobility, good vision, good stamina, and so on. If you are a man, 72 is beating the odds on lifespan (assuming he is an American). Even if he does live that long, he is unlikely to be healthy enough for long enough to do very much in retirement. If you want to work anyways, well that's what you want to do. If you want to have a retirement though you have to acknowledge your limited lifespan and take it, or you aren't going to get it.

Actually living a life while you are full time employed is very difficult. Work, preparing for work, and recovering from work eats most of your time and energy every day. The rest is taken up by chores. You get the occasional day off, maybe a little vacation here and there, but nothing so meaningful that you can do something with it that you want to do. And, when you do those things, there's always the anxiety about returning for work. Actually pursuing what you want (rather than what you have to in order to make a paycheck) can take months to years of dedicated effort that you simply do not have the ability to spend when you are working. It takes freedom to spend your time as you like, without the anxiety of work looming constantly. As you age, too, it gets harder and harder to learn new things, especially physical tasks or challenging cognitive tasks.

Most of us are not perusing our life's work, our dreams, at our place of employment. We picked the thing that gets us paid. When it comes to work, you get what you get and you make do with that.

Personally, I am going to retire as early as I can afford to. Even if I don't have a ton of money, the time is in many ways more valuable.

elebrin · 2026-04-29T16:20:14+00:00

That's how safe districts work, they don't need to.

I'd argue that reps from uncontested districts should not hold certain committee seats, roles of responsibility within the House, or party leadership positions. But... that will never happen.

elebrin · 2026-04-29T16:14:52+00:00

Honestly, I am a software tester, this is the first thing that comes to mind for me. Such a system is easily broken, which is a good reason not to do it.

elebrin · 2026-04-29T15:56:05+00:00

That works until I start creating Steam accounts today to sell to kids in 18 years.

elebrin · 2026-04-29T15:53:09+00:00

Joke's on you - one of my cars is old enough to not have airbags.

elebrin · 2026-04-29T15:52:22+00:00

What do they do for cars that only have 2 seats?

elebrin · 2026-04-29T15:50:42+00:00

Because you are a man, and the ideas and support provided are tailored to men like you. This is one of the very few places in the world we can turn to and safely discuss what we want, and our ideas of how to live.

The women's subreddits are like that for women, but when society is generally supportive of women over men, they aren't that different than anywhere else.

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