Compared to the hallowed 50s or the swingin’ 60s, when it comes to guitars, the 1970s has long suffered from an image problem. The music might have been stellar but the era’s electrics have languished under a reputation for being heavier than depleted uranium, not to mention of doubtful quality and built to maximise corporate profits rather than player satisfaction. But recently, a more sympathetic perspective on 70s guitars has been emerging.
As the price of guitars from the 50s and 60s climbs far beyond reach of everyday players, many have been taking a second look at 70s guitars – and finding, to their surprise, that excellent instruments can be found, especially from the earlier years of the decade. The key to finding a good one is to understand that the 70s was, above all else, a decade of seismic change for major American guitar brands as they struggled to meet exploding demand for guitars and fight off the rising challenge from emerging Japanese guitar-makers.
In the following pages, we join historian Tony Bacon to chart the turbulent, inconsistent but often inspired story of guitar-making in the 70s – and talk to vintage guitar dealers and players who have found diamonds in the rough of a delinquent decade...
Guitarist would like to thank the following people for their invaluable assistance in making this feature: World Guitars (worldguitars.co.uk), Aynsley Lister and Pete and Johnny, AKA ‘The Hereford Boys’, who provided the stunning 70s guitars that appear in the following pages
In 1972, when Pete Townshend had been playing SGs for a few years and was about to shift to Les Paul Deluxes, he talked to Michael Brooks at Guitar Player about Gibson. He’d asked the company to custom-build some of the discontinued SG Specials he favoured. “They brought them up to us, but the guitars were totally different,” Pete reported. “The pickups were in a different position, and on and on, so we said ‘forget it’. And I raided every music store in the country, practically, looking for old SGs,” he continued. “I’ve only got interested in guitars because Gibson won’t make me the old SGs like they used to be.”
Pete was not alone in his gloom about the way things were going with new guitars in the early 70s. His comments neatly summed up a growing feeling among some guitarists that makers – and notably the big two, Gibson and Fender – had lost the sparkle that made their earlier instruments so special. This went hand in hand with the way some dealers now talked about older instruments as “vintage” guitars, with an emphasis on the notion that they were somehow better. And, by implication, that some of the more recent practices at the bigger guitar factories were not in
