Does a $420,000 Vintage Les Paul Sound Better than a NEW Les Paul? 

Like for Vintage, comment for New!

Tyler: “Which of the Gibson’s is better?” Also Tyler: *puts a telecaster in the thumbnail*

Tyler: "The new one's neck feels truer to the 59' style" The 1959 Les Paul he just played: "Am I a joke to you?"

I bought a $650 partscaster at Emerald City and they treated me like I was buying that $420,000 Les Paul. The best guitar shop in the PNW hands down. Always a great experience.

If you haven’t yet, please visit Norman’s Rare Guitars. He loves to post videos and the two of you could do a killer joint, long format review, on several of his vintage guitars. He has literally hundreds.

That guitar is a 4 bed 4 bath house with a detached garage.

I don’t think anyone believes you’re paying for the tone when you spend half a million on a guitar. It’s about how iconic the bursts are due to their popularity amongst some of the biggest players of the 20th century, and how rare that particular run was… only around 1200 are known to exist iirc

Me, listening with my cellphone speaker 🤔

I think "tonewood" is much more applicable to acoustics than electrics.

The differences in the electric guitars are slight, and it wasn't enough to make me like the older over the newer. But the difference between the new vs vintage Martin guitars is striking. The vintage Martin definitely has a much richer tone. And I could see where someone might drop that much cash to get it.

One of your best! You have a knack for making very entertaining and watchable videos. I have a rotation of a half dozen guitar channels, you are in it.

A ‘56 Strat with a rosewood board? I thought Fender didn’t start rosewood boards on Strats and Teles until 1959.

I like how he just holds the guitars the same way as a $300 guitar

2019 Cherry Burst is just a regular LP Standard but not an R9, lol

The fact that a guitar can be $420,000 is mind blowing to me

Acoustic= I absolutely believe wood matters Electric=I’ve literally seen a guy make a concrete guitar and it sounded fine, I mean seriously why would wood matter, the sound is derived from electronics and any deviation in sound from today to a vintage guitar relies solely on the hardware they were using at the time.

When you slammed the pickup selector on a $420,000 burst you don’t own. More than once. Hnnnnghhhhh

I believe you simply get the best of both worlds in each, just the feel of each are unique to their own, and what makes both valuable.

Dude, badass video! You’re an exceptional guitar player Tyler. I’m excited to see where this channel goes!

Thanks for a great review of my favorite local neck store. Jay & his crew are great!

I feel the greatest difference is in people's minds. If they listened to these guitars while blindfolded, I doubt people would be able to clearly get which one is which, and even if they do, i doubt they would be able to tell how far apart they are in price, cause soundwise they're not that different.

The “59 reissue” was not a 6000 dollar 59 reissue.... was just a standard lol

Great video- I’ve been to that store (a long time ago), and was mesmerized! Great summation of what the choices are between vintage vs new. Thanks for the video and awesome playing! Bob from Spokane Valley, WA!

Got excited as soon as I heard Emeral City guitars! I LOVE that shop so much! So much crazy stuff in there! I saw an original Esquire in there and I never thought I'd get to see one! Everyone there couldn't be nicer, such a great shop!

IM SO HAPPY HE'S DOING THE E GUITAR STORE TOUR AGAIN

I don’t know. I feel like there isn’t really that big of a difference. I feel like owning a vintage guitar would just give you anxiety, always wondering if something bad has happened to it.

in high school, my guitar instructor brought a 1952 Telecaster to our lesson once and let me play it. I have never before or since, played such a wonderful instrument.

DAMN nice playing. Love the jazz chord work. Great video my friend!

I guess the thing with vintage guitars isn't any "real" thing in particular. There isn't a clear advantage or disadvantage. It's more the idea that so many people have touched it, and that you own a part of music history. It's sort of like when you're at a mountain, or some ancient place, and you get that feeling. Like, "Woah, so much has happened here, and this place is old". Same sort of feeling with a vintage guitar if that makes sense.

The acoustic guitar uses an air pump system to project sound dude. An electric guitar uses magnets that don’t hear wood. That’s why you can really hear the difference in acoustic. It really uses the wood to project sound.

I love emerald city guitars!!! I used to live next door to them, loved hearing Jay's stories :)

That was a really cool video, thanks for uploading..

That is by far the cleanest vintage 59' Les Paul I've seen if that's what it is. It looks almost new. I didn't know any in that condition even existed! I'm pretty sure the reissue 59' you said you were playing was just a current Les Paul Standard and not a 59' reissue. Also the strat you listed as a 56' Strat was an early ish 60's. 56' strats only had maple boards afaik. Great video and great playing!

If I was the store owner, I would have hurt you real bad for flicking that toggle switch like a god damn lunatic.

I was just at ECG yesterday! I must have missed you. That store is amazing. It’s like a museum of awesome gear.

I had guessed you would go to Emerald City Guitars for the Washington episode!! So cool. Was just there.

You can definitely hear a huge difference on the acoustic Martin’s. The electric is not as clear but still there.

1 thing I’ve heard that made so much sense was “You wanna buy a Wednesday guitar” People like to think that the people who built guitars in the 50s and 60s were craftsmen passionate about guitar. They weren’t, they were workers like you or me. So if a guitar was built on Monday the builder was most likely hungover and or distracted by talking about his weekend. The Tuesday the guitar is a lot because he’s sober and not as distracted. The Wednesday guitar is the best. The Thursday guitar the guy was tired, and over it, and Friday he was phoning it in until the weekend.

You made a great demonstration video. Very informative.

Love your stuff as always

“Better” is subjective. If it sounds good, it IS good. Your wallet may feel a difference if you go vintage though. Old guitar does not equal a good guitar necessarily. Some are crap.

Should have cost $420,690....that be Niice 😎

Man I love that store. Bought a PRS and a Gibson acoustic there. Had some of my guitars serviced there too. Great place, great vibes, great people. Highly recommend.

I just had chills from your take on little wing!!! 🙌🤯🤘⚡️🎸🎛📻💥

The true value of any guitar, for that matter the value of anything that's for sale, is exactly what someone is willing to pay for it. If I'm not mistaken, you pay more for pre-ripped Jeans, that you do for non pre-ripped Jeans. So it really depends on the gullibility of the purchaser. If that 450,000 dollar guitar is for sale and it just sit for years, it's not worth 450,000 dollars.

If im not mistaken, that new Les Paul is a USA standard, not a Custom Shop reissue? And the vintage strat can’t be from 1956 with three-ply pickguard and rosewood fingerboard?

What an awesome episode!!!!

Great show! I live an hour west of Seattle …..gotta visit that store!

That's the best I've ever heard you play.

2019 LP is just regular Standard, costs 2500$ :)

When I first finally laid my hands on my first Gibson Sg I knew it was the key to unlocking my full potential as a player. It’s been my dream to own one and while it’s a newer model, it was exactly the guitar I needed in my hands. The SG is the guitar I will always love and appreciate and now it’s my main rig for life! 😁

This is the guitar store I normally shop at! Thank you for representing my home town SEATTLE!

I've always felt like like a newer guitar must be objectively "better" in terms of guitars being tools made using technology and skill/knowledge, all of which improve over time, likely resulting in a superior end result. However, listening to the warmth of the vintage Martin compared to the newer one.. it's clear the aging process gives a little (or a lot of!) magic to the sound. This was a great video! :D

In my personal opinion. I am not an amazin guitar player. Im just learning. I am no way shape or form a good guitar player. But when it comes to these instruments. $300 or $300,000 guitar doesnt matter to me. Whatever if comfortable and sounds good to the player. Is the most important thing. I have an epiphone les paul studio lt. And i love it. I played my cousins gibson les paul. And tbh. The epiphone is way more comfortable to me. And you can make and epiphone les paul a unique and special guitar. You can upgrade the internals in the guitar to make it better. Tbh if u want a $10,000 guitar go for it. But if u have a 300 les paul and thats all you can afford or all u want. Play your heart out

I know Emerald City Guitars from Chris and Rick Talk Guitars episodes. Lovs them and thanks Tyler ❤️

Was just there this morning. Such an amazing shop.

No way that vintage strat is from '56 with a rosewood neck, looks like early 60s

I just read that Joke and wanted to share it with you. Woman stands before a judge, charged with beating her husband over the head with his own guitars. Judge looks over his glasses at her and asks: First Offender ? She looks up and says: No judge, first the Gibson, then the Fender.

Interesting comments. Much appreciated ✌️❤️

Dude. You were in Emerald City Guitars!! That’s my local guitar store. Love those guys!

I agree, Custom Shop is it for a player. And I love the Martin Sound. But stacking a pre-war D18 against a new D16 is kind of unfair! And Rosewood Board Strats were introduced by Fender in 1959, so a '56 Rosewood Board Strat is either a fake or a typing error. Think its the latter 😉. But great Video! 👍🏻

Oh yes to the breathy sound of the attack on the 38 Martin D-18… I can almost smell that guitar, it probably smells the way a funky old piano does inside…

It's cool that you kept the ashtray cover on the bridge of the Tele. No palm muting and still sounded great.

That outro was you played was angelic.

$420,000? Who’s selling, Matt Pike?

"I know it does" , well of course he is the one trying to sell 40k guitars, there is no way he will ever tell you that wood doesn't matter

Haha your closing statement hits home. I live in MA but drove down to NYC to UltraSound Studios. I went for the purpose of testing out a Dr Z Maz 18jr. So Gene put me in a practice room for $19 an hr. But in the quintessential upsell move, he lined me up with the Dr Z, but also an early Matchless SC 30 combo, and a Tony Bruno anniversary addition Underground 30 head in Zebrawood with a matching Zebrawood cab with 2 Celestion Alnico Blues. Yeah so that wasn't good enough...they gave me 3 guitars to mess around with. A '54 Tele worth $14k at the time, a '57 Strat worth $17K at the time, and a '59 Burst Les Paul worth $60K at the time. This was in the '90's so do your own math for inflation. Well, better make sure I'm playing through a gold horsie Klon Centaur. Just...idk here you go, leave me and my buddy alone in the room for an hour. There's really no coming back from that. The Les Paul through the Klon into the cranked Bruno is to this day the greatest guitar sound I've ever heard. What are you supposed to do when you go to meet the nice down to earth girl and they meet you at the door saying " oh yeah sorry you're gonna have to have to have a 3 way with Marylin Monroe and Heidi Klum." Deeply traumatizing day...

The little lick played on the acoustic guitar was sublime 👌🏼👌🏼

I would definitely just buy a new one. When you’re going to pay that much, you might as well get a newer one because every single part of it is going to be made of the best of the best quality materials. I look at it this way-you’re able to put your own history on it and if it’s a high-quality guitar, it will last a long time granted that you take care of it and it should only get better over time as well. Plus there are more options when it comes to color and a few other aesthetic options.

You talked a lot about tonewood in this video and I wanna say something coming from a physics perspective First we need to clarify how actually a pickup works. The physical phenomenon is called electromagnetic induction, described by Faraday's law of induction that basically states that whenever there's a variable magnetic field near a conductive coil a current will be generated inside that coil In guitars the magnet(s) generating the variable magnetic field are the strings, which are magnetized by the magnets in the pickups. When the strings vibrate at a certain amplitude, frequency and wavelength a current with the same exact amplitude, frequency and wavelength will be generated into the coil But how is produced the actual acoustic sound of a guitar? When you play your strings their vibrations will travel through the wood (or any other material) and, according to its own acoustic properties, the wood itself will vibrate and it will produce THE sound. That's what happens in acoustic guitars, it's the soundboard that's vibrating and it is producing the sound We can simplify all of this and say that the sound is influenced by two things: 1) How the strings vibrate (that's influenced by their construction and what they're contacting = nut and saddles) 2) The material of which the guitar is built (that's influenced by a hundred more things like bracing, the type of neck joint but I'll treat them as one single factor) In a hollowbody guitar the pickups are usually mounted directly on the soundboard. As I said before, the soundboard is a vibrating surface. When it vibrates the pickups will vibrate too, thus making the strings magnetized in different ways (according to how the soundboard vibrates) and it will generate a different current in the coil (thus a different tone) The same exact thing happens with electrified acoustic guitars Now, in solid body electric guitars the pickups are mounted directly (or via a pickguard) into a 2" thick slab of wood. That thick piece of wood is simply too heavy, too thick and too rigid to produce any kind of considerable amount of vibrations You can demonstrate it yourself, just grab an electric guitar and hear how loud it sounds unplugged. It won't sound very different from just a string by itself (like a tight elastic band) With that negligible amount of vibrations from the materials of the guitar, they become pretty much insignificant. Changing your nut will provide a much more tangible change in tone than, for example, changing the fretboard material. Note, here I was talking strictly about how the material impacts the sound, not how it impacts the feel of the guitar. You could debate that a better feeling guitar can make you play better and sound better but i don't think that's relevant here

I recently got a 1992 Alvarez acoustic, and it sounds AWESOME

Also I’ve told my family about this one a bajillion times but one of my teachers had I believe a 30s Martin acoustic that was in a house fire. He had it mechanically restored to playable but kept the character of the guitar and I remember hearing it in person i could swear it was magical.

Thanks for coming to Seattle!! Despite the city becoming an armpit compared to what it once was, Seattle still has a pretty great music scene & nothing will ever compare to that “Seattle sound” from the late 80’s & early-mid 90’s. Home of Jimi, Heart, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Nirvana, Mud honey….

lol...nobody is paying anywhere near that much for 59 bursts anymore. Even at the height of the bubble they weren't that high. This is just speculators who got burned back then trying not to loose their shirts on the one's they over spent on.

Thanks for this vid, really interesting. I'd like to hear from you about some amps, if it's possible. Which ones do you think are better, and which are not that good.

I'm a drummer since 1965. I have a musical love affair with guitars and those who play them. I'm just not, naturally, a guitarist. I've tried. I've owned 2 fine Strats. The Martin vintage has the wonderful, vintage aged sound that is unmistakable. The electrics, not so much, to a drummer's ears. Beautiful, all of them. Excellent video.

How do i live in seattle and not know about this place .. 🤣

I got a E-mail from this company called UNISON and they were like "ayo, check out this chord pack"....I was like "I don't use CHORD PA-" (Skip ad)

Reminds of my grandfathers strat, 3 necks and 2 bodys plays great cheers.

Love this video, and showing that difference, but really enjoyed you play the Martin's. 👍👍👍👍👍

"If you don't believe in tone wood... then you are probably wrong about that" Glenn Fricker wants to know your location

When there are so many factors to the sound of a guitar, tone wood ends up being pretty small contribution

Tyler, how many states do you have left on the guitar store tour? I know one of them is Oregon and I'm curious where at because I live in Oregon. Great video, I love your channel so much!!🤙🎸

been there a few times, my favorite shop near by!!

Wood definitely matters! It's hard to tell, but every little detail in a guitar adds up. Even the color of a guitar makes me play differently. Big things are made from small things. I'm very thankful I grew up with my dad's 1970's Les Paul Custom. I was just playing it the other day and when I really think of it, nothing plays like it. There's just no way to replicate it. One feature on that guitar that stands out is the smell. Aw man, I can smell it right now thinking about it! It smells very old and the sent is very strong, you can smell it from across the room! So when I play the guitar, the sent alone adds to the way I play it. Another thing is the aged electronics. There's just something about aged electronics that I love. I don't know exactly what it is, but it's almost like old dust and rust starts to give vintage electronic instruments this distinct sound. Kind of like an old vinyl record. Anyways My dad used to use his Les Paul in his old bands in the 70's. Now, I'm using it in my videos! Now modern guitars have their own charm. Eventually, they get worn in and they become something unique. It's already happened to a couple of my first electric guitars. I like to think, that eventually at some point, Chinese made guitars are going to be real collectors. I used to over look "made in China." But now when I think of it, I think of it in a more unique way. Man this guitar was made in China! That's pretty cool!

Dude, get your facts straight.. The reissue les paul is a standard model not a customshop R9, strat is not from 56 but most likely a 60/61 due to the slab rosewood fingerboard, 3 tone sunburst and 3 ply guard. The tele is not an 67 but a blackguard due to the string tree, black pickguard and logo. 67 has the transition logo and will never have a round stringtree and will most likely never have a factory black pickguard.

Killing it, as always Tyler! The little jam at the very was my favorite part btw. Not that anyone asked for my opinion lol

That’s a great store! Whenever I’m in Seattle I check it out.

I get the vintage cost more cause of the collectible value but why the reissues have kinda "vintage" price as well?

I am a engineering design and manufacturing teacher (as well as an amateur musician). I know quite a bit more about electrical components, electronic signals and material science (than the average musician), so it drives me crazy when I hear about “tonewood” in electric guitars! I love Tyler‘s videos, but he is in astrologist when it comes to this subject. He wants to believe in Tonewood, it’s a fantasy created by his own mind. Electronic processing can make any guitar sound like any other! The only way you can tell a vintage guitar from a brand new guitar is by comparing the VERY subtle differences in the “clean” tones. And even that is just a matter of personal taste. The comparison cannot render which one is better than the other. Expensive guitars are like expensive cars… at some point the value is purely in the mind of the collector. And we all know the mentality of collectors with too much money.

you were in Seattle?!?! I hope you enjoyed it here!

That was great! Thanks 🇨🇦

It’s sad that people dislike a video before they even watch it

Keep in mind, most of the legendary guitar songs were recorded when these expensive vintage guitars were new.

"tonewood" I just love how AGED wood comes through the magnets and wires and changes the sound of an electric guitar... tone-paint as well or tone-plastic knobs, and don't forget my tone-bakelite pickguard

Nice playing!

I think most of the people don't have to spend $420000 to unlock their playing potential 😂😂😂.

You'd have to have more money than brains to pay that insane price. Sure, it's a wonderfully sounding beautiful old instrument, but come on, $420,000? Those totally ridiculous prices just ensure that a few ungodly wealthy people around the globe own all of them. Do you think that's moral or just?

Did you know that in 1948, Leo Fender made the '48 Fender Broadcaster. They then renamed it the Telecaster around the 50s. Cool history.

Getting from Key West to Washington is a bucket list trip. But I may one day make it. The pics/video I have seen from this company is absolutely awesome and puts itself on my list. I am a player not a collector, so not what they are really looking for. I hope to at least visit one day.