So here it is, a brutal question to pose, probably even more brutal to answer honestly, but to all, especially those of you who have been lucky enough to lay hands on a collection of fine vintage instruments, what's your take? Are the better hand built steel string guitars of today, better sounding instruments than those well aged collectibles of yesterday??
Try and remove the sentiment and the temptasion to run with the pack, close your eyes and think before you answer, sure the soundboards and bracings of those rare old beauties have had much longer to aged in to each other and open up and I am sure they sound real good, but ........
You build instruments, or at least you exchange ideas with other builders, you strive to make the best sounding guitar that you possibly can. The fact is, like all builders since long before most of these fine old vintage guitars were fist glued up, you have probably looked at what is around and tried to improve on it, to make it better. The more you build, the more you seek, the more you seek, the more you learn and begin to understand, the more you learn the more you exchange and so on.
In fact with the revival of this craft and the Internet at your finger tips, more information and therefore more potencial to learn is available to you than has ever been available to any other generation of builders in history.
So, is it working?? Are we growing in this craft towards a better understanding? Is the science truely begining to amalgamate with the art? Are our guitars of today, or at least those of our more experienced craftsmen and craftswomen, better sounding instruments than those best builds of yesteryear?
As I mentioned above, please try to remove the sentiment, close your eyes and think about it and then, then give an honest answer. Regardless of how you vote, I think it would be interesting if we could explain why we chose to vote the way we did, IE, "I vote YES because better science has allowed clearer understanding of what is needed to get the most out of the structure as a whole." Or, I vote NO because we no longer have access to the same quality of material that was available back when these vintage guitars were made etc.
So please don't hold back even if you normally just casually lurk here, lets hear what you have to say, introduce yourself and share your thoughts and theories with us. Even if you have never played a vintage guitar it is fine, go ahead and vote any way, just mention that you are expressing an opinion or theory rather than your own experience, then we can all get a good picture of what people feel is true and what actual experience is telling us, but above of all, be brutally honest with your vote.
Cheers
Kim
How to answer? 
