Are you a boutique person?

Mark Wein said:
I don' think so. "Boutique" to me sounds like new, high end gear made in smaller numbers. Doesn't always mean better.

Vintage ends up meaning "older than the mid-70's" to me and also doesn't necessarily mean "better" either. At least not in the way it did to me in the early to mid 1990s.
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We seem to be merging the concepts somewhat and I don't know if everyone if even talking about the same thing at this point..... Business as usual :grin:
 
mattburnside said:
Fender Coronadoes are going through the roof too. I have no explanation for this.
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I had a Cornado and wish I still did. It played better than most guitars I have owned, was light as a feather and sounded better through my classic 50 than my American standard strat.
 
Chad said:
I had a Cornado and wish I still did. It played better than most guitars I have owned, was light as a feather and sounded better through my classic 50 than my American standard strat.
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Cool. I've only played two, but neither of them felt right in my hands and I hated the bridge pickup. Shame, I love the wildwood.
 
I'm kind of a whatever catches my attention person.

Been all over the map production wise.
Best I can tell you is I gravitate to a few different builders depending on scale length.

Hamer for Gibson Scale.
EBMM/Jackson/Suhr for Fender Scale.
PRS for it's own scale.
Fender for the real short scale stuff. (Mustangs, Jaguars)

The rest is if something caught my eye at the right time. But I tend to flip them in awhile unless they fall in those established buckets.
 
Lerxst said:
Is vintage and boutique the same thing now?
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Botique is corksnifery and vintage is just old!

My amp is 43 years old and I paid 150.00 for it, my multi effect pedal is a 1993 digitech RP1 and I will put it up against anything made and I have 200 total into it. It will keep up with a Marshall stack or what have you, I don't need a point to point tube anything, my solid state 25watt single 12 will do it...lol and I can carry it in one hand. I would rather have a MIM Fender and Play an old gibson and not a new 5000.00 one that is supposed to be "better" because they aren't. I can still take a Korean made Epiphone LP and make it play better than 90% of the new LP's out there. I love the older stuff, it is just better and not botique :)
 
I just use what works and I never felt like I had to impress anyone but myself with the gear I use. So I guess some would say I'm a little schizo with my gear choices. I have a pedalboard full of mostly BBE and old digitech pedals, but I also have a $400 Damage Control Timeline delay - they all work for me. Strats are my favorite guitars (have three including my Aria Pro II Bobcat) yet my Strats are MIM Fender Squier Series and yet I have a couple of Chicago era Hamers (boutique back then no?). Mesa started out boutique, loves mine, got an old Magnatone that's pretty sweet but I do my practicing through a Peavey Bandit or DOD Juice It. I will have to say that I consider most "boutique" stuff today to be waaay overpriced though.
 
A lot of boutique gear can be found cheaper than the main brand equivalent. My Cornford Hurricane amp (£1500 new, I got it for £800 on eBay) is a seriously high-end piece of gear and sounds amazing. It was much cheaper than any of the hand-wired Fender and Marshall equivalents - the hand-wired 1974 re-issue Marshall comes in at about £1800 new.

In addition to the great tone, it offers very little hum or hiss, even with single-coils at high volume. I'm fine gigging with a Blues Junior or similar, but the Cornford's silence is such a blessing in the recording studio.

...and when the mains transformer blew up (flames and smoke!) it was very easy and fairly cheap to get it repaired - all techs prefer mending hand-wired amps! A PCB amp like a Blues Junior or Deluxe probably would have been a write-off.

Basically, I'm convinced it is worth the extra money sometimes. Not sure if I'd spend $50k on a Dumble though!
 
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