Why is it that when you see old photos of people like the Stones, J Beck, Clapton....etc, from the late 60's / early 70's, and they're playing Fenders with maple fretboards, the necks already look very aged and vintage looking? Those guitars are only from the 50's and sometimes even early to mid 60's.

Where as, if you see a maple fretboard that is from the early 90's for example, it still looks the same even though it's been basically 15 to 20 yrs since it was manufactured, and even if it has been gigged and played very hard.

Is there something different they did or didn't do to the finish specific to the maple fretboards back in the early days, that differs from more recent years?

Thanks in advance.

Those early necks are finished in nitro which wears VERY quickly as opposed to todays hard wearing poly finishes!

Russ

I figured it was going to be something very simple like that.

A side question, I recently obtained one of the newer LP Jr's, that is finished in the nitro finish.

Does that mean that the body on that thing will start to check and look aged more quickly than normal?

Yes, it will certainly be more prone to wear and checking than a poly finish which hardly ages at all, although Gibson, to this day still use nitro to finish all of their guitars!

Russ

I read that one of the reasons Leo Fender went to rosewood fretboards,was that he saw some guys on TV playing Fenders with the maple fretboards worn like you said and he thought it looked bad.
That's not the only reason,but he was a very practical guy,and when he changed something it was for a reason and not just looks,so he knew that those necks were wearing fast,but then again he designed necks to be removed and thrown away when they were worn out.

Interesting!

I bet Leo wouldn't have believed that now days, that 'worn' look is something that many people look for in a guitar, and that Fender now has a Custom Shop that pretty much specialises in recreating that effect on brand new, high end instruments. Lol.

Russ

Another thing the Leo might not have believed is what someone today would pay for a neck that was "thrown away" in 1956.

Well, exactly, hence the whole reason for my original post/question. That look is so desirable that people pay ridiculous money for it, and custom shops go to ridiculous measures to obtain that look on new ones.

And I admit, like many others, I wish my Tele had that look too. That's why I was asking. However, it's not that important to me. But I was just hoping mine would start to take on that appearance, but it hasn't changed a bit! And that's fine too, I'm very happy with the thing as is.

Leo also didn't like the in-between positions that guitarists found on their pickup selectors....he called it sloppy or something like that.
And older Fender amps were designed to have more headroom,getting cleaner with the circuit improvements from tweed to brown to blackface....I imagine he would think it was crazy to design amps to overdrive into distorion.

I think if you play any nitro guitar as much as the groups you mentioned above they will look like those in no time at all. Those were played very hard.