Well I for one hope that relicing acoustics doesn't become a trend. It just seems too risky from a structural standpoint. In reality, relicing a solidbody is (for the most part) abusing the finish, and aging / corroding the metal bits. On an acoustic, I think isolating the aging to strictly the finish, and not the wood below, is going to be difficult, and possibly risky if one is using some of the more severe methods used on electric solidbodies. That video is sorta scary...
Someone surely has said this here before, but I think the relic trend for electrics came about something like this: Say you're a seasoned player, perhaps nationally known. You've been playing quality old guitars for years. Over the years you find the value of your trusty / much loved old axes is skyrocketing, such that it becomes quite a risk to gig them. Not everyone has a contract rider calling for an armed guard to guard the axes once they're staged. So you go find some suitable touring guitars... and you maybe don't want to have em looking brand new, cuz you been at this a good long time, and
you're not exactly new either
. So the custom builder dude is pretty smart, and offers to relic the things for you. Hey, them folks past the first three rows won't know the difference! I think some amount of image / ego comes into play here...Can you imagine Keef up there with a spanking new tele? Me neither...
Multiply the above by a several dozen top players, known for playing iconic axes, and you have a freakin' trend. So here's all us mere mortal players, thinking, yaknow, I can't do the $35k for that fifties tele, but I could have a nice one relic'd and it'd be
just like so-an-so's been on tour with... practical from a $$ standpoint, and some cool factor too, even if the relic part is fake cool. Perhaps we might not admit to thinking this overtly, but what influences your choices as to what you desire in an instrument can be a pretty convoluted mix of emotion, asthetics, and engineering.
I have a picture calendar, the kind you hang on the wall and flip the page each month... it's for the year 2000, and has all sorts of iconic guitars, generally three variants on a theme. Three fiftes strats, three late 50s Gretsches, two D'aquisto jazz boxes, firebirds, prewar martins, and teles of course
, etc. etc. ALL of these pics show instruments in dead mint or (at worst) near mint condition. Nice pics of nice guitars, so I kept the calendar instead of tossing it. So why aren't there any beat-up looking pieces? Maybe that's just the asthetic of the people that put the calendar together... It had to have taken some time to source the pieces and get the pics done. So figure this occured ten years ago... and it got me thinking the other day ...
Returning to 2008: maybe most of really primo / mint items are out of circulation, in a vault at a bank of some investment broker, gaining value better than the rest of their stock portfolio? And maybe what one sees at the vintage guitar shows nowadays are not so mint, as a whole. And maybe this is what some people want to play, a semi-beat guitar, since this is what is out there now circulating in the vintage market? It's just a thought I had. Surely there are dead mint pieces out there. I think these are the exception, and less commonly seen than 10 or 15 years ago. But that's just speculation on my part. Though I do think it influences this trend to relic.
I've seen relics at the shows, and I can admit they look cool; they do sorta transport ya back to the 60s, or 50s, or whenever. I don't know if I'd buy one though, and find it really hard to justify paying a premium for it, knowing it's not honest playing wear. My 2c. OK 5c, this was a long post :)