List of affordable guitars used by artists to record hits

[telemnemonics]

Billie Joe Armstrong used a Fernandes Strat copy almost exclusively on at least the first 3 Green Day albums. I believe he still plays it on tour from time to time.

Robert Quine (sometimes with Lou Reed) preferred Fernandes Strats in his later career as well.

Marc Ribot (sometimes with Tom Waits) played an ESP Tele for years.

I knew Quine a bit and he was often at a guitar shop I was friends with the owner of.
Quine gave the owner one of his Fernandes Strats as a gift, and the shop owner pickup up one of the best sounding sets of original 1950s black bottom Strat pickups, which he put in the Quine Fernandes.
When he showed it to Robert, he got yelled at and told to get those things out of there, they don't belong in there.
I was lucky enough to buy the Strat set for $200.
Quine was a generally grumpy guy but quite a player.

Both men had their own distinctive styles and were not brand dependent for their sounds.
Since they could have and also did have common name brands, Id guess that was partly their point in choosing off brand copy guitars.

 

[telemnemonics]

Guess it depends on where you live. Here you can get a guitar that a pro artist uses for less than rent sometimes significantly less than rent. Oh well, wish I could live in the wide open spaces of the 'North Country.'

Good point about locale.

I started playing guitar in the Maine countryside but after four years got the hell out of the woods and headed for the big city!
Higher income and rent made a guitar of the same price more affordable.
A NYC month's rent today could buy three or four nice US Fenders or a couple of US Gibson's.
The US made American Standard Strats I saw on Reverb around $650 wouldn't get you a month in any local Maine apartment unless you split it with a roommate.

If a young musician wants to go anywhere in music, they pretty much need to leave the back country!
Here it only takes a 70 mile drive to Boston where income and rent is roughly double.
But the number of musicians, bands and live music venues is 100X greater.
And a guitar is just a guitar.

 

[ScareDe2]

More and more people are trying to make big bucks out of what they sell locally. The incredible deals we once had, from people knowing little about what they sell, are long gone. Maybe in USA you still have good local deals. That is no longer the case here.

 

[StrangerNY]

I was originally interested in this thread, especially considering the type of music and artists I normally listen to…

But the OP, in his smug quest to prove that he’s completely correct and that this is a very exclusive group of songs or artists, keeps changing the rules or being dismissive of many/most of the legitimate answers given. He’s also going through the filter of a 21-year old; that automatically leans toward assured arrogance.

It’s like the babysitter trying to win at “Calvinball” against Calvin and Hobbes—he would constantly the rules to slant in his own favor.

The OP’s theory is wrong.

I’m out.

Yeah, this thread is wack.

It's been pointed out numerous times now that LPs and Strats at one point could be gotten for pocket change, and those are the guitars that are worth hundreds of times their list prices because they were bought cheap and played on iconic albums.

Pick a lane and stay in it, OP. Otherwise this thread is pretty useless.

- D

 

[ScareDe2]

It's about guitars used to record hits that are available for less than $1000. I had to clear some confusion. The thread title did not mean guitars that was purchased dirty cheap by the artists. I saw a receipt from the year 1972 showing a brand new Harmony Sovereign H1260 bough for $74.88 that is $489.05 adjusted for inflation. Today it can be bought used for a little more than that + neck reset/repairs. I think it is acceptable to mention it is still affordable and was one of the main guitar used by Jimmy Page.

But, a brand new Fender strat in 1970 cost about $300. That is $2110.85 today. In fact, Stratocasters cost less today than back in the day, adjusted for inflation. And if you bought a used one for $200 in 1970, it gives $1407 adjusted for inflation. That is above the generous parameters choosen for this topic. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

Next.

 

[ScareDe2]

Good point about locale.

I started playing guitar in the Maine countryside but after four years got the hell out of the woods and headed for the big city!
Higher income and rent made a guitar of the same price more affordable.
A NYC month's rent today could buy three or four nice US Fenders or a couple of US Gibson's.
The US made American Standard Strats I saw on Reverb around $650 wouldn't get you a month in any local Maine apartment unless you split it with a roommate.

If a young musician wants to go anywhere in music, they pretty much need to leave the back country!
Here it only takes a 70 mile drive to Boston where income and rent is roughly double.
But the number of musicians, bands and live music venues is 100X greater.
And a guitar is just a guitar.

I want to play music to become a more valuable tool for the society
I want people to listen and say "Yep. He deserves my money"

 

[telemnemonics]

It's about guitars used to record hits that are available for less than $1000. I had to clear some confusion. The thread title did not mean guitars that was purchased dirty cheap by the artists. I saw a receipt from the year 1972 showing a brand new Harmony Sovereign H1260 bough for $74.88 that is $489.05 adjusted for inflation. Today it can be bought used for a little more than that + neck reset/repairs. I think it is acceptable to mention it is still affordable and was one of the main guitar used by Jimmy Page.

But, a brand new Fender strat in 1970 cost about $300. That is $2110.85 today. In fact, Stratocasters cost less today than back in the day, adjusted for inflation. And if you bought a used one for $200 in 1970, it gives $1407 adjusted for inflation. That is above the generous parameters choosen for this topic. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

Next.

In 1970 a Strat could be had for $100 pretty easily.
Back then it was more common to get a guitar refinished every few years than to like and want a guitar that looked worn.
Working musicians commonly wore dress suits, white shirts & ties.
So an old looking guitar had lower value.
Clapton made Blackie out of his favorite parts from three used Strats he got for under $100 each, in the same shop at the same time.
Adjusted for inflation that's $700, same as lots of used USA Strats on Reverb now.

Of course he and other undesirables who Moms warned their daughters to watch out for, some of those lowlifes did play worn looking guitars. But I don't think even Blackie or most of the '60s guitar looked that bad in 1970, they were just obviously used, and music work with band directors wanted to see clean fresh looking guitars and outfits on players. Polished shoes too!

Same as now though, look at some same year used MIM Strats and their values will depend on condition.
Hit recordings didn't require fresh looking guitars and instead were commonly recorded by players who were using those guitars hard and had been for a while. So not the top dollar guitars in a shop.
Today's market is funny, driven more by online gear chat than by musicians in need of tools for the trade.
Which is partly why there's an obsession with price today.
Shoppers seem to want 12 guitars, so price is hard to manage.
If you need two and use them for 20 years, $800 each vs $1200 each hardly matters.
If OTOH you need to buy ten guitars every year, you may be more focused on shopping and pricing than on playing.
It's what for dinner!

 

[ScareDe2]

With that being said, that same Fender Strat from the 60's/70's now costs the price of a new car, I just saw one selling for $25k. Now the question any person equipped with common sense would ask is : "are current stratocasters producing the same sound as the older models?" Certainly not. So why are they mentioned in this topic is beyond me.

 

[Mark1406]

SRV used a Tokai for the shot on his first album.

 

[BostonTeleGuy]

During the 80s Hondo was making cheap, nice looking Les Paul copies. Believe me when I tell you if you saw Jimi Page in his prime playing one the very last thing you would think is I think that Les Paul could sound a little better.

 

[brookdalebill]

I had always heard that it was Jimi's use of the Strat that propelled a resurgence in sales. In fact, at the Lewisville Pop festival in 1969, a week after Woodstock, Randy California played his Danelectro all night, (they were cheap, but discontinued and not always easy to find) but changed to a Strat for their final number, I Got A Line On You. We wondered if it was because he sent it sailing across the stage at the end? A Strat was easier to replace back then than a Danelectro.

Randy California (Wolfe) is a hero of mine.
He was a great musician, and a brave man.
RIP, and thanks, sir.
His Silvertone/Danelectro sounded great, and he played it well.
I read an article in an old Vintage Guitar magazine.
It was written by a luthier/repairman about an inexpensive black Strat copy that that he modded for Randy.
The guitar just suited Randy, and he did not care that it was a cheap, semi-generic instrument.
He liked it, and had the luthier mod it.
I think it was an electronic mod.
I wish I could remember who wrote it.

 

[Tele-friend]

Josh Homme from QOTSA used an Epiphone ES-335 Dot Ebony for a while

 

[Russ H]

I have 3 guitars, each of which cost me under $1000 in the past 15 years and are fantastic instruments worthy of performance or recording. Additionally, they sound and look like their prototypes. They are:

1) CIJ Fender Stratocaster
2) MIJ Fender Telecaster
3) Eastman T486 (335 style)

It would be difficult to find these for under a grand today, but if “affordable” could be shifted to around 12 or 1300 bucks, these guitars would give you some pretty professional bang for you buck.

 

[nojazzhere]

Randy California (Wolfe) is a hero of mine.
He was a great musician, and a brave man.
RIP, and thanks, sir.
His Silvertone/Danelectro sounded great, and he played it well.
I read an article in an old Vintage Guitar magazine.
It was written by a luthier/repairman about an inexpensive black Strat copy that that he modded for Randy.
The guitar just suited Randy, and he did not care that it was a cheap, semi-generic instrument.
He liked it, and had the luthier mod it.
I think it was an electronic mod.
I wish I could remember who wrote it.

I, too, greatly admired Randy......great songwriter, performer, and his "eclecticism". The fact that he played with his "old" step-father on drums (Ed Cassidy) was just a hoot to us in High School.
And, in fact, that Strat that I mentioned he broke at Lewisville could have been some cheap Japanese copy. From the middle of that festival crowd I sure couldn't read a headstock.....just assumed it was a Strat because of the shape.
Another quick story.....I saw Spirit at the old Panther Hall in Ft Worth. Randy was using Acoustic amps. At the side of the hall, there was a stairway leading up to an office door. He put a speaker up at the top of the stairs, and at one point started "panning" his sustaining guitar back and forth between stage and top of stairs. Cool effect. I think he just "thought differently" sometimes. No wonder Jimi wanted him around in early days.

 

[StrangerNY]

"are current stratocasters producing the same sound as the older models?" Certainly not.

That's absurd. What in the world do you base this on?

- D

 

[GearGeek01]

If you're trying to "clone" a musician you'll figure out real quick that you will never be them, and it is impossible to "be" another human being no matter how hard you try. They tried to clone sheep once upon a time, I lost track of how that went...

But for decades the musical merchandiser's have sold millions of products to clods who have gotten sucked into the "buy this doo-dad and sound just like this famous person." Guitars, amps, pedals... yada yada yada... even down to guitar picks and strings... IMHO, its ridiculous.

When... if you would just sit down and think this through. The record company already has (let's say) "Artist X", they have the real human "Artist X" under contract that makes the sound they make when they play with their hands (on any instrument). Such as... B.B. KIng sounds like B.B. King on any instrument, whether it is his Gibson Lucille or an acoustic guitar (note: Eric Clapton/BB King - Riding with the King recording... BB plays an acoustic on at least one or more tracks, and it still sounds like BB King.) Nobody else has BB King's DNA.

The world of record companies and the "Music Biz" doesn't need you to sound like or play like or clone some famous artist. Yes, if you want to slug it out in the bars and clubs and clone other people's music, you can sit for however long it takes and learn every song you play all night long note for note and lick for lick. Weeeeee... please put a gun to my head, I did that when I was 15 years old. (And at 15 I made (some) money with a guitar in my hands doing just that). Some people go to the band rehearsal of let's kill this cooler full of beer and see how much of this pot we can suck through this bong and pretend we are musician's by trying to clone famous people. Oh, how many "bands" are actually an excuse for dad to get the hell out of the house and away from the screaming kids, to go to the "band party" and work on songs (between bong hits...). And in my experience it is the drummer who also owns the rehearsal spot, who sits for hours and hours playing his kit with headphones on, that complains if "we don't do it just like the CD"....(God forbid said drummer should have his OWN chops and his own original drumming style...) -- Maybe in my next band, we'll use a drum machine, I've read a lot of good reviews on that BeatBuddy thing...maybe the bass player would have room on his pedalboard for one of those ??? (LOL)

Success in music (to me, anyways) is playing and having your own original style and original sound. Quite frankly, if I hear a bar band playing an old worn out classic rock tune (let's say "Gimme 3 Steps by Skynyrd, one of the puke-a-relic over-played radio songs of all time)... but let's just say they play it in such an original style that while listening to it you don't run to go puke in the bathroom, but it is actually somewhat entertaining... because they did it in their own original style. (I actually believe playing 3-steps live in a bar should now be considered a musical felony.)

When I played blues full-time (6 nights a week, yes it is possible, LOL)... I decided up front when I was putting a song list together and choosing songs, and deciding what I wanted this act to be like, that I was NOT going to play most of the songs like the original artist played them. And, I was going to mix in my authentic original blues style with many of my original songs. I'm a big fat white boy, and when my harmonica player (a black guy) let his friends and relatives hear our demo tape, they thought I was a black guy.

I didn't need to go out and buy a black man's vocal cords (LOL). Trying to buy "the same" guitar your favorite guitar god supposedly used in the studio is NOT going to make you play (or sound) like your favorite guitar god hero. You don't and never will have Stevie Ray Vaughan's DNA... or any other famous (or not famous) artist's DNA. But you have you... and if you would just realize it, you are the most beautiful you you will ever be.

I'm 59 now and I'm pretty sure I stopped trying to "play it just like the record" or "play it just like the CD" or "play it just like the mp3" when I was a teenager. I figured it out very early on that you're gonna get no where super fast in the Music Biz if you're a clone. What record companies want are authentic original sounds and talent. Baaaah-baaaaah... what did ever happen to those sheep they cloned?

It's better to be the guy out there that the others are now trying to clone. Be the mold, not the plastic they pour into the mold. So instead of spending a poo-load of money and time listening to music marketers try to convince you to buy their over-priced artist "signature guitars" or some old now "vintage" thing that back in the day was probably a piece of crap but the artist who played it was the badass with the badass DNA that you'll never have.

And don't listen to Fender's CEO, he thinks Taylor Swift is today's most influential guitar player. (I am guessing to encourage little girls to ask what kind of guitar, make and model did Taylor play?) ...and the search continues.

 

[Supereditor]

I think the addendums to the post make it very difficult because …

1) Many hits were recorded on guitars that were fairly affordable in their day. As someone else mentioned, stock Fenders were relatively cheap … but have become expensive as vintage collector guitars.

2) Modifying a cheap guitar is an old trick used by the likes of Cobain (mentioned in the original thread), Tom Morello, Van Halen and countless other players. Take that away and you lose a lot of possibilities.

3) When a hit is recorded on a cheap guitar, it becomes more sought after … thus raising the price.

All of that said, allow me to suggest that even “expensive” guitars are relatively cheap. When you factor in the lifespan of a guitar, the resale value and the cost of many other instruments (violins, pianos, top-tier brass) a $3,000 guitar is quite the bargain. We are lucky.

 

[GearGeek01]

It's about guitars used to record hits that are available for less than $1000. I had to clear some confusion. The thread title did not mean guitars that was purchased dirty cheap by the artists. I saw a receipt from the year 1972 showing a brand new Harmony Sovereign H1260 bough for $74.88 that is $489.05 adjusted for inflation. Today it can be bought used for a little more than that + neck reset/repairs. I think it is acceptable to mention it is still affordable and was one of the main guitar used by Jimmy Page.

But, a brand new Fender strat in 1970 cost about $300. That is $2110.85 today. In fact, Stratocasters cost less today than back in the day, adjusted for inflation. And if you bought a used one for $200 in 1970, it gives $1407 adjusted for inflation. That is above the generous parameters choosen for this topic. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

Next.

One thing you are missing is... that Strat made in the 70s for $300 also many times came factory equipped with a loosy-goosy neck joint and in that era Fender guitars were the worst Fenders ever produced. Not sure how to calculate in "crap quality" to the inflation rate. Is there an input value for horse manure in a slot in the side of the inflation calculator machine? Or maybe various slots for different kinds of farm animal poop... like one for cow pies, one for horse apples, and one for pig potatoes for stuff like the 70s Fenders....

A great place to shop for Strats (or Teles) is your local pawn shop. I have bought numerous Squier Strats for between $60-$120, then take one of those to a good guitar tech for a set-up ($50-$75?) and you'll have a BETTER guitar than what Fender was making in the 1970s.

Since you are saying a 70s Strat would be $300 then and $2,100 now (do you work in the pricing department for the Gibson/Fender/PRS bean counters???)... so 7 times more you say. Same with the used Strat for $200... a multiple value of 7 times more in today's money.

OK< so by doing reverse inflation calculation using those same figures, then a used Squier Strat in 1970 would have cost just between $8.57-$17.14 ($60-$120 divided by 7) -- and you'd still have a hell of a lot better quality Strat then than Fender ever made in the 70s.... for under $20 bucks ... hand one to Jimi Hendrix before September 18, 1970 and maybe Jimi would still be with us today, who knows.

I do know this from experience >>>... in the early 80s I had 2 different 70s-something Strats bought used at 2 different places at 2 different times... and both had neck pocket issues. As you stood playing, the neck's headstock would head toward the floor, and I had to squeeze the body with my right elbow and JERK the neck back into the pocket with my left hand.

Now I see clods paying $3,000+ for a 70s "vintage" Fender on eBay... as I strum happily on my $100 dollar Squier Strat, knowing I have a better guitar...

FWIW, a new "Squier Classic Vibe 50s Strat" sells for $450 today... in 1970 that would have been $64.29, and definitely a better Strat than a 70s Fender Strat with a typically loosy-goosy neck pocket...

 

[telemnemonics]

With that being said, that same Fender Strat from the 60's/70's now costs the price of a new car, I just saw one selling for $25k. Now the question any person equipped with common sense would ask is : "are current stratocasters producing the same sound as the older models?" Certainly not. So why are they mentioned in this topic is beyond me.

OK so now I understand even a little more what you're saying.

Like you say now, I too used to believe "Current Stratocasters are not producing the same sound as the older models".

In fact I was deeply invested in that belief but couldn't afford complete '50s/ '60s Strats in 1980, so instead I asked guitar shops if they had any Fender parts that didn't work, pickups specifically but I bought old Fender necks with frets worn out and old Fender bodies that had been routed and lost their necks etc etc etc.
I played lots of old guitars but my fender exploration sorted through all the parts.

My beliefs included:
Old wood sounds better than new wood in solid body electrics.
Old pickups sound better than new pickups.
And to a lesser extent I used old pots switches & wiring as much as possible.
Building/ assembling partscasters for 40+ years I basically searched for the Holy Grail components of old time classic tones.

Down at the base levels it's actually possible to replace one old part at a time with a new part to compare how much influence the body wood, the neck wood, the bridge and saddles, the pickups, the pots, all have on "guitar sound".

I could turn this into a book but my hands are beat up from doing stuff for decades so I'm gonna summarize my transition from believing new guitars can't get old guitar sounds.

1) The mystery of old wood seems to be 100% false, BUT, the body wood and the neck wood do influence the sound. Swapping bodies I found that a new body of the same wood and density was pretty much no less vintage sounding than and old body of the same wood and density. Both Strats and Tele's, though mostly comparing swamp ash Tele bodies and alder Strat bodies.
Funny really, I still have one '50s Esquire body that sits in my parts pile because it doesn't sound any better than my recent swamp ash bodies from Musikraft. It's just old.

2) The mystery of old pickups is a little more fluid because some do lose magnet strength, and that is greatly variable.
I've had old pickups with time weakened magnets that sounded worse than old pickups with stronger magnets!
Allow that old recordings of now old guitars were made when those guitars were NOT old, so the magnets didn't have the 20-40-60 years of magic mojo from weakened magnets, and were in fact fairly new magnets with strong charge in them.
BUT, one set of '50s Strat pickups really hooked me on the idea that old pickups sound better and new pickups simply cannot match them.
I bought these pickups and dropped them in a '65 Strat body with an '85 Squier neck I put new jumbo frets on. Wired up with old pots etc. That was a magical sound and greatly different from my Duncan vintage strat pickups I'd bought new in the '70s!
Turns out though that what I had was a set of '54 or '55 Strat pickups with A3 magnets.
A3 magnets really change the whole guitar sound IME.
Oddly Fender puts A3 mags in very few Strat sets.
Anyhow, after swapping hundreds of old and new Fender pickups, they do all vary a little yet almost every great sounding old Fender pickup has been matched for sound by some new pickups in my endlessly changed guitar menagerie.

3) We all notice that players today complain about "ice pick tone" from Tele bridge pickups and "thin/ shrill/ weak tone" from Strat bridge pickups.
This is an area that gets more complicated because one player can get a great sound from a plain old vintage Tele with low wind bright clear vintage Tele pickups, then hand it to another player and it sound like crap.
There can be and are many reasons for this, and any given player will have ways they make a too bright old Tele or Strat pickup sound fatter and vintage great.
One is rolling off volume WITHOUT THAT STUPID TREBLE BLEED THAT GOT TRENDY WHEN EVERYBODY BOUGHT HOT OVER WOUND PICKUPS TO TAME THE ICE PICK, another more obvious one is rolling off the tone control a little.
Many players simply never really run vol or tone wide open.
Those players sound as much like their settings as like their guitar.
Then there's player technique, which is also huge and complicated.
I run vol full up and no tone control but pick and mute to darken and fatten my tone.
I've handed by plugged in Esquire to another player and he made horrible shrill tone!
Because his method was very different from mine.

4) Old time tone was often made with old time amps.
And in old times studios, where for example just the mic pre's in Neve boards were inadvertently tone sweetening magic boxes.
Back to the amps though, modern amps are generally brighter for a number of reasons.
One is that before circa 1977, speaker tech was primitive and struggling just to not blow up.
Some time in the mid late '70s they went from paper voice coil formers to kapton.
Changed speaker sound and overall guitar/ amp/ speaker/ player sound a lot.
Too much to go further on that but amps went through some similar changes in some cases.
Fender BF reissue amps have the same basic circuit today, and those were always bright amps as they are today, but classic studio recordings we may compare, will have at least had old time paper voice coil broken in low wattage speakers, which sound pretty different.
Now Marshall OTOH has virtually NEVER reissued a correct Plexi 50 or 100!
The Plexi era Marshalls had less treble and more fatness, especially when combined with old paper VC speakers fitted with old cones.
As arena Rock demanded louder brighter amps, Marshall changed the circuits to be brighter and also louder clearer and more punchy.
The Plexi 100 from '66 and '67 wasn't even a full 100 watts.
By '69 the power and treble went way up, in fact the 100w from 1970 was twice the wattage as the "100w" from '66.
And also brutally bright!
Marshall "reissued" the "SLP 100" and the "Plexi 1987x" but did not use the older circuits, instead making basically early metal panel louder brighter amps.

If you want a vintage Strat into Plexi Marshall sound you need to match which Strat and which Marshall down to the components of each.
Old wood is not the source, and old pickups are not "it" either.

We can add in that in the '70s, many or even most Marshalls got modded for more gain, but in a variety of ways by techs o the East coast and the West coast. Some in the middle too by NY and LA was where it seems like most early Marshall mods originated.
Marshall makes some multi channel amps that include a "Plexi" channel and some are kinda close.

But the overall fact is that classic "vintage guitar" sounds are really guitar specs, amp specs, speaker specs, recording gear specs, engineer methods, and player technique.

The speakers cannot be over emphasized though, and it was really only in the 1990s that speakers were recreated to sound like the abandoned speaker designs of the '60s & early '70s.
Celestion alone took several years to reissue a legit "alnico blue".
Funny tech process with that vintage tone ingredient if you're not hip to that history: Celestion made speakers but not cones.
(If you take an old Celestion and put a modern cone in it, the modern cone is what you hear. The vintage frame and magnet don't have a vintage sound)
Celestion bought speaker cones from Pulsonic and another source I've forgotten.
At some point one Celestion factory may have produces cones but the Pulsonic cones were the ones they needed to recreate to nail the alnico blue sound, and the Pulsonic factory had burned down along with tooling and documentation, so there was no record of those cones production.
In the '90s when used Celestion blue frame alnicos in AC30s were fetching $500 a pair, Celestion decided to cash in and make a reissue.
But it took them years of experimenting with paper formulas to get it as close as today.

Damn I got stuff to do why am I still typing!
Those are my findings anyhow, I hope your playing and tone hunting goes well, keep guitar valid in pop music please!

 

[fowlermike54]

OK so now I understand even a little more what you're saying.

Like you say now, I too used to believe "Current Stratocasters are not producing the same sound as the older models".

In fact I was deeply invested in that belief but couldn't afford complete '50s/ '60s Strats in 1980, so instead I asked guitar shops if they had any Fender parts that didn't work, pickups specifically but I bought old Fender necks with frets worn out and old Fender bodies that had been routed and lost their necks etc etc etc.
I played lots of old guitars but my fender exploration sorted through all the parts.

My beliefs included:
Old wood sounds better than new wood in solid body electrics.
Old pickups sound better than new pickups.
And to a lesser extent I used old pots switches & wiring as much as possible.
Building/ assembling partscasters for 40+ years I basically searched for the Holy Grail components of old time classic tones.

Down at the base levels it's actually possible to replace one old part at a time with a new part to compare how much influence the body wood, the neck wood, the bridge and saddles, the pickups, the pots, all have on "guitar sound".

I could turn this into a book but my hands are beat up from doing stuff for decades so I'm gonna summarize my transition from believing new guitars can't get old guitar sounds.

1) The mystery of old wood seems to be 100% false, BUT, the body wood and the neck wood do influence the sound. Swapping bodies I found that a new body of the same wood and density was pretty much no less vintage sounding than and old body of the same wood and density. Both Strats and Tele's, though mostly comparing swamp ash Tele bodies and alder Strat bodies.
Funny really, I still have one '50s Esquire body that sits in my parts pile because it doesn't sound any better than my recent swamp ash bodies from Musikraft. It's just old.

2) The mystery of old pickups is a little more fluid because some do lose magnet strength, and that is greatly variable.
I've had old pickups with time weakened magnets that sounded worse than old pickups with stronger magnets!
Allow that old recordings of now old guitars were made when those guitars were NOT old, so the magnets didn't have the 20-40-60 years of magic mojo from weakened magnets, and were in fact fairly new magnets with strong charge in them.
BUT, one set of '50s Strat pickups really hooked me on the idea that old pickups sound better and new pickups simply cannot match them.
I bought these pickups and dropped them in a '65 Strat body with an '85 Squier neck I put new jumbo frets on. Wired up with old pots etc. That was a magical sound and greatly different from my Duncan vintage strat pickups I'd bought new in the '70s!
Turns out though that what I had was a set of '54 or '55 Strat pickups with A3 magnets.
A3 magnets really change the whole guitar sound IME.
Oddly Fender puts A3 mags in very few Strat sets.
Anyhow, after swapping hundreds of old and new Fender pickups, they do all vary a little yet almost every great sounding old Fender pickup has been matched for sound by some new pickups in my endlessly changed guitar menagerie.

3) We all notice that players today complain about "ice pick tone" from Tele bridge pickups and "thin/ shrill/ weak tone" from Strat bridge pickups.
This is an area that gets more complicated because one player can get a great sound from a plain old vintage Tele with low wind bright clear vintage Tele pickups, then hand it to another player and it sound like crap.
There can be and are many reasons for this, and any given player will have ways they make a too bright old Tele or Strat pickup sound fatter and vintage great.
One is rolling off volume WITHOUT THAT STUPID TREBLE BLEED THAT GOT TRENDY WHEN EVERYBODY BOUGHT HOT OVER WOUND PICKUPS TO TAME THE ICE PICK, another more obvious one is rolling off the tone control a little.
Many players simply never really run vol or tone wide open.
Those players sound as much like their settings as like their guitar.
Then there's player technique, which is also huge and complicated.
I run vol full up and no tone control but pick and mute to darken and fatten my tone.
I've handed by plugged in Esquire to another player and he made horrible shrill tone!
Because his method was very different from mine.

4) Old time tone was often made with old time amps.
And in old times studios, where for example just the mic pre's in Neve boards were inadvertently tone sweetening magic boxes.
Back to the amps though, modern amps are generally brighter for a number of reasons.
One is that before circa 1977, speaker tech was primitive and struggling just to not blow up.
Some time in the mid late '70s they went from paper voice coil formers to kapton.
Changed speaker sound and overall guitar/ amp/ speaker/ player sound a lot.
Too much to go further on that but amps went through some similar changes in some cases.
Fender BF reissue amps have the same basic circuit today, and those were always bright amps as they are today, but classic studio recordings we may compare, will have at least had old time paper voice coil broken in low wattage speakers, which sound pretty different.
Now Marshall OTOH has virtually NEVER reissued a correct Plexi 50 or 100!
The Plexi era Marshalls had less treble and more fatness, especially when combined with old paper VC speakers fitted with old cones.
As arena Rock demanded louder brighter amps, Marshall changed the circuits to be brighter and also louder clearer and more punchy.
The Plexi 100 from '66 and '67 wasn't even a full 100 watts.
By '69 the power and treble went way up, in fact the 100w from 1970 was twice the wattage as the "100w" from '66.
And also brutally bright!
Marshall "reissued" the "SLP 100" and the "Plexi 1987x" but did not use the older circuits, instead making basically early metal panel louder brighter amps.

If you want a vintage Strat into Plexi Marshall sound you need to match which Strat and which Marshall down to the components of each.
Old wood is not the source, and old pickups are not "it" either.

We can add in that in the '70s, many or even most Marshalls got modded for more gain, but in a variety of ways by techs o the East coast and the West coast. Some in the middle too by NY and LA was where it seems like most early Marshall mods originated.
Marshall makes some multi channel amps that include a "Plexi" channel and some are kinda close.

But the overall fact is that classic "vintage guitar" sounds are really guitar specs, amp specs, speaker specs, recording gear specs, engineer methods, and player technique.

The speakers cannot be over emphasized though, and it was really only in the 1990s that speakers were recreated to sound like the abandoned speaker designs of the '60s & early '70s.
Celestion alone took several years to reissue a legit "alnico blue".
Funny tech process with that vintage tone ingredient if you're not hip to that history: Celestion made speakers but not cones.
(If you take an old Celestion and put a modern cone in it, the modern cone is what you hear. The vintage frame and magnet don't have a vintage sound)
Celestion bought speaker cones from Pulsonic and another source I've forgotten.
At some point one Celestion factory may have produces cones but the Pulsonic cones were the ones they needed to recreate to nail the alnico blue sound, and the Pulsonic factory had burned down along with tooling and documentation, so there was no record of those cones production.
In the '90s when used Celestion blue frame alnicos in AC30s were fetching $500 a pair, Celestion decided to cash in and make a reissue.
But it took them years of experimenting with paper formulas to get it as close as today.

Damn I got stuff to do why am I still typing!
Those are my findings anyhow, I hope your playing and tone hunting goes well, keep guitar valid in pop music please!

I can’t play worth a damn and am out of my element here with all the deep knowledge posts but here is my attempt at the original question as I understand it. Let’s take the Casinos The Beatles played. Made in USA and I’m guessing they weren’t terribly expensive at the time. You can get an Asian made model now for around $600 bucks, but the American made version is more. I seem to remember Noel Gallagher playing an Epiphone Dot early on. Cheaper guitars, mostly made in Asia, are generally of a higher quality now but of course cannot necessarily compete with their more expensive counterparts. I still believe artists can make good music with an Epi or Squier if they are talented. Just the thoughts of someone that doesn’t know a lot.