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Richie Faulkner says new guitars “are far superior” to vintage ones
“I’ve played a ’59 or two and if you didn’t tell me it was a ’59, I wouldn’t think anything of it.”
Image: Scott Dudelson / Getty Images
Let it be known that Judas Priest guitar man Richie Faulker is team “new guitars” because they are – in his opinion – “far superior, in general, to the old ones.”
Speaking to Ultimate Guitar in a new interview, the guitarist says that while he does have a couple of old school axes – such as the ‘57 Goldtop relic he uses at live shows – in his arsenal, he is by and large a “huge advocate for new guitars over the old ones.”
“I know a lot of people say that the ‘vintage guitars’ – and the term ‘vintage’ changes as the years go by… Apparently, vintage now is mid-’70s,” Faulkner says. “You know, 10 or 20 years ago, you didn’t want the mid-’70s Les Pauls. But now, all of a sudden, because everything else has dried up ‘vintage’ means mid-’70s Les Paul – I don’t quite understand it.”
“So vintage is a nebulous term. So my point is, you get good ones and you get bad ones. The word ‘vintage’ doesn’t reflect how good something is, in my opinion. So the new ones, the new relic guitars, or the new guitars, in my opinion, are far superior, in general, to the old ones.”
“In my experience, I’ve played a ’59 or two and if you didn’t tell me it was a ’59, I wouldn’t think anything of it,” he adds – to the collective cries of vintage enthusiasts around the world. “Like the frets are worn down and the neck isn’t always straight or whatever, but the new ones are perfect. So I’m a huge advocate for new guitars, and I have lots of, shall we say, heated discussions with friends of mine about that, but yeah, that Goldtop is phenomenal.”
“People say there’s quirks on the old ones,” Faulkner explains, “like the headstock is broken on a lot of them. Well, if the headstock is broken, that means it’s flawed, surely. I don’t care if you think it’s stronger than it was, it’s a flawed guitar. So the new one that isn’t broken isn’t flawed. Whether or not it feels better to you, objectively, a new guitar is a better guitar. But I suppose that’s a conversation for the internet.”
In other news, Judas Priest have officially joined the lineup of October’s Power Trip Festival, replacing Prince of Darkness Ozzy Osbourne, who has pulled out of the event because his body is “just not ready yet”.