Aren't vintage guitars all about the wood? The age of the wood directly contributing to the sound (and feel) aesthetics of the instrument? Is perfectly dried, aged wood that easy to fake? Sounds like a GREAT thing for musicians. Anyone paying $40k for a nice laquer job and old fashioned volume pots probably deserves to get ripped off. That said, I am not a participant in the vintage guitar collector market. I have, however, played some (at least I think they were) genuine vintage fenders (Sadowski guitar shop in NYC) and I'd like to think I could tell the difference.

I heard a story that the main reason Leo Fender sold out to CBS was that his stash of perfectly aged wood had run out. So once he didn't have the super choice wood to make his instruments anymore - the wood that made them play and sound the way they did - he was done. Makes sense to me. Just because the "right" wood is aged doesn't make it special. Fender had really special wood, which is what made his instruments what they were. I like to believe that anyway. Nothing special at all about most instruments these days, IMO. At least the mainstream ones.