Is 1990's equipment vintage?

Vintage isn’t JUST the number of years it’s been around. It’s that, plus the build/design philosophy that puts the gear in a special catagory.

Pretty hard to put any gear chock full of off-the-shelf integrated circuits into its “own” catagory. Hard to give it accolades for originality! 

Vintage gear has its own creative signature of sound, design, build, character, due to its design without large scale use of ICs.

The definitive cutoff year for originality without IC design crutches is 1985: The year CD players ushered in large scale use of mass-produced large ICs.

90’s porsches are certainly vintage

otoh skyfi in new york posted an ad selling a ARC VT-100 Mk2 called it vintage... i shook my head... but maybe they are right

I think wolfie is referring to Vintage vs Classic, where the latter can consist of models given even legendary status. Some are indeed special and timeless.

Before purchasing my starter-audiophile system earlier this year, my stuff was in the “old junk” category:  A 1991 Sony AV receiver that I have given to my nephew;  a pair of Jensen loudspeakers from the late 1980’s, likewise given to nephew; a Kenwood linear tracking turntable that doesn’t work right but I still have; a Technics cassette deck from ‘80’s — still have but don’t use; a 1993 Pioneer CD changer that I still use.  After giving the Sony receiver away, a guy gave me a Fisher tuner from the early 1980’s and I use that.  Old stuff can still be useful, if not quality vintage.

Not a bad topic Eric. 👍🏻