Is 1990's equipment vintage?

Who Cares?

Me, I care.  I'd like to ask people what they think of when they think of vintage.  Specifically what the cut off is.  Like, I think 2010 gear is NOT vintage yet.

If I am selling it to you, it is vintage. If you are selling it to me it's old.

In the antique world, generally accepted 50+ years to be vintage.

In the wine world, that is just the year it was made.

For me, most electronics are never vintage, they are just old, except certain turntables, Nakamichi cassette decks and the odds speaker.

You know you're old when you bought new stereo gear in the 90's and now it's considered vintage! In the mid nineties l bought a new VAC PA 100 100 amp and ARC LS 15 pre amp and they are still working fine to this day. Me not so much

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.