Is acoustic guitar an old man's instrument today?

[Brick]

Hey now.....I built a crapton of Heathkit stuff when I was a kid and I'm not......oh wait....yeah, I'm old.

 

[WaltW]

We had slot cars and RC planes and Estes Rockets and build-'em yourself Booney Bikes, Silvertone amps and guitars from HeathKit!

Heck you could practically build a workshop with a Heath O-scope, multi-meter, signal generator, and build your own short-wave radio, home stereo, and television. Microwave ovens came a bit later in the late '70's.

And for girls there were Easy-Bake Ovens!

Homemade skate boards using metal key skates, pump up water propelled rockets, Superballs, fly by cable gas planes, Balsawood gliders for a $.10
1966 my first amp was an 8" Silvertone with tremolo and an ES335 knock off made in Japan. Garage bands were fun

 

[adorshki]

Homemade skate boards using metal key skates, pump up water propelled rockets, Superballs, fly by cable gas planes, Balsawood gliders for a $.10
1966 my first amp was an 8" Silvertone with tremolo and an ES335 knock off made in Japan. Garage bands were fun

Go-karts made with lawn mower engines. Practice for the first car.

 

[West R Lee]

Homemade skate boards using metal key skates, pump up water propelled rockets, Superballs, fly by cable gas planes, Balsawood gliders for a $.10
1966 my first amp was an 8" Silvertone with tremolo and an ES335 knock off made in Japan. Garage bands were fun

When I was 4-5 years old we lived in Southern California.......sidewalks! We'd have contests with the older kids and they'd help us to see who could take the longest 2"X4" , nail rollers from skates to the bottom and make 6 or 8 foot long skateboards with 3-4 of us riding them. Man, you guys are bringing back memories.

West

 

[davenumber2]

What is the median age on this forum?

To be fair, I've been either here or on the previous Fender Forum for something like 25 years. That's terrifying!

I'm 41 and I feel like I'm one of the youngans here.

 

[adorshki]

When I was 4-5 years old we lived in Southern California.......sidewalks! We'd have contests with the older kids and they'd help us to see who could take the longest 2"X4" , nail rollers from skates to the bottom and make 6 or 8 foot long skateboards with 3-4 of us riding them. Man, you guys are bringing back memories.

West

Boogie-boarding:

 

[Prince of Darkness]

I'm 41 and I feel like I'm one of the youngans here.

You probably are!

 

[HeyMikey]

That's Sheeran, old man!

Hey adorable, you body shaming my fat fingers or dissing my lack of spell-check fu?

 

[Boomstick]

There are definitely not a lot of younger acoustic guitar hero type players. One of the last ones to come along was probably Andy McKee.

I'm almost 42 now, and even so when I was younger most of my friends played mostly electric guitar, although I have one who is more of an acoustic player, I played a bit of both and was probably a bit better acoustic player for years to be honest. I think this trend largely started when Eddie Van Halen hit the scene. I know Guild was feeling the decline in acoustics by the early 80s and experimenting with a bunch of short lived electrics at the time - some of which were actually pretty nice and worth essentially nothing used. At some point, I recall I played a Guild version of basically a late 70s Gibson Les Paul Custom (basically my favorite Les Pauls) for $300 that nearly identical with a thinner body (should have bought it but I don't think I had the money at the time. Haven't seen another since.

 

[Walter Broes]

Guitar forums have become old man hangouts for at least a decade now, and that's where you might get that impression. I have worked part-time at a small local guitar shop for the last eight years, and I'm happy to say that guitar in general is fast becoming a young  woman's instrument, which I think is pretty cool.

 

[WaltW]

I'm 41 and I feel like I'm one of the youngans here.

You are and that's great, I'm 30 years your senior as of next Tuesday.

I never addressed the topic of this thread: My grand daughter has learned to play guitar, not well just like me but, play none the less. She prefers her Telecaster with extra light .009 strings and about .020 clearance at 1st fret., over any acoustic she's tried. She said it hurts to play acoustic because the action is too open and the strings are too thick. She also plays a Baritone Ukulele which has big easy to compress strings.
I've been in a few music stores in recent months and I've seen quite a few teens and 20somethings in the acoustic rooms playing. I've been to 3 different GC stores and was pleasantly surprised to see this.

 

[adorshki]

Hey adorable, you body shaming my fat fingers or dissing my lack of spell-check fu?

Spell-fek chu is sew overgrated.

 

[bobouz]

Kids might have more idle time these days, but there will always be distractions - some healthier than others. Maybe 7th grade around 1964, I had a mini-bike with a standard issue Briggs & Stratton lawn mower engine. The definition of a love-hate relationship!

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

To look at the crowd here, you would certainly get that impression. We're mostly a bunch of old guys complaining about arthritis and diminished hand strength.

This is something I've been thinking about for a while, and I was finally moved to open the question for discussion by @Westerly Wood mentioning on the current "strings" thread that he's thinking of moving to 11s because he's "getting old" and having problems with 12s. But the question is more than just being about us; what I mean to ask is, do we trend older here because young people are not picking up the acoustic guitar anymore? Or is it something else, like maybe we hang out here because we just have more time on our wrinkled old hands?

A lot of us are over the hill and soon to be under it. But check out folks like Molly Tuttle, Dom Flemons, Billy Strings, Samuel James, Hank III, Old Crow Medicine Show, Jason Isbell, Tyler Childers, singer/songwriters in general, and the whole world of newgrass.

Google around and you'll find plenty of great young artists. Here's a good article: Young folk singers

And take a look at who's buying Taylors. They have the youth market pegged: build 'em for recording and miking, not for hanging around on the porch or by the fire with friends. Gibson and Martin are also marketing and selling successfully to a lot of young players.

Keep in mind that younger folks don't like web forums as much as we do. Too slow. They prefer Instagram and Tik Tok. So my advice is, don't consider the LTG crowd a representative folk guitar demographic. In fact, if you look at all the folk guitars available now, you'll realize that this is lutherie's Golden Age. Someone's buying them.

But when all is said and done, who cares whether acoustic guitars are waxing or waning? I say let's just enjoy 'em and let the future take care of itself.

 

[Canard]

Is acoustic guitar an old man's instrument today?

No.

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Or maybe when you take it away from the kids ...

 

[Bernie]

I believe the offer nowadays is such that there are many ways to get a more rewarding sound with machines, electronics, or even just effects on an electric guitar...
With an acoustic, you've got to be real good to get something impressive out of it...
It does take much more time, so in a world where you want to be efficient right away, or as quickly as possible, an acoustic guitar looks like a bicycle (vs a bike for instance)...But the tone, the vibe you get out of it is very special...

 

[GAD]

Internet bulletin boards are not normally where younger players congregate.

This is the issue IMO. We are called "forum denizens" on other social media.

 

[crank]

I go to a monthly pickin' party and the ratio of young folks and to folks is pretty even.. from casual observation.

 

[ReevesRd]

There are a lot of young acoustic players gigging in my area. But I am in Tennessee, home of country music.

When I was teaching, middle school kids loved playing the acoustic guitars (well, most of them).

 

[Cougar]

...or even this kid

OMFG! That kid is amazing! And the fingers on that guy!