True, but in the case of synths and amps (especially), the reason why people often prefer the originals is because each individual model is different. A Vox AC30 will not sound the same every time you switch it on (I know, because I have one). My Vox AC30 will not sound the same as yours. There will be subtle or even quite wild differences. It's just the nature of analog and the old components used. It's the same with analog synths like the Moog etc.
This is really not the same as home computers. They look & feel the same no matter what, because it's all digital and created in a lab.
You can get a very good approximation of amps and synths with modern digital modelling, but the main drawback is they will all sound the same. It's the variation and individual uniqueness (based on that 'original' sound) that musicians seek out, not the nostalgia or technology per se IMO.
Some musicians seek out original sounds, but an awful lot want to sound like everyone else (or, say Mr Hendrix, e.g.), and if it was just a case of sounding
different then there wouldn't be such a nerdy market for that exact model, you know, the Mk1.5 tonebender with
those transistors biased in a particular way with exactly the right paper in oil capacitors etc. Any old fuzz pedal would do as long as it sounded different - which just isn't the case.
In the case of a lot of audio equipment from that era (a fair bit of it created in "labs" very similar to those that the 8bit micros were designed in, certainly in the UK) even the makers didn't really understand what they had hit on and the expertise to make the same thing again and again disappeared; it's only in the last 10/15 years for example that the secrets of certain early fx pedals have been properly worked out again after having been essentially lost for decades. Witness the lab made analogue gear coming out of Behringer that satisfies the very real market demand for the acid sound of '88 even though you can emulate it.
A lot of the designs also disappeared because "progress must be better" (a lot of perfectly good valve amps ended up in skips simply because they weren't "fashionable" anymore). There were tons of different amp designs from the 60s - some still with us, some not. Why is the AC30 still around (and why is it so difficult to make one now?) Do you know? Your AC30 might sound different to mine (though I'm not sure that if we both had a '63 JMI Coppertop TB with Alnico Blues they would sound at all different, unless they were in different conditions) but the AC30 design is hugely different to a Fender Twin Reverb, e.g. and the sounds are unmistakable. It's not a question of analogue vs digital in that case. It's a matter of particular design choices coming in to play which meant you could do certain things with one and not with another. Each has its own
magic - or to put in another way, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Then there's the case of what the
users do with the designs. I think there's a fair case for pinning the sound and excitement around 60s music on the window of time when certain amp technology met with particular guitars.
And the same thing could be said for computers. The early 80s home computer boom (in the UK at least) saw loads of different models and attempts - some were successful, some not. There was a window of time where particular technology was perfect for a particular kind of creativity and the zx spectrum was a particularly successful model for games, even though it wasn't designed for it. Why?
