When you think "vintage", think about not just the recorded sound, but the playback equipment.
I heard a lot of vintage sound via AM radio through a 6" mono speaker in the dash of my '59 Ford. Sounded pretty darn good to me.
Then I got a Muntz 8-track and four speakers in my '66 GTO - that was pretty fancy sound, podner.
So if people are actually old enough to have HEARD vintage sound (like thee and me), chances are that low to medium fidelity reproduction is a factor in their memory.
For me, I think of Jamerson/Motown, Jack Bruce/Cream, Booker T., the Who, the Beatles and similar acts as "vintage". Not all were P's by a long shot, but there sure were a lot of passive basses with flats being played on that stuff. There were P-basses, J-basses, EB-0 and EB-3s, Rics, the famous McCartney Hofner, Entwhistle's T-bird and other toys...but not many active basses.