Rautalanka is a distinctively Finnish phenomenon, even though its roots are elsewhere. In the early 1960's the first generation of Finnish guitar bands started playing instrumental music in the vein of The Shadows (UK) and The Spotnicks (Sweden). These rautalanka bands were very popular for a couple of years in the first half of the 1960's, but the most hectic years passed quite soon, as the original bands started hiring vocalists. However, there has been a small but active rautalanka scene in Finland ever since, and the new bands are often very conservative, trying to reproduce the original sound as accurately as possible, in many cases with 1960's equipment (tube amplifiers etc).