Vantage VIE-10/BGS

made in indonesia (2003), basic strat features, 21 frets, 5-way selector, S/S/S generic pick-ups, body is spruce, neck is nato, fretboard is maple (well, according to the salesman), 2-color body (black + midnight wine), white pickguard, black headstock with gold-ish vantage logo on it. free (cheap) guitar cable and allen wrenches.

this is the first electric guitar i've ever owned. it sounds good. fits my style. my band covers weezer songs (power pop, alt-rock, grunge) so it's perfect especially with the solos. it's not noisy and has a very crunchy sound. right now i'm just playing it in my room through a marshall ms-2r 1w micro amp and a marshall drivemaster pedal, but i've played it through a marshall jcm900 and it sounded very good.

action was ok, i haven't made any adjustments yet. i've had this guitar for more than 3 months now and the only complaint i have is that the strings rusts easily (but can be removed temporarily with lemon oil), but i can easily replace them anytime with quality ones so i'm not that worried. and oh, the other tone knob wasn't installed that well but it still works perfectly.

definitely, this guitar will withstand live playing. a friend has actually used this on a rainy gig once and he had no problems. i believe it can last for a long time given considerable amount of maintenance time. strap buttons are very solid. very dependable guitar. i'll gig with it without a back-up.

i haven't dealt with the company (samick) because i haven't had problems with this thing yet. although i sent an e-mail to samick.co.kr asking them to provide the guitar's specs. they haven't e-mailed back yet. with regards to the music store i bought this from, the salesman was really helpful and polite, giving every info you need to know. it had a 3-month warranty, which (thankfully) i never had to exercise.

i've been playing guitar for more than 12 years now, but this is just the first electric guitar i've ever owned. and as far as i'm concerned, i got the perfect guitar for my budget (well, considering this is the philippines and you don't have that much option in buying guitars, not enough music stores). i've actually influenced a couple of friends to buy vantage guitars (both tele copies), and they love theirs. if this gets stolen, i'll definitely be saddened. but since it's not that expensive, i'll probably get the same guitar or maybe a squier strat (which probably is the same thing although "squier" is a more popular brand so it's a little more expensive by, say, 3,500 pesos or 70 u.s. dollars).