Vantage VS-600R

Here we have a fine example of the superior craftsmanship put forth by the Japanese in the early 1970's. My Vantage 600 VSR was made in the same Japanese factory which produced Epiphone, Ibanez/Greco, Ventura, Univox, Vantage, and several other brands of guitars. After the closure of the Kalamazoo plant, Gibson contracted to this Japanese plant to produce it's Epiphone guitar line until the Yen collapsed and Samick moved in and bought up the rights and moved the operation to Korea..enough history. My Vantage is a double cutaway slab of Brazillian Mahogany with a maple neck through design. The Brazillian Mahagony is not quite as hard as the American Mahogany, but it is still a tone monster and just as good. The Mahogany lies underneath a beautiful coat of baby blue paint and Vantage left the maple neck though stripe to give it a distinctive look. The maple used on the neck of my particular guitar has so many birdseyes and swirls it is almost psychadellic. My brother owns the Eddie Van Halen signature guitar...a very expensive axe..and the neck on my Vantage has more swirl and birdseye than his...and his is extremely nice. I would be a rich dude if I could've grabbed that maple tree before the Japanese did back in the early 70's. And yes, my Vantage 600 VSR is a 1973 model with double creme Dimarizo pickups and and two coil taps with two volume knobs and a tone knob. The frets are rosewood and do not show any wear whatsoever...I bought this guitar from a Bass player who was the original owner...it sat in his closet for years in the original case and all...that is why I know when the guitar was made. I really don't know "who" made the tuners on my guitar...they are made for Vantage as they all have the V cap on each one. Now some folks think that this model guitar was meant to be a shot at the Gibson SG...but I am old enough to remember another popular Gibson model which I am sure Vantage was out to smoke...and it was the ever popular Gibson Melody Maker. Ventura, Univox, and all the other's were already making SG clones (and dang impressive clones too). But I think that this guitar and its variants were a clear shot at both the melody maker and the double cutaway Les Pauls coming out in the 70's. I own a Melody Maker and this guitar closely resembles one.

This guitar suits my style to a T. I mostly play Classic Rock, Surf, Southern-Fried Rock, Tex-Rock and Tex-Blues, and even the old string stretching licks of Chuck Berry and Keith Richards....this guitar will hang right in there with the best of them. I don't know what in the world is wrong with my Australlian Brother in the other review...but his babble loses me. Does he even play guitar?? Talking about hollowing out an already thin bodied guitar?....geeez..too much beer if you ask me. Back to the guitar..I own two SG's, A Melody Maker, two Les Pauls, a Flying V, ...but for the bucks and for night after night usability and playing you can't beath is axe. This is a players guitar not a thing to worship. I have a variety of amps and speakers and footswithes....but I like to use this axe with a simple fender twin combo and no effects..just the guitar and the amps onbaord knobs....and I can get that Royal Albert Concert Hall wail witn mimimun effort. I don't know how many of you realize that wherever you play there are harmonics involved..this guitar will duplicate Hendrix or Clapton or Johnny Winter...any player who can work that feedback and room harmonics to their favor...you can literally bring the cosmos outta one of these cuitars. This is why I waited until I bought 4 of them before I told my story and let you know about these guitars. This guitar was a sleeper when it came out and it remains a sleeper to this day...although I can swear I saw Keith Richards using a VS 600 on stage the other night in Madison Square Garden during the HBO brodcasting of the Stones Live. He brought it out during "Midnight Rambler". Back to the guitar...Yes, I love this guitar and will always use it in my sets. And, it is so simple to work on and to set up and to intonate. Just basic guitar..no frills, no fancy lace...just a slab of great wood with a stop tail piece, two humbuckers, three knobs and a couple of coil taps. If you don't like the pickups...then change them...there is nothing complicated about this guitar...you can overhaul this guitar in a half hour...everything is uncomplicated and easy. My guitar is nearly 30 years old....and it is in like new condition. I have another model that has actually seen heavy usage thoughout the years and the frets still look great and it I tuned it a month ago and it is still in tune today. This guitar is a TONE MONSTER and will smoke anything put up against it. My brother brought his Big Apple Strat over here the other day....we went head to head on a variety of solos..and I got better sqeal and feedback harmonics than he could. Don't let a bolt on neck casue you to not like a guitar...even a 2,000.00 fender has a bolt on neck. Think about it.

Factory setup?? Well..I would need Ouiji Board and a paranormal studies group to attempt that...that factory and probably most of the workers are string harps in heaven by now. But, I can tell you that you can set this guitar up in 15 minutes...everything is adjustable...the tailpiece has string advance/return set screws and also string height hex nets for each string. My guitar, as I said was bought new, never used, and put into a closet...so either the factory or the music store who sold it to my freind did a wonderful job for setup. Although I do like my strings a bit higher than hovering right above the fretwire..this one has a very low action which creats a super fast neck...and due to the materials used in construction..you can bring a note from the first fret all the way down the last fret..the sustain on this model is incredible. I play a lot of rock...and sometimes depending on the song I do a lot of swithcing from bridge humbucker to the neck...I use the neck pickup for most leads and you talk about a bluesy/Cream/Clapton sound??This puppy will do it. And for all you "dive bombers" out there....hit your lick on this pup and it will growl like a silver tip grizzley. Overall, I am extremely pleased with this guitar...I wish they still made them. So simple of a construction....using the best woods available..and at nearly thirty years old...playing like it just came home from the music store. I would rather play this guitar than my others due to the sounds it produces in a live playing setting. I forgot to mention that the nut width is over 25 which is great for crystal clean chords and for large hands like myself...I have big hands and this guitar with the string spacing fits my hands perfectly. It seems that guitar makers have gotten the idea the only little people with skinny fingers play the guitar....the nut width on these new imports is ridiculous....I can't harldy play some of them without double stringing with the tip of one finger....whic means a decent lead is out.

As I have said...this is a working guitarists machine. It is not something to build an alter around..it is meant to be put to work. I never go to any gig without taking several guitars...but this guitar will hold its' own and I would even take it on the road for a national tour if I ever got one :) I am a cover band/studio guitarist. I play songs everybody else wrote and got rich from...and I play them well. I also help other people get their songs down on tape so they can get rich too....I am just a working guitarist who knows a lot of songs and who knows a lot of the tricky licks that some songs. This guitar should be considered as a tool...a tool that you should always have in your toolbox becasue it does so much and so easy to maintain. I always use strap locks so so much for the..do the strap buttons hold..and no guitar finish lasts forever..so that is dumb question....that is if you actually play the guitar you have bought and not worship it as an idol and never play it.

Samick now owns the rights to the Vantage name and now they are all made in Korea, China or Indonesia. My guitar's mommy and daddy are gone....but any guitar shop in town can fix whaterver ails this axe if you can't do it yourself. You won't find a lot of these out there anymore...I bought four before I decided to review them> My sound so depends on this axe nowadays that I bought four of these guitars and will never sell them. I have one set up with Les Paul pickups..another one set up with the Seymour Duncan Screamin Demon/Pearly Gates configuration....the other two are stock. If you treat this guitar right it should last forever...or at least until a re-fret job is due. Mine have been there 25 years and still look great.

I have been playing guitar ever since I saw that movie "Davy Crockett" with Fess Parker and Buddy Epson. When I heard the song "Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier" that was it...I wanted to play guitar. My dad fixed me up with a small mexican guitar he bought one day in Laredo when we lived in Texas. The next thing you know I was singing Davy Crockett thanks to some help from a mexican friend of my dad who played guitar with a Mariachi Band at a local Mexican Resturant. He showed me how to tune up...five or six chords, a few picking techniques, and the basic generals involving timing and how a guitar fits into a band. I use to watch his band play every Friday and Saturday night at the resturant...great fellow and I miss him a lot. He was a um pa pa um pa pa type player but could definately hit a flamigo lead when the song required it..along with a high pitched Ah ha haaaa you hear so often in Mexican folk songs. Then my brother brought home the 1st beatles and the 1st stones records....I hit my dad up once again for a loan...instead he brought home a Sears Silvertone strat copy with case with a built in amp. I sounded like shit for long time..it takes a while to convert from acoustic to electric...but soon I was off to the races. When I heard that Stones song...It's All Over Now..I was just befuddled and wowed by the way Keith Richards streched those strings and produced that sound. I thought he was a guitar god. That is when I found out about Chuck Berry..Albert King...Howlin Wolf... And throughout the course of my playing I have met some of the famous ones..especially some of the more notable Texas players BEFORE they went on to make millions. And during the course of my playing I have accumulated quite a collection of guitars for my own personal use. I also have three full stacks, an assortment of combo amps...a closet full of footswitches and effects...a great PA system...all over the course of the years. As for this guitar....It lacks nothing I could want..and it can be hot rodded and put back into original conditon in the same day..simple comstruction....but it is a tone machine which is why I love it.

I bought this guitar in a second hand shop in Perth, Western Australia, on 26th October 2000. My ultimate purpose was to build a semi-hollow bodied jazz guitar and graft on the neck from a cheap old piece of rubbish.

But having played this one several times in the stoor, I found it to be quite nice, even though it is has had a fairly rough life. (It even has "Luke's Guitar" scratched into the surface. Three times.)

It plays so well, and such a good strong Gibson-esque crunch, that I'm going to clean it up and enjoy playing it......until the hollow body is made and WHOOSH - it'll be off faster than a bride's nightie.

DESCRIPTION

Double cutaway Gibson/Yamaha shape. Centre body chunk is Alder or spruce, left in natural wod colour. Upper and lower bouts are blue (and I'm sure gonna respray them!!!). 2 x humbuckers; hardtail bridge; through-body string mount; no tremolo arm. 2 x vols, 1 x tone knob. Curiously, it has what appears to be a coil-tapping switch by the knobs, and then a p/u selector on the upper bout (SEE REVIEW OF Vantage 695 in menu). This is peculiar, and I may well fill in the holes with putty and just have a normal selector switch.
Did not come with strap or case, but then I didn't expect it to!

FINISH
Was probably good when this guitar was made (about ten years ago.???)
Has survived despite hard life in the hands of young Luke.

PLAYABILITY
Very good. Easy on the fingers, does rock, jazz chords. With an effects pedal, should make a good range of sounds.


OVERALL
I can't really give it points due to its condition, but suffice it to say:

Last year I found an old Cimar Jazz Bass copy in similar condition. I did a total respray and defret, to make in into a very nice fretless bass. This Vantage guitar should yield the same fine result, with a bit of work. This proves to me that you can often find a heap of crap in a second hand store and give it a new life. Hence, you don't need to spend big bucks to have some fun and make yourself a neat guitar.
The best thing about used guitars is: if the neck hasn't warped yet, it's not going to. My Cimar fretless is proof of that, and I look forward to doing the same makeover with the Vantage.

I'd be very happy to chat with others who are attempting this type of project.

Cheers,

Peter
(edukator@hotmail.com)