Sunday, April 5, 2009

Vox “Virage” guitars.


Yes, it is real folks. Vox, a trusted leader in some awesome, all tube amps, has developed a kick ass electric guitar! The Virage can be found in either a single or a double cut away, semi-hollow body type.
My first impression was that the Virage guitars appear to be tone monsters, and I’ll explain why.

Take a moment and imagine an electric guitar design that has both rocked and stood the test of time. Think about tone here, and sprinkle it with some vintage flavor. When I did this all I could see was a semi-hollow body/set neck design electric guitar, with two humbuckers and a stop bar tail piece.
Some rather classic guitars like the Les Paul, SG, PRS, and ES-335 come to mind. I know that some of you might be thinking “what about the single coiled cousins like the Strat and the Tele?”. But, for the sake of this article, let’s stay on the semi-hollow body, set neck, and stop bar tail piece path.

This classic “tone giving” set up for electric guitar has remained unchanged for decades. This configuration is two humbuckers in a semi-hollow body with a stop bar tail piece bridge. How many times have you seen this very body type guitar in the videos of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s?

Well, if it isn’t broke why fix it, right? Well, this classic set up for success in tone wasn’t broke, but it may have needed some fine tweaking.

Vox has been making killer tube amps for as long as I can recall, and probably since before I was born too. The tone that comes with an all tube Vox amp has been on more albums than you or I could ever count. They are the choice of so many hard core gig masters and they supply a tone that can hit you in the sternum. Plus, being a Vox, they are known to perform night after night without any troubles.

Well, add “makers of fine electric guitars” to the Vox resume!

The Vox Virage SC (single cut away) and the Virage DC (double cut away) are hot new guitars that are begging for attention. One trip around the Vox web site shows just what these beasts are made of. How about hand carved, set necks? That will keep the sustain going all night.
Two P90 pickups fuel the sound going out to the amps from the Virage guitars from Vox. These are very much like the pickups that I wrote about last time, in this very blog.
The P90 pickups featured in the Vox Virage guitars are “triple coil” pickups. They can be placed into a single coil mode, a humbucking mode, or in a P90 (warm phat single coil) mode. What’s even better is that they are not an active pickup system (needing batteries or an onboard computer to deliver that awful digital noise), but instead they are 100 percent analog pickups, capable of delivering pure madness!

There are two 3-way switches on the Virage guitar bodies that allow for switching between the three different pick up "modes", and between the two pickups themselves. I assume that you can select the neck pick up only, the bridge pick up only, or both of them together, and in whatever mode you want said pick up to be placed in.

I love the contoured bodies of the Virage guitars! They look as if they fit perfectly into your hip, and would be easy to play all evening long, with out any fatigue at all! The informitive images on the Vox site show a side view of the Virage guitar where you can see for yourself exactly what I mean.


Don’t just take all of this from me, instead click here to see what I am ranting on and on about, in video form! A job well done goes out to the good people at Vox. What a nice guitar.

No comments:

Post a Comment