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Vintage Advance AV6 P Electric Guitar

 

Review of the Vintage AV6 by The Man in the Jar

Features of the Vintage AV6

Tuners - Wilkinson branded mini-tuners with small knobs that work well and feel solid. The capstans are staggered in height to provide good string tension over the nut.

Headstock - This is a six-on-one-side Strat variant with a more rounded profile.

Nut - This is listed as ivory but I'm unsure of the source. In any case it is tidily and accurately cut.

Neck - The bolt-on maple neck has been stained to that golden "aged" maple tone that only normally comes with a decade or so of ageing. This is a thin profile neck that sits well in the hand and is very playable. The heel is finished with a block of bubinga that sits in the neck slot of the alder body and enhances the coupling between neck and body.

Fretboard - This is a lovely dark rosewood with barely any visible grain. There are traditional white dot fret markers which are repeated on the player's side of the unbound fretboard.

Frets - Medium-round profile well-polished frets provide an easy playing experience.

Action - Lovely and low straight from the box.

Body - The Stratoid alder body has all the comfort contouring you'd expect from a Strat-type and the Laguna blue finish is really rather gorgeous. 

Bridge - This is a Wilkinson branded version of a standard Strat vibrato supported along its leading edge by six screws with the strings feeding up through the vibrato block from the rear. The tuning held well in use and the shimmer of traditional vibrato technique really works well with P-90's.

Pickups - Three Wilkinson-branded stacked P-90 humbuckers sit under oblong cream covers.

Controls - There's one master volume and one master tone. The lower knob is a progressive coil tap taking any pickup combination from humbucker to single coil and all points in between. The five-way pickup selector completes a very versatile sonic package. 

Pickguard - The mint green three-ply scratchplate has a convex upper edge as opposed to a more traditional concave curve.

Strap-buttons - Quite small strap buttons sit in the usual places.

Output Jack - On the lower edge in a shallow Telecaster-style bucket.

Finish - Very good throughout.

 

Sound of the Vintage AV6 

With the stacked P-90's on full humbucker this guitar delivers a joyous vintage rock 'n' roll sound with a fantastic plummy bottom-end. I was fascinated by the distinctive voice of these pickups and spent a long time simply flipping through the selector switch comparing tones. Then I started to add jangle with the progressive coil tap. The bass end tightened up and I could approach a Rickenbacker-style shimmer on the top register. This is an extraordinarily individual guitar that supplies a bunch of great voices for blues, jazz, rockabilly and rock 'n' roll. 

 

Overall Impressions of the Vintage AV6

This is one of the best-sounding "clean" guitars I've come across. In a world of manic shredding it's a joy and a bit of a relief to be given a guitar that is built unabashedly for simple rock 'n' roll. So be aware that this guitar has a fundamentally vintage voice, be sure that this suits the style of music you intend to play. If it fits the bill, the AV6 will reward you with a staggering range of sonic variations within that framework. I loved it.   

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