Well first off I paid £150 for this. Ex-demo, so not new, not second hand, think in-between the two. This is a PRS copy and Vintage have pretty much nailed the body shape! It's a Double-cut. Vintage says the VRS means "Vintage Rock Series".
The finish I chose for this guitar was the "through blue". A very dark blue finish on the front with a lighter greeny-blue on the back and neck. This finish is semi transparent (you can see the wood). Through blue is now a discontinued colour.
For the body 3 pieces of Eastern poplar have been used. A bookmatched flamed maple veneer is glued on top. The top of the guitar is carved while the back is contoured for comfort. The neck is nice and chunky set neck and is made up of 2 pieces of maple with a 1 piece rosewood fingerboard. Upon the fretboard are 24 medium frets. Abalone (or some kind of synthetic abalone) is used for the inlays in form of dots with the acceptation for the 12th fret inlay which is, well think of the V from the Vintage logo and imagine putting a mirror to the side of it - that’s what it looks like, MOTS is used for this. The headstock has a flamed maple veneer on the front, also in dark blue. The Vintage logo is the only piece of writing whatsoever on the headstock, it's done in MOTS. Mother of toilet seat, the pearl like plastic commonly found in things like toilet seats, used for reasons of cost. A black plastic truss rod cover is screwed onto the headstock using 3 screws. The serial number is a cheap sticker! I would rather it be like engraved onto the headstock or something.
Great playability! Some may prefer a skinnier neck though.
One of the things that stand out in this guitar is the Wilkinson hardware, good quality hardware with a good reputation, on a cheapish guitar! The hardware on the through blue is chrome. 6 three-a-side E-Z lock tuners are fixed upon the headstock. E-Z lock tuners are basically tuners with two holes in the posts instead of 1 - you pass the string through one, wind it a bit and put it through the next hole. Not the best locking system but a clever one and quite simple to use. They are put in such a way to make the strings pass through the nut and to the tuner in an almost straight line, this helps a bit with tuning problems, especially since this guitar has a tremolo. The tremolo is again a Wilkinson creation. It only dive down but can be modified to float a bit so you can pull up too. The whole thing keeps in tune fairly well, although I hardly use the tremolo it's still a nice thing to have. Onto the pickups! Here we have 2x Wilkinson humbuckers with black plastic pickup surrounds. These are covered humbuckers - chrome. Pretty sweet pickups, especially at this price. Clean sounds are easily obtainable. Distorted, high gain sounds sound shine through the bridge pickup! I wouldn't say this is for say "uber heavy metal" though! So nice tones, was thinking of taking them out and replacing but I've changed my mind now....but I'm lazy too so.... Anyways the humbuckers are wired up to a simple 3 way selector switch (with a black plastic tip) and single volume and tone knobs. The knobs are black speed knobs. To be honest the tone knob doesn't do too much while the volume knob only a bit better than those kinds where it's on or off. But that’s OK I suppose since I'm the kind who hardly touches them!
Ok set up wise I probably shouldn't judge. I bought it from a shop where they apparently did a free set up for me. Plus it's ex-demo so I can not judge the quality of the set-up straight out of the box.
So all in all a great guitar. A few flaws here and there but they acceptable considering the price. If I lost it or if it were stolen then I would probably buy another one, just this time not in blue!
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