« Vox Custom 24 »

Its a long story... I responded to an ad in the St Albans chronicle, a regional north london newspaper regarding a Gibson les paul firebrand! Not knowing what this strange animal was, I called the ad and got the address. The juvenile voice on the line had me suspicious, but my hunger for the elusive guitar deal of a life time made me overlook this disturbing detail. Arriving after speeding all the 12 miles through Watford to St Albans in a 69 Triumph spitfire I could hardly contain my excitement, but as with all deals I had to gain composure and pretend not to be excited. Perhaps this guy was a syd barrett that lived in his bedroom for 20 years? After knocking, a neanderthal looking mono sylabbic speaking youth with the greasiest hair i'd ever seen ushered me up to his bedroom. The thought of some scene from deliverence crossed my mind, but the smell of a guitar find powered me onward. He opened a wardrobe, removed what seemed to be dozens of pairs of shoes to reveal the unmistakeble shape of a fitted gibson case. Like a coffin being exhumed from a grave he wiped off the dust and laid the precious sarcophigus on the bed. OPening the case there was what appeared to be a les paul that had been scratched to death by the buried alive victim you see in movies. It was a les paul no doubt. I asked the cro magnon about its history and the like, but alas details were sketchy. He said he had to sell. I asked the all important question, how much? Expecting a four digit reply, he simply grunted make me an offer. This is the moment whan all the cool in the world is needed, and all the yoga in the world wouldnt have brought my heart rate down. I took a gamble, based on my suspected IQ assessment, and offered him 250 quid. He immediately said yes, and I began counting out the faces of queen elizabeth into his sweaty palm, trying not to appear excited, half expecting him to turn into the punk pithicus he looked like. I finished dealing out the wad, and closed the case, thanking him, got down the stairs and out the door. I was in the spitfire and down the road, glancing at the black gibson case wondering if the thing was for real or a fake or what!. Once home we , my brother and I thoroughly researched the strange gibson and found it be official. The bridge pickup was working intermittently so I took it to a guitar shop in St Albans for repair. Whilst there the owner asked me to try this new vox 24 fret guitar he had just received. Remember this was 1983 and Carlos Santana was using the Yamaha sg2000. I guess this vox was a challenger to this genre of axe...... he traded the gibson even up for the vox which was 699 pounds in the store with a hardshell case

The 24 frets was special, it was weird to be able to solo in B above the 12 fret easily. The action was incredible and the screaming response from the semour duncan double humbuckers was twice the output compared to my 74 strat. It has single coil switching and out of phase switching too, which gives versatility to the sounds available.

The guitar is heavy! Its made from a number of gorgeous looking dark woods laminated, but I was suffering from "les paul neck" by the end of the first jam with the boys.

Construction is excellent and the finish superb

Ive had this guitar 20 years now and the only change I made was to replace the neck double humbucker pickup with a fender lace sensor double pickup, the blue/ gold combo. This now allows me to have amazing fenderesque tones and the screaming seamour at the flick of a switch.

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com