Vox SSC-55

This guitar is Vox's singlecut solid body design. It has a traditional design but it has all the high technology that Vox guitars nowadays are known for. Not many people know but Vox guitars nowadays are some of the most modern and cutting edge guitars you can get. The guitar has a mahogany body with a maple top Les Paul style. The finish on this is their Goldtop finish. It is a bit darker than you see on most old school Goldtops. The set neck is made out of mahogany with a rosewood fretboard. The fretboard has 22 frets. The bridge is the Vox maxconnect bridge. It is kind of like a tune-o-matic and stop tail combined into one piece. The coolest part about these guitars is the pickups. This guitar has the Vox Coaxe pickups which are like 3 pickups in one. The guitar has a volume and tone with 2 mode selectors for the pickups and a 3 way switch.

UTILIZATION

These guitars are super comfortable. Vox has taken the idea of body contours to the next level. They call it 3D contouring. The whole body is contoured to fit close to you when you are playing it. You do not feel like you are reaching around the guitar when you play it. The neck joint is really nice. It is not bulky at the back so you can easily reach the upper frets. They cut away a bit of the wood so you can easily reach around the neck all the way to the highest frets.

SOUNDS

The sounds on this guitar mix old school and new school. The sound is very versatile but it does it all without modeling. It does it the old fashion way with magnets and clever wiring. The Coaxe pickups are very cool. They are like 3 pickups in one. According to Vox you get clean, crunch and dirty modes. I like to think of it as single coil, P90 and humbucker modes because they perfectly emulate these pickups in tone. On this model of Vox you can select each pickups mode individually. So if you wanted you could have a twangy single coil bridge tone combined with a smooth humbucking neck tone. Or you could have a snarling P90 tone in the bridge with a humbucker in the neck. Or the other way around. With this guitar the versatily is very surprising.

OVERALL OPINION

These Vox guitars are taking guitar design to the next level. You wouldnt see a big company taking this big of a step in guitar design. The comfort and versatility of these guitars is something you would never seen a big company. Big companies tend to stick with what they know best and only improve the models when they have do. Smaller companies like Vox need to advance to get noticed and when they do they force the big companies to setup up their game. I hope the big companies see guitars like this and step up their game.