VINTAGE V100 ReIssued Electric Guitar ~ Lemon Drop

Product Information

Over the years, JHS have continued to work at close quarters with skilled craftsmen within the Vintage research and development team, maintaining consistency throughout. Whilst assuring the last guitar out of the container when it arrives is as good in every shape or form as the first one. JHS have also had the uncanny foresight to stay ahead and survive all musical trends along the way. The Vintage ‘Viator’ travel guitars for example which, like the company’s line of soprano and concert ukuleles, have sold in their thousands. Actually, the loyalty and love for the brand which I’ve experienced with players of all ages I’ve met over the years, is astonishing and speaks to the honest way Trev and I have approached the project. To this day, the social media channels are awash with positivity, which I have to say is very heartening. Wilkinson Tune-O-Matic enables fine-tuning of each string for superb intonation all over the fretboard. Mass produced guitars always suffer to a varying degree from sharp burs on the edges of the frets where they have been cut off in production. By spending time "softening" these edges it makes a massive difference to the feel of the guitar. From a sharp, scratchy feel when moving your hand up and down the fretboard to a guitar that feels like it has been played in for years. It was the classic case with both guitars, where you just feel like you’ve put on a pair of slippers you’ve had for years. They just sat in my hands and when I plugged them in, they did exactly what I wanted them to do.

Dennis continues, “ Trev Wilkinson always knew of JHS and when we were looking to create the Encore Vintage Series, we wanted a killer bridge that stayed in tune, Trev had just brought the VS10 vibrato bridge to the market, which was a clever combination of his twin post design, with fixed intonation steps, and overall adjustability which hit an amazingly economical price, but still did the job 100%.” Trev created a process whereby the relicing could be achieved in serial production and in a worldwide industry first, Vintage ICON Series was born, making 'new pre-worn guitars', ‘modern relics’, accessible to a much wider market with all of the hallmark Vintage attributes of style, value, high spec, superb playability and great tone. From the idea on paper to the finished product is a challenge, but from the start, I’m already streets ahead working with exceptionally well-built models that already play and sound superb. Each guitar is themed with an original story, with custom artwork, related details and Wilkinson hardware throughout, and arrives with an individually numbered authentication certificate and extra special ‘case candy’. It’s not easy to come up with something different in the guitar world”, says Ben Court, the creative genius behind every Joe Doe guitar.If the purpose of a copy is to provide a taste of the real thing at a way more affordable price point then both these V100s pass that test in some style. Good things come to those who wait – but who has the time for that? The Vintage ICON Series replicates the beautiful, worn-in look and feel of an instrument that has paid its dues, without investing the lifetime's worth of woodshedding, rehearsing, performing and travel. This is a guitar that already looks like your lifetime companion; the best part is your journey is just beginning. Play on. We use a lot of hired gear when we are flown out to shows, so I’m not sure what I’m going play. It’s often different at every gig, but the Yellow Peril has the same Graham Oliver sound whatever amp I use, it plays and sounds so good every time, I love it. JHS had now proved they could design and produce world class products under the Vintage banner. With a reputation to build upon, the company looked to the future with a plan to grow and develop lines for acoustic, electro-acoustic, electric, and bass guitars and a superb range of folk instruments. As the story goes, with the supply of desirable ‘beat up old guitars’ drying up, new build ‘reliced’ guitars began to appear and guitar production followed many other categories such as furniture, clothing, jewellery, architectural accessories and the like, in creating an industry around new old instruments that saved you the bother of dragging a guitar around, for forty years beating it up!

People often don’t take hardware seriously, it’s frustrating. I fully understand that players are often more concerned with the visual cosmetics of a guitar, like a fancy maple cap for example, but the reality is, if you don’t have hardware that works, you can’t make a guitar. Two piece centre jointed mahogany body, with carved solid maple cap and bookmatched flame maple veneer provides resonance, tone and ‘correct weight’ comfort. The Vintage V100 features a unique, evolutionary body shape, with a graceful descending bass side shoulder and an ingeniously-designed offset heel providing improved access to the upper reaches of the fretboard. As with the design by which they’re inspired, both V100s are weighty propositions (there’s no mention of any weight relief ), but they do stay on the right side of the 4.5kg/10lb threshold and feel perfectly good in terms of playability, especially for the price. The fretwork is pretty tidy with the frets sitting over the binding, and it’s of a sensible gauge, too, not over-big in width or height at approximately 2.7mm wide and around 1.2mm high.

Success

I’ve always loved guitars that tell a story, there are so many iconic holy instruments, the guitar Jimi Hendrix set alight at the Montreux festival and BB King’s Lucille for example, they all have great stories and not just a sum of their parts, they all have a reference. JHS Managing Director Paul Smith comments, “Working closely with our manufacturing partners in the Far East, we have been able to develop and design instruments that punch way above their weight, always with an eye on the value/quality ratio. Our collaboration with Trev Wilkinson has been an education and a pleasure, and partnering with world leading hardware brands has allowed us to deliver immense value within the instruments we produce. There is obviously a lot of time invested in developing guitars that are not only astounding quality for their respective price points, but that are also unique enough to demand attention, yet familiar enough to translate into sales for very satisfied customers.