From Jake Lockard owner of Vibrance #26 Five String Bass:
REVIEW - Vibrance Wenge 5 String Bass
A little about the reviewer: I have been playing bass for over 15 years. I have owned or played many basses during this time; Fender (Ps and Js), Warwick, G&L, Ernie Ball, Modulus, Carvin, Ibanez, and Conklin to name a few. I have been the bassist for my current band for the last 5 years. During this time I married the love of my life, sold my house, bought a new house, and welcomed home two beautiful daughters. I also quit my job to stay home and provide care for my girls until they are in school. As life got busy I started to neglect my bass. I went from weekly practice to the occasional quick fix. When I held my Vibrance bass for the first time I knew all this would change. The inspiration I needed was in my hands.
Specifications: My bass is a 5 string Vibrance neck through/semi-hollow with a wenge top and walnut back. It has a Honduran rosewood fretboard with cherry binding. It’s equipped with a versatile Bartolini preamp and pickups, and boasts top of the line Hipshot hardware. It has a 35” scale with a zero fret, and it weighs in at a comfortable 8lbs 3oz.
The moment I took hold of this bass I knew it was something special. The craftsmanship and attention to detail on this beauty are beyond words. No CNC machines here. My bass came to me set up flawlessly by Vibrance builder Craig Collins. The string action and intonation were spot on.
The oil finish is deep and rich and really highlights the beauty of the wood (in my case mostly walnut and wenge). The deep cutaways and longer-than-usual upper horn give the Vibrance a unique look, but they also help balance the bass perfectly so that whether you’re playing in a seated or standing position, the bass rests in just the right spot. The body is very shapely and features a ton of hand carving and relief and it contours to your body in all of the right ways. After playing this baby for extended session after extended session over the past six months it’s become obvious to me a lot of time was put in to researching the ergonomics of this bass’s design. This thing is really comfortable to play, and for long hours at a time.
This bass is a tone pioneer. You could spend months exploring new tonal territory with this thing. I know because I have. This bass goes so far beyond your typical P & J bass sound that it belongs in a class of its own. I will elaborate further on how the different elements affect the sound of this bass, but you truly need to play one and hear it for yourself to understand the range this bass has. At its core this bass achieves piano-like clarity and string definition and it's capable of sustain for days on end.
The evenness and balance of my Vibrance’s tone across the frequency spectrum is truly something to behold. One thing that helps accomplish this is the zero fret design. The zero fret lies between the first fret and the nut. When you hit an open note the string rests on the zero fret instead of the nut. This feature goes a long way to equalize volume and attack between fretted and open notes.
The low end on my Vibrance is nice and tight with just the right amount of growl. This holds true for the low B string as well. This bass has without a doubt the most responsive and punchy low B I have ever heard -none of the rattling, muddiness or loss of volume I have experienced with many of the other 5 string basses I have owned or played is evident here.
The knob layout on my Vibrance is clean and intuitive and the Bartolini pickups and preamp never sound harsh, even when you have them boosted to the max. The preamp gives you a huge amount of tonal possibilities. From piano like solo tone and crisp and airy slap tone to refined and smooth “bread-and-butter” bass tone, this beast can do anything and do it exceedingly well.
In short, if you are looking for a great playing and sounding bass guitar that can provide you a wide range of amazing tones, Vibrance should be on your radar. The icing on the cake is that they are absolutely gorgeous instruments.
Jake Lockard, Bassist - The FP Band
REVIEW - Vibrance Wenge 5 String Bass
A little about the reviewer: I have been playing bass for over 15 years. I have owned or played many basses during this time; Fender (Ps and Js), Warwick, G&L, Ernie Ball, Modulus, Carvin, Ibanez, and Conklin to name a few. I have been the bassist for my current band for the last 5 years. During this time I married the love of my life, sold my house, bought a new house, and welcomed home two beautiful daughters. I also quit my job to stay home and provide care for my girls until they are in school. As life got busy I started to neglect my bass. I went from weekly practice to the occasional quick fix. When I held my Vibrance bass for the first time I knew all this would change. The inspiration I needed was in my hands.
Specifications: My bass is a 5 string Vibrance neck through/semi-hollow with a wenge top and walnut back. It has a Honduran rosewood fretboard with cherry binding. It’s equipped with a versatile Bartolini preamp and pickups, and boasts top of the line Hipshot hardware. It has a 35” scale with a zero fret, and it weighs in at a comfortable 8lbs 3oz.
The moment I took hold of this bass I knew it was something special. The craftsmanship and attention to detail on this beauty are beyond words. No CNC machines here. My bass came to me set up flawlessly by Vibrance builder Craig Collins. The string action and intonation were spot on.
The oil finish is deep and rich and really highlights the beauty of the wood (in my case mostly walnut and wenge). The deep cutaways and longer-than-usual upper horn give the Vibrance a unique look, but they also help balance the bass perfectly so that whether you’re playing in a seated or standing position, the bass rests in just the right spot. The body is very shapely and features a ton of hand carving and relief and it contours to your body in all of the right ways. After playing this baby for extended session after extended session over the past six months it’s become obvious to me a lot of time was put in to researching the ergonomics of this bass’s design. This thing is really comfortable to play, and for long hours at a time.
This bass is a tone pioneer. You could spend months exploring new tonal territory with this thing. I know because I have. This bass goes so far beyond your typical P & J bass sound that it belongs in a class of its own. I will elaborate further on how the different elements affect the sound of this bass, but you truly need to play one and hear it for yourself to understand the range this bass has. At its core this bass achieves piano-like clarity and string definition and it's capable of sustain for days on end.
The evenness and balance of my Vibrance’s tone across the frequency spectrum is truly something to behold. One thing that helps accomplish this is the zero fret design. The zero fret lies between the first fret and the nut. When you hit an open note the string rests on the zero fret instead of the nut. This feature goes a long way to equalize volume and attack between fretted and open notes.
The low end on my Vibrance is nice and tight with just the right amount of growl. This holds true for the low B string as well. This bass has without a doubt the most responsive and punchy low B I have ever heard -none of the rattling, muddiness or loss of volume I have experienced with many of the other 5 string basses I have owned or played is evident here.
The knob layout on my Vibrance is clean and intuitive and the Bartolini pickups and preamp never sound harsh, even when you have them boosted to the max. The preamp gives you a huge amount of tonal possibilities. From piano like solo tone and crisp and airy slap tone to refined and smooth “bread-and-butter” bass tone, this beast can do anything and do it exceedingly well.
In short, if you are looking for a great playing and sounding bass guitar that can provide you a wide range of amazing tones, Vibrance should be on your radar. The icing on the cake is that they are absolutely gorgeous instruments.
Jake Lockard, Bassist - The FP Band
From Jeremy Tidemann, owner of Vibrance #8 Single Cut Walnut:
I discovered Vibrance guitars a couple years ago at the Ellnora music festival in Urbana, IL. My attention was immediately drawn to their booth as I was awestruck by their wall of beautiful guitars. I wanted to know if these guitars could possibly sound and play as good as they look.
I spent two days at Elnora playing their guitars, and it didn’t take long before I knew I needed to own one! The next year I kept going back to Vibrance to test out their guitars and to figure out which would be the one for me. After a long journey on the quest for tone, I’m finally the proud owner of #8.
I decided on #8 because it was particularly strong in the rock department, and that’s where I had the biggest hole to fill. It’s unfair to try to confine this guitar to one genre though. For example, I find myself playing blues on my Vibrance more than my PRS hollowbody! It’s absolutely inspiring to play, and I keep reaching for it again and again...
More on how I chose my guitar:
The folks at Vibrance were very kind and accommodating, taking time to answer all of my questions. They even let me bring my own Mesa TA-30 amplifier so I could test drive each guitar from an amp I am intimately familiar with.
The tone of these guitars is new and impressive. How would you explain the tone of a Les Paul to a world that’s only ever heard the tone of a Strat? I feel the same way about Vibrance after playing them - it’s not Fender, Gibson, PRS, etc. When playing the Vibrance guitars, I was struck by innovation, not imitation. It’s new, it’s very pleasing to the ears, and you should try to hear it for yourself if you can!
The Vibrance guitars are a great crash course for anyone who wants to learn how much the choice of wood can impact guitar tone. Each guitar type had its own distinctive tonal characteristics, spanning categories from jazz, funk, rock, blues, rock, and even metal. All guitars were desirable and very musical in their own right. Since I love to have as many tonal options as possible, I was happy to hear that each guitar brought something unique to the table.
My take on guitars:
The bubinga possessed a deep fullness and a deliciously dark tone, great for jazzy licks or sweet and supple chords. I picture this guitar in the hands of one of the jazz greats, just milking the sound from every note while a bass and brushed snare fade into the background to let the guitar take center stage.
The ambrosia maple I would describe as spunky. Not dark like the bubinga but not overly bright. This guitar had a punchy midrange character that was fun to play around with. Rather than traditional jazz or rock styles, this guitar struck me as a great creative tool that could bring a new dimension to the sound for various types of alternative music.
The walnut produced crisp, clear, and fully balanced tone across the board – exactly what you want for a high-gain lead guitar. The neck pickup sounds great, but the bridge pickup is where this guitar shines. Crank up the gain and you will hear a wall of sound – very pleasant. Suited for either leads or rhythm, this guitar won my vote for the rock guitar of the bunch and was ultimately the guitar that went home with me.
The wenge guitars were born for heavy metal in my opinion. The choice of pickups admittedly has quite a lot to do with this, as they are the same pickups used by John Petrucci of Dream Theater. The wenge wood is both beautiful and gnarly and the overall visual impression works well with the Crunch Lab/ Liquifire pickups. The tone is heavier on the bottom end, with just enough in the treble to peek through. In my opinion it’s really engineered for extreme overdrive so that the harmonics from the bottom few strings fill out the rest of the spectrum. The wenge really roars like a lion through a Mesa. If I were a metal guitarist, this would be my pick hands-down.
Brief aside:
But “pick-ups are everything,” right? If you hold this opinion, I understand where you’re coming from. By modifying/replacing pickups on an electrical guitar, you will be able to drastically alter, degrade, or enhance the tone. I have a MS in electrical engineering, so I know just as well as anyone how much electronics impacts guitar tone – it does – a lot. It’s important to acknowledge, however, that acoustical feedback mechanisms exist within all stringed instruments. Electronics aside, these feedback mechanisms are what ultimately determine the way the string vibrates after being plucked. Perhaps it’s easier to acknowledge the role of these feedback mechanisms in grand pianos and acoustic guitars, but they also exist in electric guitars. As you can tell, I’m in the camp that believes that wood and instrument construction are important considerations, beyond pickups, that take the quest for tone to the next level.
Even though the raw tone of the guitar is great (i.e. sounds great unamped), the pickup configuration in my Vibrance gives me so much more control over my tone. I chose a walnut solid-body and Craig installed a custom 5-way rotary pickup selector switch (in place of the bridge tone pot) that works in addition to the 3-way toggle switch. I can pretty much decide which coil(s) I want blended with any other coil(s), whether single coil or humbucker. I can choose between having 1, 2, 3, or all 4 coils firing, with a lot of control over which specific coils are paired with one another. It also has in-phase and out-of-phase configurations for single coils if you want to go for a notched tone. Even if you don’t buy how much the wood is adding to the tone, the pickup configuration on my Vibrance still blows tonal combinations of most other guitars out of the water. To clarify, in my quest for tone, I’d be happier with a guitar that has one great tone, rather than many of inferior tones. But with the high quality wood and construction of my Vibrance, I feel like I can have my cake and eat it too. There’s not just one great tone, but many.
Conclusions:
Vibrance guitars are masterfully built and should be on the short list of anyone considering a high performance boutique guitar that could double as a family heirloom. They feel great and inspire. These guitars don’t have just one sound that competes with top brands – they have an entire tonal ecosystem unto themselves.
The biggest challenge for a new buyer will probably be the decision regarding the wood and pickup configuration to match their desired sound and playing style. If possible, I recommend finding the Vibrance booth or setting up a visit with them so you can hear the differences yourself.
Jeremy Tidemann
Urbana, IL
Interview at Summer NAMM 2013 with Hipshot.
Harmony Central > Guitars > Reviews
MAUVEHEAD
Vibrance Ambrosia Double-Cut
Review By:
mauvehead on 5/30/11 4:03 PM
Reviewer Background:
Guitar Player for 26 Years
Purchased From:
www.vibranceguitars.com
Price: $3,500.00 USD
Features:
Wow...this guitar is very nice! I'd even go so far as to say that this Vibrance Guitar (and the others I have played) are the nicest guitars I've ever come across in my 26 years of playing experience. As far as electric guitars go, I've owned and/or playedthe likes of Gibson LP's (vintage, Custom Shops, Deluxe's, Classics, Standards, Limited Editions, Anniversary's, etc) and SG's (vintage, Standards, Supreme's, etc), PRS's (high-end and Customs) and 335's, RKS (the early ones), Custom Shop Jacksons, Fender Custom Shop and American Deluxe Strats and Tele's (including some nice vintage stuff), hand-made Zuni's, some of the cooler early Parker's, plenty of Gretsch's, EVH's, American Ernie Balls, nicer Carvins, Conklin, an Ibanez Universe and Prestige RG's, nicer G&L's, and a bunch of others that I'm forgetting. My Vibrance Double-Cut surpasses them all on every count. Here's the basic info: mine is serial #004, a Double-Cut design, arched Ambrosia Maple top (aka 'Wormwood' with lots of Ambrosia beetle bore holes....very beautiful wood) and matching Ambrosia headstock overlay, Black Walnut/Cherry 5-piece neck-through design, carved and chambered Black Walnut back wings, 24 fret 24.75" scale-length Rosewood fingerboard with Cherry binding (with Holly side marker dot inlays) and Holly/Cherry 'dot-in-a-dot' fingerboard inlays, a bone nut with a really nice old-fashioned 'zero fret' design, and medium-large frets. The Vibrance headstock logo and truss rod cover, pick-up rings, and rear body control cavity covers are made from Cherry to match the other Cherry adornments. The body and neck and headstock all sport a semi-glossy hand-rubbed oil finish. Very high-class indeed. The gold hardware is as follows: Hipshot Baby Grand (with Graph Tech String-Saver saddles), Hipshot open-gear style locking tuners (18:1 ratio) with custom gold pearl tuner buttons, Q-Parts dome control knobs with gold pearl cap inlays, and Schaller locking strap buttons. One very upscale feature that I really like about this guitar is that every screw throughout this guitar (with the exception of the factory tuning machine screws) are actually machine screws with ferrule inserts versus traditional wood screws. Even the Schaller straplock buttons have machine screws and ferrules. No chance of any of these screws stripping out the wood. Nice touch and I'm sure it took a bit more expense and time to incorporate all of those ferrule inserts for the screws. I'll list the electronics in the 'Sound' section of this review.
Sound Quality:
The pick-ups are a matching set of DiMarzio 36th Anniversary black/creme zebra PAF's (F-Spaced bridge) with custom ordered gold pole pieces. The above mentioned 3-way pickup toggle switch is strategically located on the upper horn and stays out the way but is easy to get to when needed. The controls are a pair of CTS special taper 500k volume pots, a CTS master tone audio-taper pot with a Jensen copper foil paper-in-oil .022µf capacitor (it looks like a miniature soda can....nice), and a 'Platinum Lab V6 Varitone' switch made by Andy Rothstein. All in all this electronics set-up is supremely versatile and toneful. Over the years I have slowly gravitated towards vintage spec'd lower output pick-ups and these DiMarzio's are nicely voiced. The CTS pots, Jensen cap, and Varitone switch all combine to give me a plethora of sweet tones. To describe every possible control combination (and their respective tones) would require a book I'm sure. Needless to say that I can not only get stellar tones with small volume knob adjustments, but the added voicings from the Jensen cap and the Varitone make for a good time with a nice tube amp (like my Swart AST). Ironically, even with all of the varied tones that the electronics provide, the inherent tone of the guitar's wood still come through loud and clear without the electronics getting in the way. Per the inherent tone of the guitar itself, that is something that really needs to be played and heard to be fully appreciated. I've had the pleasure of playing most of Craig Collins' guitars (he's the genius behind Vibrance Guitars) and each and every guitar he builds has a unique voice and vibe. Craig prefers to use Black Walnut for the bulk of his guitars' body and neck woods because of the tone Walnut brings to the table. Walnut seems to have the best of the tone qualities needed for guitar: more sustain and warmth than mahogany, korina, or ash, a more pleasing and balanced clarity and volume than maple, and an even frequency response across the spectrum. With my Ambrosia Double-Cut the tones are warm yet clear and well-defined. The sustain is quite nice and puts my very good-sounding Gibson LP to shame. Craig reinforces the necks of his guitars with carbon fiber rods for even more stability and sustain (besides the strength of the 5-piece laminate neck-through design) and he also chambers out the bodies, in part for weight relief and also for more acoustic liveliness. So when all of that factors in, you end up with a guitar that has punch and clarity but also nice warmth and sustain. One thing I really love about this Ambrosia Double-Cut is how it responds to my picking dynamics. I can back off when I need to. Or I can dig in. Either way, this guitar follows my touch quite intuitively and it feels similar to driving a nicely tuned sports car. That being said, I think it requires better musicianship because of this. 'Garbage in, Garbage out' as they say, and I think novice players would miss the one-size-fits-all nature of most cheaper imports. This is the kind of instrument that I can grow old with and it will undoubtedly have a strong impact on my guitar playing for the better. I can't imagine ever parting with this guitar....
Reliability/Durability:
Per the 'reliability/durability' marks, so far so good. This guitar (with its carbon fiber rods, 5-piece laminate neck, machine ferrules, and no-nonsense hardware) is likely to outlive its owner. Craig overbuilds everything about his guitars and you immediately notice the build quality when you first pick this guitar up. There isn't anything cosmetically or structurally that is compromised in any way. Craig told me that he builds them a certain way so that he'll never need to repair them down the road. I believe he 'means business' when he says that and I can't fathom anything on this guitar ever needing repaired other than perhaps if it got run over by a car or dropped off of a two-story building. This guitar is seriously well-made...
Ease of Use:
As for 'Ease of Use'....Yep it does the job without getting in the way. One design aspect of this guitar that I really like is what Craig calls the 'Neck Transition Area' where most guitars have their neck heel. Quite frankly, there isn't any neck heel with this guitar so I guess he can't call it a neck heel! He has it carved extremely deep and the upper 24 frets are effortless to reach. The fretboard is a fast 12" radius that is flat enough for fast arpeggio/scale playing but arched enough to be comfortable for bends and chording. The neck profile is also very nice. It sort of feels like a subtle D-Shape and is comfortably thin without getting too thin. Again, the neck and fingerboard are comfortable and well-carved. Fits my hand like a glove. And there is no increase in the thickness of the neck-taper until you get right up into the 'Neck Transition Area'. The width of the fingerboard widens out at the upper frets only enough to get the job done without making it feel too-much-too-soon. Also, Craig uses an old-school volute design down where the neck angles off into the headstock. It's a hefty volute but you never notice it because it is well beyond where the hand travels due to the 'zero-fret' design. The only way the hand could feel the volute is if the hand was down past the bone nut. Per the nut, the strings actually get their string-height by resting on the 'zero-fret' which Craig says is made from hardened stainless steel fret-wire for long-life and durability. I really love the 'zero-fret' concept and wish other guitar luthiers would get back to that design. To my ears the 'zero-fret' allows for better string intonation and more vibration transfer of the strings. Also, the zero-fret makes it easier to employ string-bends down in the first couple of frets. The scale-length is a true 24.75" however the added 3/4" (or so) of string that runs between the bone nut and the 'zero-fret' adds some welcome tension to the strings. It's like having the fret span of common LP-styled guitars with the string tension and clarity of Strat/Tele-styled guitars. As far as the fret-work goes, Craig is the master of that. I've even had a local guitar repair guy ask me if Craig does repair fret-dressing on other guitars because his fret-work was so well done. To me that spoke volumes that one guy that normally does fret repair for a living would be interested in Craig doing fret-work on his own personal instruments. Needless to say, the action is pretty low but not prone to fret-buzz or rattling unless I really pound into the strings. (This guitar is strung with a standard set of .010'-.046's.) The frets are glassy and well polished with well-rounded ends, and the choice of medium-large fret wire is very nice for fast playing without feeling like overkill. This guitar is a real player...
Overall Rating:
Overall, as I've mentioned above, this guitar is in a class all by itself. Craig Collins has really raised the bar in the guitar world with his Vibrance Guitars. That being said, Craig is a real pleasure to deal with and he's a perfectionist about every last detail. He accommodated me at every turn as my two guitars were being built, including choice of pickups, hardware, electronics, custom fretboard inlays, etc, and I can't speak highly enough of Craig and his guitars. It has been a guitar player's dream to see two custom guitars take shape and come to life. I'm also glad that I met Craig at a time when he was starting up his own guitar company and I consider it a huge honor to be an early customer/player of these new Vibrance guitars. In my estimation, there just aren't any other guitars like these. My two custom Vibrance Guitars were definitely worth the investment and I hope to play many many gigs and recordings with these fine instruments.
MAUVEHEAD
Vibrance Ambrosia Double-Cut
Review By:
mauvehead on 5/30/11 4:03 PM
Reviewer Background:
Guitar Player for 26 Years
Purchased From:
www.vibranceguitars.com
Price: $3,500.00 USD
Features:
Wow...this guitar is very nice! I'd even go so far as to say that this Vibrance Guitar (and the others I have played) are the nicest guitars I've ever come across in my 26 years of playing experience. As far as electric guitars go, I've owned and/or playedthe likes of Gibson LP's (vintage, Custom Shops, Deluxe's, Classics, Standards, Limited Editions, Anniversary's, etc) and SG's (vintage, Standards, Supreme's, etc), PRS's (high-end and Customs) and 335's, RKS (the early ones), Custom Shop Jacksons, Fender Custom Shop and American Deluxe Strats and Tele's (including some nice vintage stuff), hand-made Zuni's, some of the cooler early Parker's, plenty of Gretsch's, EVH's, American Ernie Balls, nicer Carvins, Conklin, an Ibanez Universe and Prestige RG's, nicer G&L's, and a bunch of others that I'm forgetting. My Vibrance Double-Cut surpasses them all on every count. Here's the basic info: mine is serial #004, a Double-Cut design, arched Ambrosia Maple top (aka 'Wormwood' with lots of Ambrosia beetle bore holes....very beautiful wood) and matching Ambrosia headstock overlay, Black Walnut/Cherry 5-piece neck-through design, carved and chambered Black Walnut back wings, 24 fret 24.75" scale-length Rosewood fingerboard with Cherry binding (with Holly side marker dot inlays) and Holly/Cherry 'dot-in-a-dot' fingerboard inlays, a bone nut with a really nice old-fashioned 'zero fret' design, and medium-large frets. The Vibrance headstock logo and truss rod cover, pick-up rings, and rear body control cavity covers are made from Cherry to match the other Cherry adornments. The body and neck and headstock all sport a semi-glossy hand-rubbed oil finish. Very high-class indeed. The gold hardware is as follows: Hipshot Baby Grand (with Graph Tech String-Saver saddles), Hipshot open-gear style locking tuners (18:1 ratio) with custom gold pearl tuner buttons, Q-Parts dome control knobs with gold pearl cap inlays, and Schaller locking strap buttons. One very upscale feature that I really like about this guitar is that every screw throughout this guitar (with the exception of the factory tuning machine screws) are actually machine screws with ferrule inserts versus traditional wood screws. Even the Schaller straplock buttons have machine screws and ferrules. No chance of any of these screws stripping out the wood. Nice touch and I'm sure it took a bit more expense and time to incorporate all of those ferrule inserts for the screws. I'll list the electronics in the 'Sound' section of this review.
Sound Quality:
The pick-ups are a matching set of DiMarzio 36th Anniversary black/creme zebra PAF's (F-Spaced bridge) with custom ordered gold pole pieces. The above mentioned 3-way pickup toggle switch is strategically located on the upper horn and stays out the way but is easy to get to when needed. The controls are a pair of CTS special taper 500k volume pots, a CTS master tone audio-taper pot with a Jensen copper foil paper-in-oil .022µf capacitor (it looks like a miniature soda can....nice), and a 'Platinum Lab V6 Varitone' switch made by Andy Rothstein. All in all this electronics set-up is supremely versatile and toneful. Over the years I have slowly gravitated towards vintage spec'd lower output pick-ups and these DiMarzio's are nicely voiced. The CTS pots, Jensen cap, and Varitone switch all combine to give me a plethora of sweet tones. To describe every possible control combination (and their respective tones) would require a book I'm sure. Needless to say that I can not only get stellar tones with small volume knob adjustments, but the added voicings from the Jensen cap and the Varitone make for a good time with a nice tube amp (like my Swart AST). Ironically, even with all of the varied tones that the electronics provide, the inherent tone of the guitar's wood still come through loud and clear without the electronics getting in the way. Per the inherent tone of the guitar itself, that is something that really needs to be played and heard to be fully appreciated. I've had the pleasure of playing most of Craig Collins' guitars (he's the genius behind Vibrance Guitars) and each and every guitar he builds has a unique voice and vibe. Craig prefers to use Black Walnut for the bulk of his guitars' body and neck woods because of the tone Walnut brings to the table. Walnut seems to have the best of the tone qualities needed for guitar: more sustain and warmth than mahogany, korina, or ash, a more pleasing and balanced clarity and volume than maple, and an even frequency response across the spectrum. With my Ambrosia Double-Cut the tones are warm yet clear and well-defined. The sustain is quite nice and puts my very good-sounding Gibson LP to shame. Craig reinforces the necks of his guitars with carbon fiber rods for even more stability and sustain (besides the strength of the 5-piece laminate neck-through design) and he also chambers out the bodies, in part for weight relief and also for more acoustic liveliness. So when all of that factors in, you end up with a guitar that has punch and clarity but also nice warmth and sustain. One thing I really love about this Ambrosia Double-Cut is how it responds to my picking dynamics. I can back off when I need to. Or I can dig in. Either way, this guitar follows my touch quite intuitively and it feels similar to driving a nicely tuned sports car. That being said, I think it requires better musicianship because of this. 'Garbage in, Garbage out' as they say, and I think novice players would miss the one-size-fits-all nature of most cheaper imports. This is the kind of instrument that I can grow old with and it will undoubtedly have a strong impact on my guitar playing for the better. I can't imagine ever parting with this guitar....
Reliability/Durability:
Per the 'reliability/durability' marks, so far so good. This guitar (with its carbon fiber rods, 5-piece laminate neck, machine ferrules, and no-nonsense hardware) is likely to outlive its owner. Craig overbuilds everything about his guitars and you immediately notice the build quality when you first pick this guitar up. There isn't anything cosmetically or structurally that is compromised in any way. Craig told me that he builds them a certain way so that he'll never need to repair them down the road. I believe he 'means business' when he says that and I can't fathom anything on this guitar ever needing repaired other than perhaps if it got run over by a car or dropped off of a two-story building. This guitar is seriously well-made...
Ease of Use:
As for 'Ease of Use'....Yep it does the job without getting in the way. One design aspect of this guitar that I really like is what Craig calls the 'Neck Transition Area' where most guitars have their neck heel. Quite frankly, there isn't any neck heel with this guitar so I guess he can't call it a neck heel! He has it carved extremely deep and the upper 24 frets are effortless to reach. The fretboard is a fast 12" radius that is flat enough for fast arpeggio/scale playing but arched enough to be comfortable for bends and chording. The neck profile is also very nice. It sort of feels like a subtle D-Shape and is comfortably thin without getting too thin. Again, the neck and fingerboard are comfortable and well-carved. Fits my hand like a glove. And there is no increase in the thickness of the neck-taper until you get right up into the 'Neck Transition Area'. The width of the fingerboard widens out at the upper frets only enough to get the job done without making it feel too-much-too-soon. Also, Craig uses an old-school volute design down where the neck angles off into the headstock. It's a hefty volute but you never notice it because it is well beyond where the hand travels due to the 'zero-fret' design. The only way the hand could feel the volute is if the hand was down past the bone nut. Per the nut, the strings actually get their string-height by resting on the 'zero-fret' which Craig says is made from hardened stainless steel fret-wire for long-life and durability. I really love the 'zero-fret' concept and wish other guitar luthiers would get back to that design. To my ears the 'zero-fret' allows for better string intonation and more vibration transfer of the strings. Also, the zero-fret makes it easier to employ string-bends down in the first couple of frets. The scale-length is a true 24.75" however the added 3/4" (or so) of string that runs between the bone nut and the 'zero-fret' adds some welcome tension to the strings. It's like having the fret span of common LP-styled guitars with the string tension and clarity of Strat/Tele-styled guitars. As far as the fret-work goes, Craig is the master of that. I've even had a local guitar repair guy ask me if Craig does repair fret-dressing on other guitars because his fret-work was so well done. To me that spoke volumes that one guy that normally does fret repair for a living would be interested in Craig doing fret-work on his own personal instruments. Needless to say, the action is pretty low but not prone to fret-buzz or rattling unless I really pound into the strings. (This guitar is strung with a standard set of .010'-.046's.) The frets are glassy and well polished with well-rounded ends, and the choice of medium-large fret wire is very nice for fast playing without feeling like overkill. This guitar is a real player...
Overall Rating:
Overall, as I've mentioned above, this guitar is in a class all by itself. Craig Collins has really raised the bar in the guitar world with his Vibrance Guitars. That being said, Craig is a real pleasure to deal with and he's a perfectionist about every last detail. He accommodated me at every turn as my two guitars were being built, including choice of pickups, hardware, electronics, custom fretboard inlays, etc, and I can't speak highly enough of Craig and his guitars. It has been a guitar player's dream to see two custom guitars take shape and come to life. I'm also glad that I met Craig at a time when he was starting up his own guitar company and I consider it a huge honor to be an early customer/player of these new Vibrance guitars. In my estimation, there just aren't any other guitars like these. My two custom Vibrance Guitars were definitely worth the investment and I hope to play many many gigs and recordings with these fine instruments.