Rock ’n’ Volas
There’s little doubt we live in the bolt-on era. And if your choice isn’t wide enough, how about a slice of classic Japanese craft that apes Fender in all but shape?
Based in Hong Kong, and co-founded by Ryan Wong and Cho Shi Hyung, Vola guitars, which stands for the “voice of life and arts”, are made in Japan – there is limited USA ‘custom shop’ build, too, but those models aren’t currently available in the UK. Along with a range that covers traditional styles, as here, Vola leans into much more modern rock creations like the Floyd Roseequipped Ares and Blaze X.
For the most part body shapes are original and quite stylish. Here, the Oz, for example, melds an old-style Manson-type cut-out on the base with pretty conventional Ibanez-y thinner horns and the requisite altered Fender six-in-a-line headstock. If this Oz is Vola’s most Strat-alike model, the Vasti recalls the Telecaster but retains that base cut-out, with an added chamfer, and pushes the treble horn cutaway in quite a BC Rich-like direction.
Shapes aside, both guitars follow the classic Fender recipe. The body woods are alder (Oz) and ash (Vasti) both hidden under solid colour finishes. The edge radius is small on both and their bodies have a deep, but not quite vintage rib-cage cutaway. And, while there’s a scoop on the back of the treble cutaway, the body heels are old-style Fender with no chamfering or shaping.
Both guitars use a 648mm (25.5-inch) scale length and necks are one-piece maple with no separate fingerboard and a nicely vintage amber tint. Reflecting their more modernist style, the fingerboard radius follows a flatter Gibson-like 305mm (12-inch) camber with very tidily installed medium frets on the Oz (approximately 2.3 wide x 1.1-1.25mm high) and a wider, more jumbo-sized (approximately 2.84 wide x 1.2mm) gauge on the Vasti. The necks – which both have a diagonal ‘rift sawn’ grain, the Oz’s with noticeable flame – are pretty big with a chunky ‘large C’ profile and both have 22 frets, the last fret seated on a fingerboard overhang. Fit and finish are superbly tidy: very typical modern Japanese build with not a hair out of place.
Also typical is the Gotoh hardware. The Oz uses the ‘modern standard’ Gotoh 510 vibrato here with a tapered die-cast FST block and steel block saddles, along with the typical collar that houses a small grub screw to tension the screw-in arm. The Vasti’s Tele-style bridge, again by Gotoh with their three ‘In-Tune’ saddles, here in steel, not the more usual brass. Tuners, meanwhile, are typical Kluson-style but with Gotoh’s height-adjustable string posts, a string tree on the top two strings and both guitars have nicely cut bone nuts.
There’s little innovation to the electronics. The Oz uses a covered (nickelplated) humbucker at bridge with dual flat stagger single coils, a five-way lever and a master volume/master tone set-up all mounted on an adapted Strat-like shape from a three-ply, off-white plastic. The knobs and single coil covers are a slightly darker ‘coffee-d’ plastic. There’s no ID on the pickups (the body is routed to accept a neck humbucker) and the only shielding is the foil underneath all of the scratchplate; pots are 250k and the tone cap is 0.047 microfarads. The Vasti’s covered neck single coil appears oh-so-Tele while the dual blade single coil-sized humbucker has a ‘power boost’ mode engaged by pulling up the master volume.
Feel & sound
Nicely weighted and with a very comfortable feel there’s encouraging resonance and clean quick attack, as you’d expect. But that’s not what’s going to make you go, “Oh!” No, that’s the relativity big, chunky neck – the Oz measures 23.3mm at the first, 25.3mm at the 12th, the Vasti a very similar 23.7mm at the first and bang on 25mm at the 12th fret. To put that in perspective, the depth at the first fret here is what Fender’s American Professional (and many others) measures at the 12th fret.
There’s no fingerboard edge rounding, you’ll have to wear it in yourself, and the gloss poly finish, once the go-to for every manufacturer, begins to feel rather marginalised as so many makers employ satin, oiled wood, or simply worn ‘aged’ neck finishes. That said, it seems to be a light finish to the neck with very little, if any, build-up around the frets.
Broadly speaking there’s not much you haven’t heard here before. The Oz is a smart, bright (not overly), zinging Stratalike with some extra rock sauce in bridge. The middle pickup is probably reversewound with reverse polarity as we have hum-cancelling in the mix positions – the bridge and middle mix position also splits the humbucker to voice its screw single coil. There’s a good balance between the singles and the ’bucker too: yes, there’s a little lift but it’s not a huge jump, and with rock and Texas blues tones, the neck single coil almost matches the bridge’s authority.
The Vasti, yes, sounds like a Telecaster, and a good one at that. There’s good balance in all three pickup positions: the neck avoids sounding too veiled while the wider mix is distinctly different to those Strat-alike mixes with less ‘quack’ but a good hollowed voice nonetheless. The bridge is certainly steely sounding and with the volume pullswitch down we’re hearing the forward-
If you like classic Fender-style with a big ol’ neck these are perfectly weighted, comfortable guitars
facing single coil of the dual blade design. Lift up that volume pot, however, and the full humbucker mode takes over for quite a punchy volume increase. It makes for a strong, cutting and brightly voiced ‘rock’ Tele, although here – by design or not – the neck pickup is microphonic. We suspect it’s the cover that isn’t potted but it could cause you problems at high gain. Aside from the ‘power mode’ on the bridge humbucker there doesn’t seem to be any other hum-cancelling.
The volume controls on both have quite a quick taper which is nice enough for swift volume swells but might be too sudden if you’re the sort of player that sets their volume lower for clean rhythm. The tone control, meanwhile, is quite woolly when fully rolled back but that actually means there’s plenty of graduation to the pot’s travel.
There’s nothing here that’s going to change the world but both are nicely dialled-in guitars – although you’ll need to tilt the Oz’s vibrato to get any upbend. Tuning stability is as good as you are at fixing your strings, stretching them and making sure the nut’s grooves are smooth (which they are).
Verdict
If you’ve been around guitars for any length of time you’ll no doubt appreciate Japanese craft. Okay, that might be a huge generalisation but we can’t remember moaning about Japanese build-quality for many, many a year – if ever. So like Ibanez’s Prestige or John Page’s Classics, these Volas tick the quality box and then some.
Both these guitars certainly use the time honoured Fender blend but at least they’ve given it a different aesthetic – which may or may not, of course, be a good thing. We can’t predict your taste but, shape aside, if you like classic Fender-style with a nicely meaty and big ol’ neck these are perfectly weighted, comfortable guitars with reasonable colour choices and the sort of sounds the style and price suggest.