Fender Acoustic SFX-II And Acoustic Junior Amplifiers
VOX REVIVES AN OLD DESIGN FROM THE 1960S BUT WITH PLAYABILITY AND FEEDBACK CONTROL IMPROVEMENTS FOR TODAY’S PLAYERS. CAN THIS HIPPIE-ERA HOLDOVER HANG WITH THE COOL KIDS?
They may have the amp market stitched up but Vox isn’t the first name you think of when you ponder great guitar brands.This despite Vox guitars being used on some pretty damn iconic recordings over the years. The company taps into that legacy with its new Bobcat guitars, inspired by a pair of 1960s models (the Bobcat and Lynx) built for Vox by Italian company Eko. Each guitar is very reminiscent of their 20th-century inspirado but they come with playability and construction improvements.
GETTING A SEMI
The semi-acoustic Bobcat’s two variants - the S66 and the V90 - are essentially the same guitar, with the exception of the pickups and electronics. And the original guitars needed an update: early Bobcats were well known for their uncontrollable feedback, and the pickups weren’t exactly the cream of the crop. The new version is built around a weight-relieved spruce centre block with a maple ply body (and remember, ‘plywood body’ doesn’t mean the same thing in acoustic-style instruments as the plywood used in cheapie solidbodies in days past). The neck is made of mahogany with an Indonesian ebony fingerboard.
Hardware includes a set of open-gear tuners made by Grover, a Tune-O-Matic style bridge and trapeze tailpiece, and a pickguard with a definite ‘60s vibe. Vox has used the same plastic hue as the originals, and this attention to detail is also carried over to the reproduction aluminium control knobs. The controls themselves appear the same on both models but they’re not: the V90 has a pair of P-90-style single coil pickups and the two volume/two tone setup we all know from eight decades of electric guitar manufacture. The S66 takes a different approach though: its pickups are a trio of Stratocaster-like single coils, and although both guitars only offer a three-way pickup selector switch, the S66 has a dedicated volume control for the always-on middle pickup. That way you can select pickups as you would on a two-pickup guitar but then blend in as much or as little of the middle pickup as you need, giving this guitar a huge amount of range when you include the individual volume controls for the bridge and neck pickups and the master tone control.
On the construction side these guitars are almost flawless. There seems to be a stain applied to the Indonesian ebony fingerboard on both guitars if the residue left on my fingertips is any indication, but this is pretty common on new guitars with ebony or rosewood fingerboards and the phenomenon usually disappears after a few days of playing.
HOLLOW THERE
Plugging into various amps including a Marshall DSL50 and a Marshall CODE 25, the two guitars revealed their strengths immediately. These are no ‘fish around for your tone’ guitars. The V90 has that classic P-90 edge and warmth, where clean tones sound almost acoustic-like but distorted ones sound both fat and edgy. And the feedback issues of the past are nowhere to be found with the Bobcat: I threw some pretty high levels of distortion at the guitar and was rewarded with some beautifully vocal lead tones, instead of punished with high-pitched squealing.
The S66 may, by design, miss some of the V90’s fatness – but it makes up for it with versatility and character. While the V90’s pickup settings sound like variations on the same basic tone, the S66 offers a lot more malleability across its voices. The bridge pickup has a dry, tight tone with a snappy attack while the neck pickup is nice and juicy in that ‘60s Strat kind of way. Add in the middle pickup and you can introduce a bit more detail to the neck pickup or more body to the bridge. Turn the outer pickups all the way down and turn up only the middle one, and you’ll get a great all-round rhythm sound that is also handy for single-note lines when you don’t need the full bark of the bridge pickup. At one point during testing I played both guitars along with a bunch of The Cure tracks and I found it was easy to dial in workable versions of all sorts of Cure eras and guitar tones. Then I put on some blues and found some killer overdriven solo tones for that genre. Both guitars love fuzz pedals too. And again, the resistance to feedback is a godsend for those who are into this type of vintage styling but with a more modern approach to gain and effects.
The playability is very easy, although the string spacing at the nut is more forgiving of simple chords than complicated fingerpicking. Bends have a series of satisfying harmonic overtones that sound great with some overdrive, and the neck shape is unobtrusive without being too thin. Overall it’s a very pleasant playing experience that shouldn’t tax your shoulder or wrist over long periods.