star stream type 1

Vox has its place in the history of rock ’n’ roll, but with the exception of a couple of 60s guitars, it’s all about the amps. The Korg-owned brand has tried to tempt us with its electric guitars over the years, but it wasn’t until the Virage range appeared a few years back that it seemed to have hit pay-dirt with a classy reinterpretation of the thinline semi (along with numerous off-shoots). But in spite of that, the Virage never caught on with players, so now Vox has turned to the Starstream – a very different kind of electric guitar design.

With its rosewood ’boarded neck and mini wooden body (albeit made from mango wood), it’s more everyday than it looks. But its outer plastic section and a cast aluminium frame – which connects the top horns with the screws that hold the neck to the body – take it into another dimension.

Two mini-humbuckers are conventional enough, but along with a piezo-loaded vibrato and plenty of onboard processing (the Vox AREOS-D system, powered by four AA batteries), you can voice 27 different sounds and add onboard drive or reverb, although the former is assigned, broadly speaking, to the ‘electric’ sounds and the latter to the ‘acoustic’ sounds. The electronics are housed under a grey-topped control panel with controls to select the different banks and apply those effects.

Sounds

The nice-playing neck is Fender-like, with a shorter 638mm (25.12-inch) scale, and it’s comfortable thanks to that ergonomically shaped outer frame – it’s pretty lightweight, too (7.1kg). Unlike Line 6’s Variax, its only competitor, the Starstream uses both its magnetic and piezo pickups – often in combination – to produce its sounds. So, for example, both ’buckers are active in the Acoustic 2’s Nylon sound, as well as the synth sounds in the Specialist bank.

The first sound bank, ‘Single’, voices the humbuckers’ single coils in usual neck, both and bridge combinations. ‘B’tween’ combines the coils and seemingly adds some processing to produce three Strat-y in-between, hum-cancelling flavours. ‘Humbucker’ is what you’d imagine, while ‘Modern’ offers neck and bridge single coils and full bridge ’bucker. All good enough.

Piezo is introduced in the ‘12String’ bank, which sounds typically synthetic, and two ‘Acoustic’ banks include good large and small size acoustic-y voices, a credible 12-string, unconvincing nylon, good resonator, sitar (although this has an odd sustain envelope), and okay-ish banjo. The final selection, ‘Special’, offers squashy synth, bass synth and an organ-like sustain sound that’s rather difficult to control. The ‘electric’ sounds (but not the synth sounds) can be modded with the fruity overdrive, and a spacious reverb helps the Acoustic and Special voices. You can store your favourite sounds into six user presets.

Verdict

The Starstream presents a bold piece of modernist design that has some mostly usable and certainly diverse sounds for the adventurous gigging and recording player. But is it the Vox guitar we really want? The jury’s out… [DB]

7/10