italia imola vario

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Made in the Mirr Music factory in South Korea (the same as Reverend), Italia was originally designed by the UK’s Trev Wilkinson, although these days many of the new designs, including our review guitar, are conceived by the Italia team in the USA.

The Wilkinson-designed Imola 6 has been available for some time with its three split P-bass-style ‘Duplex’ pickups controlled by two five-way lever switches – one for the treble-side, one for the bass. If you’ve ever wondered what the bass side of your Strat-style bridge pickup would sound like mixed with the treble side of the neck pickup, this is the guitar for you. Earlier this year Italia announced a trio of new models that includes this new version of the Imola, available in two colours: a muted satin yellow and satin purple. Mainstream? No way – and that’s just the finish.

The Imola is based around an offset-style body with a rounded upper horn making it all a little more compact and tubbierlooking than Fender’s Jazzmaster, for example. Where the Imola 6 uses a Korina semi-solid body, the new Vario switches to chambered American alder with a maple top. Italia tells us the Vario also features a “redesigned body cavity for better tone as well as weight reduction”. On that note, the Vario weighs in at a very good 3.45kg (7.6lb).

Both Imolas are based around a Fenderlike 648mm (25.5-inch) scale length with conventional four-screw-through-neckplate, neck-to-body join for the rosewoodtopped maple neck. The headstock here is reversed to add further difference, while hardware includes upgraded locking tuners and a six-screw vintage-style Wilkinson vibrato (a WVCR, not the quoted WVP) with staggered deep drilled anchor holes in the full-size die-cast block. As ever, we get a push-fit arm with tension adjustment.

Sounds

Instead of the two five-way lever switches of the Imola 6, the Vario features three three-position slide switches – one for each pickup – that offer bass-side coil, both coils (in parallel) and treble-side coil. A five-way rotary pickup selector sits between the master volume and tone on the chromed control plate; it offers the standard Stratlike pickup selections. In either position two or four (neck and middle; middle and bridge) on that rotary five-way, you have six combinations via the three-way slide switches. These give different shades of those well-known ‘in-between’ Strat sounds. However, if, for example, you’ve selected the bass-side coil of the neck with the treble coil of the middle, when you select the neck position via the five-way rotary, you’ll be hearing just the bass-side coil of the neck pickup unless you move the neck pickup’s slide switch back to its centre position. Not the most useful.

These half-coil sounds weren’t available on the Imola 6, which also offers perhaps the most useful wide split of the neck half of the bridge pickup with the treble half of the bridge pickup – or vice versa. That said, in positions two or four on the Vario, you can select, say, the full middle coil with a split on the neck or bridge – which you can’t do on the Imola 6. One way to increase the Vario’s options would be to install the simple seven-way Strat sound mod to voice neck and bridge, as well as all three pickups on together. A quick mod turned the Vario into something a little more usable, by offering the neck and bridge in combination.

Is any of this tweakery useful? As a standard three-pickup guitar, it’s a bright, light and quite appealing Strat-alike with a sustaining, zingy unplugged and quite resonant voice that really translates plugged in. Yes, the option to voice either coil in those mix positions does give you a little variation, but it provides shades of that same hollowed and funky mix, not hugely contrasting voices. The danger is that the guitar becomes very thin and ‘acoustic-y’, which could be both positive or negative.

Verdict

We can’t help thinking that the original Imola 6, while perfectly bonkers in concept, actually works allowing any Strat-position combo of full or mixed coils via its two five-way switches. Here, those mixes are only available in positions two and four of the rotary selector, unless you want to voice just a solo ‘half’, which really isn’t that useful. That seven-way mod certainly helped the potential and makes the Vario a little more valid. Without it, well, the Vario doesn’t seem quite as variable as the existing Imola 6. [DB]