The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

Hi,
First time post.

My first guitar was a VP820. I have MISSED it for 6 years now. Just picked this one up. Couldn't post until it was a done deal!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... :B:BN:US:1

There's another one, from a different seller, modified, if anyone's interested: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 2521400384

I think 600+ $ is pretty expensive...

I know the VP series were very solid built guitars, and even Ed Roman has good things to say about the 800s. I don't know if I would go quite that high on one, but that is simply due to preference. I think that's the highest I have ever seen a VP go for. From another perspective though, until I finally got my replacement PE-R80 I had over $1000 ready to throw at the next one that came up simply because I wanted it that bad. It would not be worth $1000 to most other people though.

I had a VP7XX (not sure with no nomenclature) but it was neckthru and had much the same layout. The neck at the body was a little wider than that of my others, enough that I could tell. It was not in as good contition as the first link. All in all they are built like tanks and therefore to last.

Congrats on "re-uniting" with an old friend!

Hey, thanks for the posts.

$600+ would have been expensive, but I must say that my old VP820 was a great instrument - one of the nicest playing and most versitile (sp?) sounding guitars I've ever had. If it weren't for the brass hardware plus neck thru on this new one I couldn't have even considered the price.

And guess what - while I was bidding my VP that had gone AWOL so long ago suddenly surfaced! Talk about coincidence!

That let me bid a little higher, because now I can sell that and offset the purchase price of the new one. My original VP has the same brass hardware as the new one, but it has a stoptail, set neck and 2 phase switches.

All in all, I'm very pleased, can't wait to get back into a Vantage!

Scanning the posts since this thread started, my first thought on seeing Sebastian's was "glad somebody else said that."

However, APII has a valid point, and your reply backs it up. Combined with the re-emergence of the AWOL guitar, it looks like you were meant to have this one.

BTW, I'm one of the people you outbid--though not closely, I dropped out well before that (though it might have been closer if I weren't in the process of being laid off at work ).

I once would have thought that $650 was to much to pay for a guitar with the Vantage name on the headstock. However as the owner of the guitar in question. With the quality of the guitar's build and the expense I have put into the upgrades, even though I would be the first to agree, why in the world would a guy put $135 tuners on a guitar. I did them because I wanted to. Sometimes that is just reason enough. Fortunately for me I am not in a position that I have to sell the guitar, I just posted it on a whim. If it doesn't sell I will keep it and continue to enjoy it.

Those are definitely some radical tuners! At fist glance they almost look as if they were mounted backwards! The linear pull makes sense though, and if you look at the principle behind the Kahler and Floyd bridges, the fine tuners adjust by linear tension as well.

Stienberger had a set of tuners something like this on one of their few earlier double cutaway "with headstock" guitars. The string ran down into the center of the post and was pulled taught by pulling the string deeper into the post.

I may tweak a bit on some prices, but in a sense it is all in what someone perceives the value to be (in particular the purchaser). In my eyes I got a $1000 PE-R80 for $466 total. Others would say for not much more than $1000 I could have had a Les Paul. I could have had a V-8 for under $2 for that matter.

Kimplex's guitar is a little different from the one I bought. But it looks to be in good nick. His has the original case, too, mine didn't . I was attracted to the thru-neck and the brass fittings. I am also receiving the original machine heads (currently it's fitted with locking tuners), and because I loved my original VP 820, I like the thought of being able to take it back to stock if I want to.

Anyway, I can tell you that we paid $450 or $500 for my VP820 when it was new. I don't care if I could get $600+ for either of them. What I do know is that my VP820 was a tremendous instrument - it will hurt to sell it even though I'm replacing it with a better model - and they ain't gonna make no more of 'em. I'd keep them both, but I'd feel like a hog. These guitars deserve to be played.