Vanquish Legend Classic Plus

We first caught up with Brit-maker Adrian ‘Ade’ Hardman back in late 2007. "During the last 18 months, as well as keeping up with orders, I have sold a percentage of my business to one of my customers and now business partner, Steve Darling, and now trade as Vanquish Sounds Ltd," he tells us. All good, but what of the guitars?

"These changes have enabled us to take a towering hard look at what we were doing and, by listening to both professionals in the music business and our customers, we have focused on refining the Legend range in terms of design and tone.

"Firstly, we went through the design with a fine-tooth comb and reduced the depth of pockets to retain as much wood wherever possible. We moved the bridge and tailpiece back for better intonation travel, slightly widened the neck and ‘board for a better feel, and increased the fingerboard thickness for a better string break-angle by the bridge and nut."

Legend Classic Plus

Pulling the new Legend Classic Plus from its case, it is clear one thing hasn’t changed: Hardman’s obsession with minute detail. Finished in lightly toned oil and wax there is no room for error, or stray file or sandpaper marks.

But from top to bottom – from the strange neck join and the ‘invisible’ headstock splice to the inlaid pickup rings and bridge/ tailpiece – the work is superb.

Unlike our previous review of the all-mahogany Legend Custom, the Custom Plus adds a fine quality, book-matched flamed maple top that shimmers magnificently as you move the guitar in the light. It’s lightly carved and the symmetrical cutaways lend an nearly SG-like style to the guitar – and one that we think looks better strapped on.

The core of the guitar is Brazilian mahogany, "chosen specifically for its age and light weight in the search for resonant tonewoods," adds Hardman. While that may be good traditional craft the neck joint certainly isn’t.

The angled joint places the neck heel deep into the body, "ensuring a full contact amoung the body and neck wood for maximum tone transfer." Such claims may be hard to prove but the jointing is superb.

Okay, Hardman is one of the few small Brit makers to cut his body parts on CNC but it still takes great skill to work that precisely – whatever the tool. For

example, you probably wouldn’t notice that the back-angled headstock is spliced on – it really is virtually invisible.

The Classic Plus now features a headstock facing from the same rosewood as the fingerboard (the control cavity is now rosewood too, not chromed metal) and the small square markers now have abalone centres – subtly posh, but not tarty, in keeping with the overall vibe of the guitar.

The Vanquish logo is neatly inlaid while the rosewood truss rod cover has an engraved ‘Legend’ logo. The fretwork is immaculate, each medium/low fret has a notched tang so the fret slot stops before the edge of the ‘board – very tidy.

Hardman, boldly, has gone for quite a big neck and the guitar is all the better for it. Just shy of 23mm deep at the first fret, 25.2mm at the 12th, its rounded profile apes an older fifties Gibson. It won’t be for everyone but, whether you fancy something different, just ask!

Once again we get the inlaid custom-made tailpiece, with rear-anchored through-body stringing, and slightly inlaid Tone Pros tune-o-matic bridge along with those neat and lightweight Gotoh Waverly-style tuners.

Another change concerns the pickups and Hardman has reverted to a more classic, low output PAF-style Bare Knuckle custom wound pickup with no coil-splits, just standard toggle selector and CTS volume and tone pots.

Removing the backplate (held in place with bolts that screw into threaded inserts) we not only see a nicely foil-shielded cavity, with screw-down earth contacts, but additionally an old style ‘bumble-bee’ tone cap and a treble bleed cap on the volume control.

Craft aside, the guitar is well set-up and features the Buzz Feiten Tuning System. Not only is the tuning spot on, we barely had to touch the tuners – that is a stable machine.

Sounds

Hear it in action. First, here’s the bridge pickup:

var so = new SWFObject(”/default/flash/AudioSampler.swf”, “AudioSampler”, “170″, “40″, “7.0.14″, “#FFFFFF”);
so.addVariable(”file”,”http://mos.musicradar.com/audio/review%20audio/Guitar/jul09/Vanquish_1.mp3″);
so.write(”flashcontent_review%20audio/Guitar/jul09/Vanquish_1″);

Next, here’s the twin pickup mix:

var so = new SWFObject(”/default/flash/AudioSampler.swf”, “AudioSampler”, “170″, “40″, “7.0.14″, “#FFFFFF”);
so.addVariable(”file”,”http://mos.musicradar.com/audio/review%20audio/Guitar/jul09/Vanquish_2.mp3″);
so.write(”flashcontent_review%20audio/Guitar/jul09/Vanquish_2″);

Finally the neck unit:

var so = new SWFObject(”/default/flash/AudioSampler.swf”, “AudioSampler”, “170″, “40″, “7.0.14″, “#FFFFFF”);
so.addVariable(”file”,”http://mos.musicradar.com/audio/review%20audio/Guitar/jul09/Vanquish_3.mp3″);
so.write(”flashcontent_review%20audio/Guitar/jul09/Vanquish_3″);

(2 pages; go to page: 2)

[Source] Dave Burrluck