Vintage REVO Series Integra – can a neck-through guitar this cheap be any good?
£599, vintageguitarsrus.com
The vast majority of Vintage guitars (capital V) have pretty clear inspiration points. Lots are wink-nod takes on guitars from the big G and the big F – Les Pauls, Strats and so on. But that can’t be said for this new REVO (Retro Vintage Originals) Integra I’m currently holding, a roughly Jazzmaster-shaped object that’s also a through-neck, dual-humbucker hardtail. What is it? Is it worth the £599 price tag? Why is it so… green?
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What is the Vintage REVO Series Integra?
The offset body and surplus of switches mean that, at first glance, the Integra almost evokes some forgotten budget 60’s Japanese model. Refinish it in a dark sunburst, give it some weird single-coils and it could pass for an early Teisco oddity. But thanks to a very unique combination of specs, it’s hard to call it anything but itself. There’s a string-through six-saddle hardtail, per-pickup coil-splitting, Alan Entwistle X3 blade humbuckers (in a shade of cream that very much clashes with two of the three available finishes), the varitone-like ATN-5 circuit and, notably, a through-neck.
The through-neck is, in part, why this guitar is here today. It’s rare to see through-neck guitars for under a grand, let alone at £600 – it’s a much pricier construction method than both bolting or glueing a neck on to a complete body, and hence is often the sole domain of more premium instruments.
Image: Press
Wood and finish
When I take the guitar out of the box, it’s strikingly light, with ash body wings flanking the mahogany/maple laminate through neck. The fretboard is Jatoba, while the three finish options are all open-pore – Amber Burst, Natural and the Green/Yellow Burst I’m looking at. Aesthetically, I’m not a huge fan: neither radioactive slime-green or tobacco-stain yellow are colours that I personally feel accentuate the natural beauty of wood grain, of which there’s a lot of here. And while slime-green did, of course, recently have a bit of a cultural moment, the effect here is more evocative of something left in Swamp Thing’s basement than it is anything Brat-adjacent.
The split pickguard also gives the body a rather unbalanced look – a little rectangle of exposed wood is framed by the guitar’s plastics, so the middle of the guitar is strangely empty, while the guitar as a whole is strangely busy.
So, looks-wise, I think it’s a bit of a dud. The natural finish at least matches the pickups better, but I think it’d benefit from the ‘70s coffee-table treatment of a dark, grain-accentuating stain. Even just a traditional sunburst might tie it together a bit more sensibly, as might a non-split pickguard.
I do want to say that it’s the exception rather than the rule for the REVO series – there are a lot of guitars within the range, particularly the offsets, that are really bloody cool-looking, including a four-single-coil thinline offset with a Jazzmaster vibrato. Compared to that, the Integra is very much the ugly duckling of the range.
Perhaps more importantly than any aesthetic quibbles, the finish has a practical result. The first thing I notice when playing the Integra standing up is that there are zero comfort carves. No forearm bevel, and no belly cut – it’s a total slab. And thanks to the open-pore finish and the size of the lower bout, the wood grain on the edge of the body will cheesegrater your right forearm to bits when playing with short sleeves. Fun!
Image: Press
Hardware and electronics issues
Not a fantastic start visually or ergonomically, and things don’t get much more confidence-inspiring in the electronics department. When I first plug in, there’s no sound at all. Wiggling my instrument cable gives me some intermittent output, so it doesn’t take long to find that the issue is the electrosocket-style jack – it’s recessed too far into the control cavity, so the tip of my cable is grounding out against the back of the tone pot. Fixing this involves unscrewing the jack plate from the body, setting the ¼” socket at a shallower depth and then reassembling. Not too tricky, but it’s definitely not something you should have to do to a £599 guitar.
The pickup selector switch also has a fun habit of just killing the signal every so often. Popping the lower pickguard off to take a closer look, the switch is revealed to be a super-cheap example with very thin contacts – the sort that I’d look to replace as soon as possible, especially if I was planning to use the guitar on a stage. The control cavities also have no shielding, bar a small strip of metal tape below each switch. Combine this with fairly messy wiring, and it perhaps explains the generally noisy performance of the guitar.
The tuners are Wilkinson sealed-gears, with tall posts and two string-holes per tuner. This allows for your own choice of string angle at the headstock, but I’m unsure why you’d ever want to use the higher option for less downward pressure on the nut, especially with a hard-tail. In any case, they’re perfectly solid and work fine, despite the superfluous hole.
The Wilkinson string-through hardtail bridge is also a great piece of kit, with well-made saddles and loads of room for adjustment. But… the nice accurately-machined 90-degree corners of the steel saddles are markedly less nice when digging into the palm of your hand. You may find yourself wanting to round over the corner of the low E saddle with a file, especially if you like palm-muting.
Angles and demons
The Integra, despite not having any neck angle, uses angled humbucker rings. The strings are totally parallel to the body, while the pickups are pitched forward, meaning one coil of each humbucker is much closer to the strings. Some angle is normally fine, and here it’s not really a problem in humbucker mode. But the angle is such that when splitting the bridge pickup there’s a really thin, ice-picky sound. The coil furthest from the strings is active, and because of the angle, you can’t adjust the pickup height to beef up the sound without the back edge hitting the strings.
Fixing this would involve either putting a bit of foam underneath each pickup, or grabbing a cheap set of aftermarket pickup rings. But I think it’s reasonable to ask: why doesn’t the guitar just have the right hardware to start with?
Are there any positives?
So after all of that moaning, is there anything good left to say? Well, I will give a nod to the factory intonation and action – both of which were bang-on out of the box. The neck itself is rather nice, too – colour aside, the satin finish is smooth under the palm, and the neck bears a surprisingly thick and hand-filling D profile, which tapers rather gradually to full body finish after around the 14th fret.
While the heel does provide a lot of access, I’d hardly call it a shreddy neck, but it’s still a lot of fun to play. Once the slight surprise of the profile fades, the neck comes together as quite a Les Paul-like experience, thanks to its flat radius and small frets. The fretwork is fairly smooth, too – not the shiniest job in the world but there aren’t any sharp edges or obvious high-spots.
How are the amplified sounds? Well, for the most part I find myself sticking on full humbucker mode due to the aforementioned angle and shielding issues with the single-coil sounds. The X3 blade humbuckers are fairly aggressive, and quite audibly ceramic in their sound – they draw me towards power chords and riffs more than anything delicate.
However, this changes when engaging the ATN-5 circuit. It’s essentially a passive wah with four set positions – and it’s a lot of fun. Being able to get some more filtered and characterful tones out of the otherwise full-on blade humbuckers is also a welcome addition to the tonal palette here – mid-pokey solo tones and scooped, restrained cleans are all easy to dial in with the rotary switch’s five options.
Who is the REVO Integra for, then?
With all of that said, this is sadly a hard guitar to recommend. If it was priced more in line with Vintage’s other guitars, and maybe had some different finish options, I’d heartily recommend it to anyone with a soldering iron and a dream. A through-neck hardtail offset could be a tinkerer’s delight. But as it stands, the through-neck comes at the cost of, well, the rest of the guitar, seemingly making up the vast majority of the £599 price-tag.
That’s hardly boutique, but it still invites comparisons with Yamaha Revstars, PRS SEs and even some Squiers and Epiphones (including a Firebird – also a through-neck!). The Integra matches these other instruments in cost, but will also need a lot of attention in the electronics department to be fully ready to gig.
I was initially drawn in by the neck-through construction at this price, and the generally unique design. But it was sadly the total lack of comfort carves, the pickup ring issue, the dodgy electronics that were my main takeaways from the instrument. So if you see an Integra at a hefty discount, be very aware of the challenges that you’ll face – but go for it. At full price, however, I’d look at basically any other guitar in the Vintage catalogue. Bolt-ons just aren’t that bad, I promise!
REVO Integra Alternatives
A budget of £599 can get you a hell of a lot of guitar right now. If you’re an offset fan, Squier’s Classic Vibe range is on a great kick right now – the standard Classic Vibe ‘60s Jazzmaster (£395) could be up your street. If you’re desperate for a through-neck, the Epiphone Firebird could float your boat – but it’s currently out of production. And, if you just want value for money on an HH guitar, the Yamaha Revstar RSS20 is £650, and boasts stainless steel frets atop its multi-voice switching.
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
