Back in 2012, Vox reached back through its mold-breaking design history for the launch of the Apache travel guitars. The swinging 60s have again provided some inspirational fodder for next generation instruments, though only in name this time around. The Starstream Type-1 guitars feature an onboard modeling system that includes 27 different tones to play with, and a rather distinctive body shape.
The heart of the new Type-1 guitars is the Areos-D system, which is powered by four AA-sized batteries, with Vox saying that a quartet of Ni-MH batteries should be good for up to 15 hours of continuous use, which drops to 11 hours for alkaline batteries. The electronic tone modeling wizardry puts three banks of electric, acoustic, other stringed instrument, and synth sounds at a player's disposal, with six extra banks provided for noodlers to store favorites.
The system integrates a control module behind the two-post tremolo bridge to shape sonic parameters, a digital signal processor, the guitar's "specially voiced" Vox XLM magnetic pickups for electric guitar sounds, a piezo pickup in each saddle for acoustic tones, as well as the familiar volume and tone adjusters and the pickup selector.
Elsewhere, there's a mango wood body with a funky wave strip running around the roughly lightbulb-shaped main core to give it Strat-like horns, granting unrestriced access to the upper reaches of the maple neck topped by a 22-fret rosewood fingerboard. Die cast tuning heads help keep strings taught. The Starstream naturally has an instrument output jack, but a player can also pick in private thanks to an included headphone jack.
The Vox Starstream Type-1 guitars are due for release in May and June for US$799.99 and will come in five color options. Visitors to NAMM in California next week can get a taste at the Korg USA booth.
You can see and hear the guitar in action in the video below.
Source: Vox Amplification
