Tanglewood Guitars in the UK commissioned veteran guitar designer Gary Levinson to create a range of affordable but contemporary guitars. Here’s the result
SCEPTRE VENTANA DELUXE £649
WHAT IS IT? An affordable HSS ‘SuperStrat’ designed by Gary Levinson of Blade Guitars
If you were playing guitar back in the late 80s and liked your gear, you would have undoubtedly come across Gary Levinson, the creator of Blade Guitars. To some, they were just another Strat-alike in some pretty contemporary colours, but virtually every facet of the benchmark design was re-evaluated, not least the dualblock Falcon vibrato and the onboard active VSC circuit, which offered a combined treble and bass boost or a midrange solo boost. For those pristine rhythm parts or gained leads – essential voices for the time – the Blade was the near-perfect tool.
Back to today and Gary’s latest design venture is Sceptre, a mini-range of three electrics and a pair of basses commissioned by UK-based Tanglewood Guitars, known for its value-for-money acoustics that are distributed worldwide. Now, you might be groaning, ‘Not another Fender-inspired ‘new’ design…’ and we hear you. But with Gary at the drawing board there’s got to be some merit, hasn’t there? When this unshowy Ventana Deluxe arrived we plugged straight in and in moments concluded, ‘We’re good to go!’
There’s no country of original label visible on the guitar yet Gary confirms it’s Chinese-made – and rather well, too. The two-tone ’burst to the front reveals a stripped ash-looking body, though it’s actually (two-piece) alder with a thin ash veneer to the front only. “We’re using twoto three-piece bodies whereas, typically, in this price area you’d be looking at three to five pieces, sometimes more. Since I’m not into horizontal plywood, that was one spec that came in early on,” Gary tells us from his HQ in Basel, Switzerland. “Originally, the factory used a swirly grain Mongolian ash veneer that looked like it should be on a piece of decorative furniture,” he laughs. “It took me six months of hounding to get them to source the American white ash straightgrain veneer you see there.” and we get a simpler master volume/master tone control circuit. By design, this is a more contemporary take on that classic 69-year-old benchmark.
The actual outline is subtly modernised, too, with slightly thinner, more pointed horns, while the heel area is lightly dished, and the hard rock maple neck, which has a
