Look Sharp

Tanglewood Guitars in the UK commissioned veteran guitar designer Gary Levinson to create a range of affordable but contemporary guitars. Here’s the result

- Dave Burrluck

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!’