Building on the successes of Vintage’s range of affordable guitars, with their high quality-to-price ratio, are the Vintage Advance models. Designed entirely from the bottom up by Trev Wilkinson, these are takes on familiar models but with design tweaks that make them uniquely Vintage. The low cost has been achieved by designing all the components in house, and then having production in China overseen by Wilkinson himself, allowing a high quality.

The AV6 obviously takes its inspiration from the Stratocaster, although there are various changes in this model. Firstly, the output jack is on the edge of the body, much like a Telecaster, as well as the pickup configuration being different, with an option of single coils, P90s or a mix of humbucking and non-humbucking pickups. There are subtle changes in the form of a graphite nut for great resonance, whilst the tuning pegs are staggered in height, which reduces the need for string trees, which in turn improves tuning stability. Wilkinson has designed the tuners himself, adding a second hole in the peg, which effectively turns them into locking tuners- a huge advantage when using the whammy bar. The bodies are alder, whilst the necks are made of maple with a rosewood fingerboard, and whilst they are heavier than standard Strats, the added weight gives an extra resonance to the instrument. At slightly higher prices than normal Vintage guitars, this marks their move in to mid-market pricing, although with the attention to detail involved, one can get significantly more bang-for-buck than with some other brands.