Back in 2012, Vox Amplification looked to its design history to launch a pair of travel guitars based on the classic 1960s Phantom and Teardrop shapes. With NAMM just around the corner, the company has refined the concept for the feature-packed APC-1.
The new model's shape is at once familiar and new, roughly sporting a Teardrop body that's fashioned from poplar but with a hump behind the hardtail bridge that's home to a 4.6-cm (1.8-in), wide-dispersion, feedback-resistant Tektonic Audio speaker and two passive radiators.
Within the sizable pick guard is what looks like a single passive humbucker, but is actually two. There's a busy-looking control interface below, with some features brought over from the Vox Mini Go modeling amp. Cooked-in effects include chorus, tremolo, delay and reverb. The travel guitar also features 33 built-in grooves across 11 genres, as well as an onboard tuner.
The tones run from clean to wonderfully dirty, effects/rhythms and the speaker are powered by six AA-sized batteries, and in addition to an output jack for cabling up to an external amp/speaker setup, there's a headphone out and aux input (for feeding in backing tracks). Rounding out the key specs, the 24-inch scale bolt-on maple neck is topped by a purpleheart fingerboard with 22 frets.
As you can see in the video below, this looks like a powerful and fun portable noise machine. The APC-1 is reportedly due for release in July for a yet-to-be-revealed retail price.
Product page: Vox APC-1