I got a Vantage VA-810 when i was 6 years old, about 20 years ago. The guitar is really good looking and sounds great. Nice to find this website!

Great site- I collect L 5's but had to get a 335 copy- just ordered a 1992 cherry 635V from a shop way out in NW Alberta....all good as I am Samick fan...just keep being impressed by MIK quality from 80's-90's. thanks for putting up this great info centre.

I just finished restoring and customizing my AV-310 I bought new in 1985.
These inexpensive gems were remarkably well made for the price.

I remember when Vantage guitars first hit the market. I worked as a teacher in a music store in the 80s. As soon as the VSH455 appeared, I bought one. I still have it and it is my go to guitar for Jazz gigs large and small and has been my battle axe in countless performance environments. Awesome guitar.

The silver lining in the dark cloud of Covid was to give me the time to make good on my life long promise to relearn how to play the guitar. I left my almost rarely used Vantage VW 100 in Florida when I returned to Canada. I have since bought 2 guitars to play and spend the winter researching guitars only to learn that my Vantage guitar was built in 1979 during the Golden Age of Japanese guitar making. I cant wait to return this fall to polish it up and play it for the first time in years. Does anyone know if the top is solid Sitka spruce and what type of solid mahogany is the back and sides - where was it sourced?

Thanks for the site! I have a VA 10 LT ('83, I think?) that I bought in college for $150, and have loved it ever since. Never could find info about it until I stumbled here by chance. It gets compliments all the time, couldn't be happier.

I had a Korean Vantage 335 in the later 90s but I sold it. Wish I still had it. Just picked up a VP825. Happy to have the information here to learn about my cool 80s guitar. Thanks for the website.

Vantage Born To Rock!
Yeah, what a sleeper quality brand of guitar that arrived during for what many of us experienced during our youth.
These guitars were a far greater quality than many of the other similarly priced guitars afforded during my youth.
I come from the bastard generation of "inbetweeners"...... A product of the sexual revolution, those latchkey and single divorced parents that were stuck and forgotten. Not "Boomers" and grew up way too fast to be "Generation X". We were the hard rocking drug fueled misguided youth of America.
Vantage Guitars were the affordable tool that helped channel our energy towards something bigger than ourselves.
My first Vantage guitar was a true investment that I still own today. During my generation, every boy played guitar at some point in high school. Those that stuck with it and accomplished anything , had quality and playable instruments. This was something not found in most any affordable instrument. Even many of the lawsuit guitars sucked. It was my shopping the best deal on a Hondo or similar priced instrument that I met Tommy Phillips over at Pro Sound in Denver Colorado. This was 1979. Sure he was a salesman but he had many choices of things to sell me... He taught me the finer points to look into a quality instrument. Educated with those facts I was looking at the Les Paul Jr or a student model SG....
Both were plain and unexciting but decent enough quality and just ever so beyond my price range. I visited the store often as I saved more money. Tommy Phillips summoned me over and into the back where he was unboxing and showing me the literature that he received with a test shipment of new guitars from a recent new company called MusicTechnologies . They were importing a new brand of guitars from Japan.
He told me to forget the notion of cheap transistor pocket radios and the proliferation of imported Japanese junk.(much the way China is viewed today) .He said look towards all the electronics now being produced such as Sony. Japan did indeed make quality and the VSP 750 sample was a excellent example of quality and style.
In fact it appeared to be of much better playability , sound and quality than the LesPaul junior selling at nearly twice the price. I scraped up $219.00 out the door to take home my first "real" guitar. I sold my old Hodaka dirt bike later that week and bought the matching hardshell case for $80 later that week.
I still have my orig. Set Neck Ghost and have many years later bought two more from eBay. The last Ghost cost double what I had paid in 1979 for the first one.. I also have bought two more of the Vantage VP 500 models . Don't remember what I paid for the second of these Les Paul Copycat guitars but it was a great deal compared to what they sell today for. The VP 500 was more akin to a Hondo but yet still much higher quality. They have rock solid necks that are thin and fast with ease of adjustment, you can play the lowest I'd action without buzz and fretout like no other guitar I have seen. My major complaint is I prefer a set neck over a bolt on. My 750 series Ghosts have exceptional set necks. The 500 series spirits have awesome neck but just a bit unconventional having a Les Paul styled guitar with bolt on neck. I also not a fan of the formed birch formed top over a traditional carved top.. Regardless all of my Vantage play very well and sound great. My biggest want and wish is now for a model 455 thinline semi hollow body . The old model from Japan with the dark walnut stain and the multi laminate running down the center section..... These today have been priced beyond what I wished to pay.... Perhaps someone owns two and would wish to trade for one of my 750 Ghost guitars or maybe a spirit 500?&

I enjoyed this site very much. It was a pleasure to find back pictures of my first guitar model. It was a wine red Vantage Spirit, which I got from my parents as my 16th birthday present in 1981. Unfortunately I didn’t keep it very long. It must have been quite a well built guitar, as I remember that older, experienced guitar players I knew were enthusiastic about it, and they played Gibson en Fender themselves.