Well I was at my local music retailer the other day, Jim's Music in Irvine. Great store BTW - nice guys and good pricing, mostly mainstream mass-market stuff, but they will set you up well.
I played with the Strat VG and it was exactly what I expected. It does what they say, but it left me with the same feeling I have about all digital modeling. Quite simply, it sounds and is fake.
The strat in N (normal) mode just uses the mag pickups and its a normal strat. Its a good one too, like the standard US strat. Great tone and action, quality. It is what you would expect.
Now in the modeled mode, where you pick a guitar (S-strat, T-tele, H-humbucker, A-acoustic) and a tuning (N-normal, D-drop D, 12-string, DADGAD, OpenG, Baritone-b) it just digitally fakes it. And that's where it loses me. The modeled Strat mode in normal tuning - back to back with the Normal (not modeled) strat - is simply weak. The highs are muted. The pick articulation details are lost (that's good for some clunkers I suppose). Same with the rest. My baritone guitar sounds better. A real 12 string is better. My Taylor acoustic is insanely better. My Tele is better. WTF go figure - they are all REAL!
But if you can't afford all those guitars, or need to change in the middle of the song, or if you play through a bunch of crappy digital modelers or effects anyway, you might actually love this guitar. It sure is convenient for the tuning stuff. But its certainly not the real deal.
Like I said, it does exactly what it is supposed to, and I'm impressed, but I don't need one.
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