Flatline Guitars Vistaglide Custom

I had never heard of Flatline Guitars until I saw an ad in a magazine for them and was intrigued by a blurb written by a fan that they had the most comfortable necks ever. I went to their website and found out that they had a lot more than just a comfortable neck. Their entire company is built around the P90, something you don't see very much these days. It seems like more and more companies are trying to offer as many variations as possible hoping one of them sticks or offer one pickup that they think is the most popular (I think that would be a toss-up between Strat single coils and humbuckers).

To be fair, Flatline doesn't JUST offer P90 guitars but it's the P90 that inspired the company and almost every one of their guitars feature at least one P90 and that makes it a P90 Guitar Company to me.

Not only that, but the company was started out of passion. The founder Rick Lockhart was an economist for years, building hot rods and custom guitars in his spare time until one day he just decided that it was what he wanted to do all the time and he started his own guitar company. The goal was to make a player's guitar that could take the touring life and survive.

Flatine offers three basic models, the Delta (which has a classic T shape to it), the Biscayne (which is their offset offering and my favorite looking of their guitars) and the Vistaglide (which has a classic S shape to it).

It was the Vistaglide custom that was waiting for me when I cam home from work and I am more than happy to review it (a little less happy about the idea of sending it back).

The shape is automatically going to call up comparisons to similarly shaped guitars but that would be a radical mistake because body shape is ALL there is in common (even the pickguard is changing from what's on the website to something like what I have). It starts with the fact that the guitar features a hardtail bridge with a string-through-body setup, two Lollar P90s and a mahogany body. It also features a mahogany neck with a rosewood fretboard.

If the idea of two P90s in a body style like this doesn't strike you as unique enough, there's the glide switch to help set Flatline apart from most other guitar makers. There is no toggle switch for pickups on this guitar. Instead, there's a knob and unlike a rotary position knob where you click from position to position, this allows you to smoothly blend exactly how much of each pickup you want in your signal. Turned fully clockwise, you're on the neck pickup only, fully counter-clockwise on the bridge pickup only. There's a handy indent (that you can't see but you can feel as you rotate the knob) that tells you when you're in the middle position.

This really adds to the tonal possibilities but when you figure that there's also a tone knob, you're in knob-tweaking heaven and for so many possibilities, it's a wonder that the guitar looks as clean as it does. One volume, the glide switch and one tone knob. I found that I generally liked to either play the bridge pickup exclusively for its more biting tone or move to about halfway between full bridge and the middle position (75% bridge, 25% neck). The fact that I could do this - that I could dial the guitar in THAT specifically was awesome and really welcome. The best part about it though was that it was easy to change my mind and adjust as I saw fit.

If I wanted to get that same ratio on, say, a Les Paul, I would need to use both pickups and then turn the volume of the neck pickup down halfway and all of a sudden changing to the neck pickup for a jazzy chord section would require me to flip the switch and turn the knob where on this guitar, it's only turning the knob.

I can't say enough how cool it is to be able to pull in more or less of a pickup at will. I would think it was cool if it was noisy as hell but Flatline makes the operation of the glide switch smooth and noiseless. No popping or scratching and it's pretty much the coolest thing I've ever tried out when it comes to pickup blending.

The guitar also features top of the line parts from the stainless steel, gold plated Hipshot bridge to Lollar P90s. The tuners are classic Kluson tuners and the neck features a 25.5" scale and a graduated radius going from 7.25" to 9.5" to increase playability and the ability to bend (I'm coining the phrase "bendability" right now) as you move up the neck.

The guitar's surprisingly light body is finished in a thin covering of poly and the neck features a satin poly finish. The result of the satin finish is that the neck is very smooth and very fast and the modern C shape is very comfortable. It did take me a little while to get used to the neck. my guitars are either poly finished with no satin feel to them, lacquer, or some sort of varnish so a satin poly finish felt a little weird to me but I warmed up to it pretty quickly and ended up loving how my hand wasn't hindered by either sliding or sticking because of sweat build up on a regular poly finish.

I do wonder how an unfinished neck would feel, but considering that the goal of the company was the make a guitar that could withstand touring, I can't blame them at all for putting a durable finish on it.

The guitar plays like a dream. From the fast neck to the excellent bridge, there's a little bit of the snap you would expect from a 25.5" scale but the mahogany body means it's more smooth in tone and it is AMAZING how great these P90s sound. Usually I like my P90s to be wound hot so notes get overdriven easily and you can get that smoky blues tone, but I was blown away by how fat and mean sounding these can be if you attack the strings. If you pull back a bit with your attack they'll clean right up and you'll have some amazing single-coil tones. For my personal amusement, I was playing palm muted metal stuff and while it wasn't dead on, it's a little shocking just how close it was. I was in tonal heaven as I was adjusting just the right blend of the pickups and adjusting my attack on the strings and ended up playing for hours moving from one area to another, then back to see if I could find it again. I could.

This guitar is too easy tone-wise. While you do dial in your specific tones, it's not like you have to tape down the knobs in an attempt to never lose them.

If you haven't given a Flatline a chance, you need to. They have amazing guitars with tone to die for and a solid feel (but again, the mahogany body was shockingly light meaning there was excellent mahogany tone and no pain in the shoulder area when I played it) and high quality parts. Flatline accomplished it's goal of making an excellent instrument built around the P90 and one that can withstand touring.

The Vistaglide Custom that I reviewed has an MSRP of $3,599.00 but has a street price of somewhere around $2,500.00. That may sound like a lot, but the guitar is built by hand in the US and features the best parts and the most amazing tones, so I think the trade-off is a good one.

I definitely urge everyone to check these guitars out if for nothing else to see how well a guitar company that took their inspiration from the cars and guitars of the past have stepped up and evolved the design and tonal capabilities into what they offer today.

-Pappy