Well, had this Vintage JB for a week now and time I think for a quick update on my views of it.
Out of the box it played very well, good fat tone, low action and all in all a rather nice feel to it. Have noticed not much sound difference between both Pups on and Neck only, really nice mids and top end wail on the Bridge pick up. Cleans up resonably well when you back of the volume on the guitar and comes back with a vengence when the guitar is cranked up all the way.
Build quality (with the exception of the scratch plate and top knob on the pickup selector) seems more than adequate, tail stop anchored deep within the body, nut cut is good, not too deep so appears to give a good defined resting point. The best thing about this guitar for me is definately the neck, feels slightly slimmer than a 60's LP and not to dissimilar to my PRS, sort of wideish and thin.
Tried top wrapping with Dean Markley 11-52's, not for me, i was stuggling to bend a full tone on the G and the tone sound went sooooo dark, to the point that I had my DSL treble full out and the mids and bass backed well off and it still sounded muffled and mushy, changed back to 10-48's standard thro stringing and the whole thing changed again back to a bright Bridge tone and a deep but smooth and clear mid tone, still not getting too much difference between mid and neck position, that may be down to the Wilkinson PUPS more that anything else.
Blues tone with volume at 5-7 sounds nice, push the volume to full with no amp change and your'e almost in Heavy Rock land, tweak the gain on the DSL up to half way with very little reverb and you get a real nice AC/DC sound.
So overall rating:
Build Quality - 8/9
Hardware - 8
PUP's - 7/8
Neck - 9
Fretboard - 9
Relicing - 8
Overall JB look - 9
Value for money - 9
For a guitarist that does not have a great deal of money to spend, I think it's good value. I have played for a while and would happily use this as a gigging guitar, reasons are that it will cope with most of the sounds that you would need for a pup type environment, but mainly because of the cost, I would have no fear of taking this thing out to a spit and sawdust boozer, knocking seven bells out of it, dropping it a few times, or some numbnut spilling a beer over it, could almost view it as a guitarist consumable, use it, drop it, break it, replace it. And interestingly when people have asked what model is that and you reply with it's a copy of a Joe Bonamassa guitar, it either starts a coversation about Joe or gets the response "So is he good then" and before you know it there could be another JB fan in the making.
Now to the serious bit:
This is not a guitar that has been sanctioned or endorsed or in fact even looked at by JB, he has asked but a guitar to review has not been forthcoming from Vintage, they do not use the name Joe Bonamassa in any of their advertising and simply advertise it as the Icon "inspired by" range, as they also do with the V100MRPGM (Peter Green inspired out of phase les paul copy) it is a copy, don't think it's anything else, I'm sure that the Epiphone JBLP will be a completley different beast to this, but at this present time the Epi JB is not available (at least not in the UK) and as I am a huge JB fan without the budget for a £3500-4000 Gibson JBLP, this enables me to throw it over my shoulder and for a few minutes (untill I bum a note) let my imagination run riot with my own humble JBLP lookalike. As before there are some pictures posted here
http://www.myspace.com/stewartw
I am not recommending / advertising or pushing anything for Vinatge, I only have bought one of their guitars and this is just my opinion of it, when the Epi comes out I will definately try one and if it's as good as Joe says it is I will sell the Vinatage and put the money towards an Epi JBLP

Have Fun and laugh like it's your first time! You never know you might get to like it!
