Lucem Custom Designs The Unorthodox – Slowdive’s Neil Halsted has a new axe Lucem Custom Designs makes new custom guitar for Slowdive guitarist

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Lucem Custom Designs are a very cool, slightly underground guitar maker based in England. They make some very tasty bespoke and standard guitars. This year they have hooked up with Neil Halsted of Slowdive and created a unique guitar called The Unorthodox!

The Unorthodox

You will either love or hate the design because it is, in my opinion, so unique and yes I love it. It has a one-piece 25.5″ scale length through-neck construction with 22 frets loaded onto a rosewood fingerboard inlaid with mother of pearl block inlays. They use a quarter sawn Sapele Mahogany through-neck and Poplar body wings. Though this can be tweaked if you go for a custom variation.

The guitar is a hardtail design with a Graphtec Res-o-lite bridge and has Schaller Da’Vinci machineheads to keep everything in tune. Pickups wise you get a pair of Lucem Stormrider humbuckers. It has an interesting control layout based on their ‘Old Nick’ Paradox model (made for the ex-Verve guitarist, Nick McCabe).

Visually they use a four-ply scratchplate in either black, white, Pearloid or imitation tortoiseshell. They are available in the following colours Jet-Glo Black, Olympic White, Seafoam Green or Sonic Blue. They can also do burst finishes if you ask nicely.

Slowdive

If you are a fan of Slowdive then you will know that Neil Halstead is often associated with ‘shoegaze’ style music and so this design looks like the kind of thing he would play. Personally, I think for the money that it is a very cool looking, retro-inspired, a bit of an oddball, but beautiful looking guitar and I would love to try one out myself.

For a hand-made instrument, it offers a lot for not a huge amount of money.

RRP – GBP 2460

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