Simon Lee of Simon Lee Guitars had a good idea when he started manufacturing his Cyclotron line.
The whole development behind the CYCLOTRON range came about because I am very concerned with the destruction of the rain forests and I wanted to build guitars that didn’t glamourise exotic hardwoods, because I knew very well that these same timbers are becoming endangered species.
Instead of producing highly lacquered, exotic timber ‘furniture’ guitars, I have designed instruments that explore the potential of, and celebrate very modern materials.
By modern materials, he means things like cut offs from industrial pipes, vending machine coffee cups, yogurt cups, plastic bottles and even crushed up C.D.s. And get this, some of the CDs used are ones seized from pirate operations!
Here’s a Tele style.
Many of these guitars have a polished marble or granite look. There is no reason why these types of materials wouldn’t work for a solid body electric guitar. People have been working with composites for a long time. And, they look like they are made very nicely, good parts (Gotoh heads, Bare Knuckle pickups). Price is £850.00 ($1,650 or so).
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Tags: Cyclotron, Guitar, Simon Lee, Simon Lee Guitars
Gary wrote,
A virtual friend of mine has been sent one of these to review - I posted a brief bit on my blog about it but he hasn’t written the full review yet.
Gary’s last blog post..Kingfisher in the garden
Link | July 4th, 2008 at 7:10 am
Pribek wrote,
I’ll be looking forward to seeing that Gary.
There are a lot of things that interest me about this. I think that it’s one thing to use trees that have been planted as a crop to make solid body electric guitars but, using precious hardwoods from rain forests for this purpose seems a vanity.
I’m also always fascinated by aesthetically pleasing things made from discarded material.
And, from looking at Simon Lee’s site, he seems to be a serious guitar maker.
Link | July 4th, 2008 at 8:46 am