Lace Music Helix HG03

The Lace Helix is a odd shaped guitar made by the Lace Music company. Lace is mostly known for their Lace Sensor pickups which feature heavily shielded magnets that dont lower the sustain on the guitar. The guitar features a Maple neck with an Ebony Fingerboard with 22 jumbo frets and a 12 inch radius connected to a 2-peice alder body. The tilt-back headstock has a set of Grover Mini-Rotomatic tuners. It features 3 Lace Sensor Hot Gold pickups. The neck and the middle are rated at 6k while the bridge is rated at 13k. There is a standard strat-style 5-way switch to switch between the pickups with. It has a chrome volume knob and 2 DATA wheel tone controls.

UTILIZATION

A design flaw on this guitar is that the bridge is located too far back on the body. It will be difficult if not impossible for anyone to be able to correctly intonate this guitar. Another flaw is that the bridge pickup is more than twice the output of the neck and middle pickups. So for the user there will be extreme changes in volume when switching pickups. I had to lower the bridge pickup all the way to equalize the volume for the 3 pickups. The tone controls work well but they are awkward to use due to them being huge DATA knobs. The ebony fretboard is nice. I always prefer ebony when it comes to fretboards due to its smooth feel.

SOUNDS

It sounds like a typical strat in all the positions that dont use the bridge pickups but once you have the bridge pickup engaged the high end becomes excessive. The hot bridge pickup sounds okay with distortion but for some it may still sound a little thin. Its almost impossible to get a good clean tone on the bridge pickup with its output.

OVERALL OPINION

The Lace Helix has a unique and interesting shape that you wont see very often so thats a plus. The construction is solid and it does not feel like it would break any time soon. I dont see how they could have let a flaw like setting the bridge too far back get through production in this day and age. With a problem like bad intonation you may not notice it at first but after a few minutes of playing you will feel like some chords do not sound right, and from my experience people will subconsciously avoid guitars with bad intonation. I would not recommend this guitar to anyone unless they are just looking for something interesting to look at.