Home | Luthiers | Inventory | FAQ | International | Tortis | Gallery | Home | Luthiers | Inventory | FAQ | International | Tortis | Gallery | Adrian Lucas builds wonderful flattop guitars. He began building guitars in 1990, originally building classical guitars and adding steel string acoustics soon after. He has experimented with and refined various design ideas over the years and have arrived at some unique and succesful models including the Radial steel string and the Pavilion models.
Additionally, during his time as a guitar maker he have illustrated a book on guitar making, 'Making Master Guitars' by Roy Courtnall (Robert Hale 1993). This has become something of a standard textbook in the field and was a real stepping stone in his own research and building methods. Subsequently he produced illustrations for 'The Art of Violin Making', by Chris Johnson and Roy Courtnall (Robert Hale 1999).
Adrian is still active as a musician and am involved in various bands and projects with other musicians especially around the Lincoln area.
All of Adrian's guitars come standard with:
We have 3 Lucas instruments in stock from Radial to Pavillion... inventory
A Radial Steel String model in European Spruce and Cocobolo.... Email us/phone!
Julian Templeman from RMMGA wrote of this instrument::"Dennis brought along an instrument by a UK maker who I haven't come across before, Adrian Lucas (http://www.lucasguitars.co.uk). He's been mainly a classical builder, but has branched out into steel strings as well. The example Dennis brought along was a "radial steel string": if you go to his web site, you'll see that it is a comparatively small bodied steel string (it fits in a classical case) with two sound holes, one in each shoulder. I've seen this style on Hawaiian slack-key instruments, but not encountered one to play. The construction on this guitar is interesting: he uses two soundholes because a traditional hole would interfere with his X-bracing design, attaches the neck using traditional classical building methods, and finishes the instruments with French Polish. The slotted headstock reminds me of a Maccaferri. The 'radial' in the name refers to the fact that he uses a symmetrical X-brace in the middle of the top, with radial supplementary braces. The sound of this guitar was intriguing. It was very new -- only a couple of weeks old -- but shows a lot of promise. Very loud, and having the sound holes on the shoulders means that you can hear yourself very well. It isn't a typical steel string sound; it has many of the characteristics of a flamenco guitar, and a bit of Maccaferri. Great for lead work, and but it also strums and fingerpicks very well. It will be interesting to see how the sound matures, and I'd like to hear one played lap-style with a slide. They also seem very good value, coming in at about 1700UKP." Link to original post
The latest from Adrian; a Pavilion in European Spruce and Brazilian Rosewood.
With a 400mm lower bout and a tight waist, this guitar produces a great sound yet is comfortable when played sitting. This guitar also has fossilised walrus ivory nut and saddle to round off the usual delicate Lucas appoinments!