Musicvox may have concocted some of the most far out and wacky guitar body styles of anything out there today, but generally speaking their guitars’ features are actually somewhat traditional.
In fact, until now all of their models have featured stop tailpieces, with nary a tremolo, vibrato, or whammy bar to be seen. While the Floyd Rose tremolo has been around long enough to be considered vintage or even antique, the addition of a Floyd Rose brings the Musicvox Space Cadet Custom into the modern era and opens up a whole new world to players who have always wanted to try a Musicvox guitar but can’t live without their whammy.
FEATURES The Space Cadet model may be one of Musicvox’s more conservative designs, but it still has very distinctive styling that’s sure to appeal to players who are tired of the same old thing. Construction features include a mahogany body and maple neck with rosewood fingerboard.
Our example was decorated with a limited-edition custom two-tone black and white finish, with contrasting black binding on the body and headstock and white binding on the neck, and gold-plated hardware adding a touch of class.
In addition to the licensed Floyd Rose double-locking tremolo system, the Space Cadet Custom Floyd Rose is equipped with a pair of Musicvox vintage-style humbucking pickups, master volume and tone controls, and a three-position pickup selector switch. The bolt-on neck has 22 medium-jumbo frets, pearloid block inlays, a 25 1/2-inch scale, and a relatively slim and flat C-shaped profile.
PERFORMANCE Musicvox guitars have previously found happy homes in the hands of garage rock, punk, new country, and surf guitarists, but this may be their first model ideal for metal and hard rock guitarists. The vintage-style humbuckers produce loud and proud twang through a clean amp, but when treated with delicious doses of overdrive and distortion they deliver a snarling tone that falls between the honk and howl of a Gretsch Filtertron and the dominant mids of a Gibson PAF. This guitar does both surf and turf equally well.
The Floyd Rose is set up perfectly out of the box in a floating configuration for performing dive bombs and raised pitch shrieks. The flat profile makes the neck comfortable for shredders, and the medium jumbo frets provide plenty of metal to latch onto for sweep picking or over-the-top bends. This is by far Musicvox’s most hot-rodded model to date.
LIST PRICE $999 MANUFACTURER Musicvox, musicvox.com
The licensed Floyd Rose tremolo is set up in a floating configuration and features a gold-plated finish.
Musicvox’s vintage-style humbuckers provide an alluring balance between twangy clean surf tones and aggressive midrange distortion.
THE BOTTOM LINE If you’ve always loved the looks of Musicvox guitars but wanted a whammy bar or even more shred-friendly features, the Space Cadet Custom Floyd Rose is the one you’ve been waiting for.
Chris is the co-author of Eruption - Conversations with Eddie Van Halen. He is a 40-year music industry veteran who started at Boardwalk Entertainment (Joan Jett, Night Ranger) and Roland US before becoming a guitar journalist in 1991. He has interviewed more than 600 artists, written more than 1,400 product reviews and contributed to Jeff Beck’s Beck 01: Hot Rods and Rock & Roll and Eric Clapton’s Six String Stories.
