Carbon fiber Guitar article at Acoustic Guitar

We are featured in Acoustic Guitar Magazine this month (for a second time!) in a great article by Ron Forbes-Roberts on carbon fiber instruments. The bit on Blackbird Guitars is below to read the whole thing go here:

Blackbird Guitars

Joe Luttwak and Troy Stevens of San Francisco–based Blackbird Guitars view the use of carbon-fiber composite as a way to help overcome traditional barriers in guitar design. “One problem is how to get good sound and portability,” says Luttwak, a guitarist with a degree in ecological design. “In our opinion, these things were at odds with each other until the Rider.”

Blackbird’s Rider travel guitar has a standard scale of 24.5 inches, but measures a trim 36 x 10½ x 4¼ inches and weighs only three pounds, making it light and compact enough to hitch to a backpack or fit into an overhead compartment. Luttwak says the traditional Appalachian dulcimer inspired the guitar’s design. “The dulcimer is a small instrument, fully portable but loud, so that’s where we came up with the idea of the Rider’s entirely hollow resonance chamber,” he says. “We used carbon fiber because, besides being strong and weather resistant, that was the only way we could make an all hollow instrument.” To keep weight down, the guitar’s headstock, neck (reinforced with a nonadjustable truss rod) and even the top’s carbon-fiber longitudinal bracing are also hollow.

In order to make the Rider easier to hold, its sculpted back has a squared lower edge and rounded upper edge. “It’s a lot more comfortable than you’d think,” Luttwak says. “You wrap your body around it, stabilizing the body with your right arm and because the neck is hollow, it’s balanced at the 15th fret and just sits there balanced on your leg.”

The first batch of 50 Riders sold out soon after Blackbird debuted the instrument at the 2007 NAMM show. The company is also preparing to build a composite classical guitar, which, like the Rider, will be built to last. “Composite survives a lot longer than wood, so what we have here from an eco perspective is longevity,” Luttwak says. “Nice guitars are designed to be heirlooms.”

Blackbird RiderBlackbird