Green guitar? Carbon Fiber and eco-design

What is the eco-benefit of our carbon fiber guitars? First lets consider the assumption that wooden guitars could use improvement in longevity after there are 300 year-old Strads- so wood can clearly be sufficiently durable. Tim Brookes addresses this issue in his wonderful book Guitar: An American Life, "All good guitars are underbuilt and will not last terribly long." He [Rick Davis of Running Dog Guitars] says "A couple hundred years is definitely the outside for a steel-string guitar, and probably less. If you build them so they are proportionally as strong as a violin, which will last hundreds and hundreds of years, they'll be too stiff to produce the sounds that we associate with the guitar." This horrifies me. The instrument built to die. He thinks about my reaction. "I would say it's sort of the racer of the instruments. It's built extremely light and fragile and you're going to use it for a certain amount of time and get the maximum performance out of it, and then it's going to fall to pieces..."

We build our Blackbird Guitars very lightly because it is the primary way to maximize resonance- for instance our steel-string model weighs less than 3 lbs. We achieve this with thinner tops (1mm) and lighter bodies. Our proprietary, one-piece hollow neck and head further lightens the construction over what is possible with a conventional guitar. The epoxy, carbon fiber fabric, and carbon tubes we use to make Blackbird Guitars are exponentially stronger than wood and are similar materials used in the most critical aerospace applications for nearly four decades. The tensile strength, tensile modulus, and environmental resistance of our composite structures means we can build a lightly built guitar that will outlast any wooden structure. Our carbon fiber guitars which can last as heirlooms for generations is the epitome of eco-friendly and far outweighs the significant embodied energy in carbon fiber. All of our clients own nice wooden guitars and to help them live as long as possible (the guitars that is) they bring a Blackbird along for the ride instead.