San Francisco's Blackbird Guitars took a jumbo acoustic called El Capitan to 2015's National Association of Music Merchants show in California that was said to be the first guitar made from a high performance composite made mostly of linen. Now the company has announced the Savoy, a small body acoustic made using Ekoa that's promised to ooze vintage tone and be structurally superior to old-growth wood.
Ekoa is a sustainable linen fiber and bio-resin composite that's been benchmarked against Alpine Spruce, and is reported to offer more resonance, while benefiting from vintage tonewood-like projection, dynamics and timbre. Where owners of wooden instruments might find themselves having to find ways to monitor the health of their prized acoustics, Blackbird says that guitars made from Ekoa are "impervious to temperature and humidity changes."
The three-quarter size guitar is also said to punch out a full-size voice, and benefits from a 20-fret, 24.5-inch scale length neck that meets the top of the body at the 12th fret and the bottom horn at the 15th for easier access to higher fingerboard positions. A small sound port in the upper side of the guitar gives players a good sense of the kind of tones making their way through the soundhole to the front.
We'd have to hear the Savoy for ourselves to make a judgement call, but if the video below of Quinn DeVeaux picking an El Capitan is anything to go by, it should sound pretty good.
The hand-built (with some mechanical assistance) Savoy is currently on display at Blackbird's NAMM booth, alongside the other members of its Ekoa line – El Capitan and the Clara ukulele. Pricing, with case, starts at US$2,500.
Source: Blackbird Guitar
