Video of the Week - Custom Emerald 9 strings by Peter Vail

Our friend Peter Vail did this sample video of this guitar before shipping it to it's proud owner. This guitar has been also played by Andy Mckee no less! This was a custom order based on the body of the Emerald X35 acoustic bass. It has 9 strings and custom K&K pickups. Soon we'll do a complete review of it. Here are some lovely pics of it

A Brave New Carbon-Fiber World - by Rick Spreitzer

Please welcome our new contributor Rick Spreitzer, former CA endorser artist and carbon fiber guitar enthusiast. He sent us this delightful article. We hope to have more entries form him soon. Enjoy it!

As a guy barreling down on half-a-century, I have had the pleasure of playing some mighty fine wooden guitars. There are a few that stand out: a golden-topped 1976 Martin D-35, a 1965 Gibson cherry-sunburst J-45 (my first vintage guitar!), and a 1942 Gibson L-00 (that to this day, I regret selling). In the past year, I splurged on a Collings OM-1 that is sublimely intoxicating.

But there’s an unlikely addition to this list of stand-outs: my 2007 Composite Acoustics Performer GX. To me, it’s a guitar that does it all. It’s an amazing rhythm guitar. It’s balanced enough to play finger-style. It sounds great plugged in. It has the best intonation of any guitar I’ve ever owned. It takes well to aggressive capo-use and alternate tunings. It’s also virtually indestructible because it’s made entirely out of carbon fiber.

Video of the Week - Diving Antarctica with a Blackbird Rider!

This is one of my favorite videos and it really highlights how durable is a carbon fiber guitar. You can see it diving in Antacrtica and surviving! Don't try doing this with a wooden guitar! This is simply beautiful...

About Hartley Peavey, the new owner of Composite Acoustics

I was forwarded this article and i really loved to share it with you. He is such an inspiring person. It is worth reading it even if you are not into guitars. It's the story about a man and a dream and how he pursued until making it real. It is amazing to read it from his own words.

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Amazing Emerald Guitar bargains!

Jump on them as fast as you can! They won't last long! This is an amazing chance to get an amazing guitars for a fraction of their price.

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Carbon fiber used for guitar tops? Aren't you kiddin'?

I want to echo here a really good text written by Joe Luttwak, CEO of Blackbird Guitars, about using carbon fiber to build guitar tops -> the link

Carbon fiber vs. wood sound board + stiffness
Over the years, we've observed a lot of mystery around the material and construction of acoustic guitar sound boards amongst the guitar playing public, after-all sound boards account for the majority of 'tone' of the instrument. In particular, the art/design/science of making guitars achieve a certain quality of sound, volume, frequency response. This became very clear when we received the following comment on our Youtube account:
These guitars are CRAP, considering the price you pay... Guitars are made out of flexible wood. Carbon is one of the most rigid materials known to man... It's good for bracing and truss rod support, but not for anything else. Especially not building a resonating chamber. -AlisonChaynes 

Here is what I more-or-less responded:
'Actually Guitar-top material Aka Spruce is exceptionally stiff for its weight- this is the most basic point of acoustic guitar building and you missed it! Good spruce is a hard material to beat actually, but composites have the advantage of being tune-able so you can dial in the stiffness. Just like a wood guitar, we have bracing to determine stiffness of the top (except we use carbon fiber for our braces), but we also can adjust the thickness, material, weave, orientation of the top to determine stiffness.'

I reached my character limit at that point, but there is another big advantage over wood tops, namely consistency. Because our tops exhibit nearly the same mechanical properties every time, we can quickly develop the perfect blend of top bracing and the other aforementioned variables (aka  thickness, material, weave etc.) so we get the desired responsiveness- every time! Responsiveness is what we are after which broken down means volume, frequency response, dynamic range. Blackbird guitars are closer to the more response boutique guitars by design. Your mass-produced wood guitars (even the pricey ones) are typically 'over-built' aka too stiff... One more thing about the post, if carbon fiber is good for bracing, which is the basis of achieving good tone and stiffness, shouldn't is also be good for the top itself?

Video of the Week - CA Cargo by Martin Blanes

Here is one of my tunes. I hope you enjoy it!

The guitar featured is the Composite Acoustics Cargo Raw travel guitar. A Huge sound in a tiny package. The music is my arrangement on the traditional music of the region where i am from, that is called Galicia, in the North West corner of Spain.