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This is a very clever instrument indeed. The body is made entirely of a material called Ekoa, which is compressed natural fibres and resin. Ekoa is very hard, and very stiff, and retains the tonal properties of wood, so you get a lovely warm chiming sound, which is extremely loud when required! Blackbird developed Ekoa to offer all the modern benefits of carbon fibre such as reliability and resistance to moisture and temperature, whilst retaining a proper authentic ukulele sound. Boy, what a job they did.
It is not just the materials used that are clever: the design of this little pocket rocket is ground breaking too. The soundhole is offset to the top, which allows a greater proportion of the soundboard to reverberate for longer, but probably the most revolutionary feature is the hollow neck and the soundhole at the headstock, which allows the neck to be a resonating chamber, adding more volume and tone shaping.
The back is arched, which along with the Pineapple style body shape fills the bass out even more, which works wonderfully well with the Low G string which is fitted. And in the hand, it feels so balanced, so capable, so well made and just soooo damnably clever. I guarantee that you will not have played or heard anything like it! We have been blown away.
All of this clever technology makes this the ultimate go anywhere ukulele: impervious to temperature and humidity variations. One word of caution: as this is a composite material, there is some variation in the look and feel on the top: there are some rougher parts, where some fibres are prominent near the top, and like wood there are different patterns in the top which make each instrument unique. Also, owing to the instruments being made of pressed fibres, there are some fibres that look like scratches, but they are under the finish, and just a result of the manufacturing process.
The Richlite fretboard is super smooth, and very hard and resonant as well, just stacking up the excellence. It also comes with a Gator padded gigbag, which is 25mm padded and very good quality.
Pictures show actual instrument you will receive.
Spec: Ekoa composite body, and neck Graphtech Micarta nut and saddle Gotoh UPT planetary tuners Hollow neck leading to headstock soundport 35mm nut width with 27.5mm G to A string spacing 383mm scale length Aluminium fretboard top dot markers (cost option, included) 12 frets to body, 17 frets in total Richlite fretboard Clear Fluorocarbon strings, with smooth wound Low G 2 strap buttons installed (cost option, included) to bottom bout and to heel joint\
Gloss finish to back, neck and headstock Natural matte finish to top
