Blackbird Clara Ukulele wins Composites Innovation Award

Building on the success of carbon-fiber acoustic guitars and ukuleles developed over the past decade, Blackbird dedicated several years of research and development to incorporating these low-density eco-materials into their proprietary hollow-neck unibody acoustic construction. Clara is the loudest concert ukulele with the widest frequency range available yet compact enough to fit in a backpack— the perfect instrument to have around in all circumstances. "With the tone of vintage wood and the durability of cutting-edge sustainable composite construction, musicians get what was previously unobtainable: the experience of a vintage old-growth wood instrument in a lightweight, durable package", says Blackbird founder Joe Luttwak. The Ekoa construction represents a very important material solution for various musical instruments because exceptional quality "tone" comes from old growth wood which is increasingly difficult to source and stocks are of ever-deteriorating quality. Ekoa has many applications including sports equipment that would benefit from high strength, stiffness, vibration dampening and a material with a natural designer look.

Find out more about Blackbird's Clara ukulele at www.blackbirdguitar.com
To learn more about Ekoa, please visit www.lingrove.com

The Clara concert ukulele starts at $1150. Visit the Clara page to learn more.

ABOUT BLACKBIRD
Blackbird guitars was founded in 2005 to satisfy the desire for the ultimate travel guitar. Non-traditional product design and development resulted in radically new directions and a family of travel instruments that are the standard-bearers of acoustic performance.

ABOUT EKOA
Ekoa is produced in partnership with Lingrove, a distributor of natural high performance materials. It offers high performance with exceptional strength, dampening, resilience and even lighter weight than carbon fiber. Like all composite materials, Ekoa is made up of fiber reinforcement fabric in resin matrix, but one that is worker and planet-friendly. The plant-based fabrics and biobased resins have a beautiful designer material quality, which does not always require finishing along with distinct performance advantages over other composites. The Clara ukulele, is the debut application of Ekoa which is suitable for numerous other applications from sports equipment to furniture.