Is It Time to Get Out of the Wooden Box?
The Emerald Guitars X20 - a dreadnought sized body, this with a unique solid ebony veneer top
Great acoustic guitars have been built from real solid wood for over a century. Solid tops, sides and backs of great sounding and beautiful to look at woods. But many of the in demand woods are now scarce, or protected, or gone completely and we see more and more guitars being built with alternatives, some of which just don’t sound as nice to some ears. We also see more and more guitars not using solid woods any longer, replacing them with “high pressure laminate” aka plywood and fingerboards made from dyed compressed paper waste. If you cannot hear or feel a difference then these things don’t matter. However I do hear and feel a difference and am underwhelmed. Getting all solid wood instruments is getting very expensive.
So my question for you all is, if you are open to materials alternative to solid wood, just how open minded are you?
Full disclosure, I am going to talk about carbon fibre guitars in this article and I am an Ambassador for Emerald Guitars of Ireland. Ambassadors are not paid and don’t get any significant perks, other than a minor discount if you bring a sufficient number of prospects to Emerald and those folks choose to purchase. So to be clear, I am not making anything from Emerald Guitars. I have purchased with my own money, three different Emerald Guitars because they sound and play wonderfully and are also extremely beautiful.
A Short History of Emerald Guitars
This is my own Synergy X20 Harp Guitar
In 1994, founder Alistair Hay got the idea for making carbon fibre guitars while working at Seebold Racing, builders of carbon fibre racing boats. He built his first carbo fibre guitar in 1998 and opened Emerald Guitars in 1999. The first guitar to leave the factory was the Ultra, built specifically for Steve Vai in 2000 with the first available range of Emerald Guitars appearing in 2001. Emerald first appeared at NAMM in 2003 and worked hard to build the company and the product line going through the typical successes and setbacks of most companies doing something completely different in an established marketplace. Emerald suffered the same challenges as the rest of the music industry right up and through the COVID times. Prior to COVID, in 2016, Emerald Guitars made the decision to go direct to customers, bypassing the traditional music store sales route. While the company was early to go this route, we see a great many guitar makers now going direct to the customer. 2024 was a milestone year for Emerald Guitars with the production of their 10,000th instrument and the opening of their brand new state of the art factory.
10,000 may not sound like a lot in the context of Fender, Gibson or Yamaha, but for a boutique builder doing something very different it is very significant. Now each week on their YouTube channel, Alistair shows the guitars shipping to customers around the world that week.
Innovative Construction
Emerald Guitars are made entirely of carbon fibre. The bodies, tops, necks, headstocks and fingerboards are all carbon fibre. The bodies can be coloured with subtle shades or vibrant ones, or as seen in the opening image,with a solid wood veneer on the top.
The guitars are designed to be acoustic but are available with built in pickups with a choice of LR Baggs Element, LR Baggs HiFi Duet, GraphTech Ghost Piezos, Ghost Piezos plus a K&K contact pickup or HyVibe Smart Guitar Pickup. My three guitars all have the Ghost Piezos, and they are the only piezos that I found sounded good without a preamp and an equalizer.
The wonder of carbon fibre is that it is not impacted by temperature or humidity. The guitar doesn’t move or shift over time. It’s also very solid, There are videos of Alistair Hay standing on the body of an Emerald Guitar.
Getting Your Own Emerald Guitar
Emerald Guitars build guitars to sell from inventory online. It’s a fast way to get an amazing guitar that sounds and plays great. However, Emerald Guitars also has a powerful 3D Builder that runs in your browser. You pick the model, you pick the top if you want veneer, or the carbon fibre style and colour of your preference. Their veneer library is amazing and your build will use the veneer piece you select and you can actually position the veneer on the body in the 3D Builder so the figuring appears where you want it.
Based on my three instruments, playability out of the included case was perfect. No adjustments needed and the strings were fresh with no tarnish and from D’Addario. I play the guitars so much that I have changed the strings on my Virtuo model to go slightly lighter and with D’Addario XS coated strings because I prefer them to uncoated.
This is what my Chimaera looks like
When I bought my first Emerald Guitar, I did so because I was looking for a Harp Guitar, and Emerald had the best reputation for the investment. The photo above is my Synergy X20 Harp Guitar. I was so impressed that as I had been seeking a double necked acoustic and had tried a few, all of them horrible, I took the chance on an Emerald Chimaera.
The Chimaera is just one of the options that Emerald Guitars builds. Because of the strength of the carbon fibre, multiple strings are not an issue and they have build guitars that take up to 30 strings!
In addition to the traditional dreadnought size, they also do lovely parlour sized guitars, ukeleles, Weissenborns, basses, electric-acoustics, an archtop and a super short scale 12 string called the Amicus.
This isn’t meant to be an ad for Emerald but I get enthused by wonderful instruments. I’ve spent my own money because they are superb and readily blow away other instruments in terms of sound and playability.
The Virtuo that I bought most recently is a semi-hollow electric with Ghost Piezos in the bridge and a pair of Fishman Fluence humbuckers in the top. I can combine all the pickups in the guitar or run separate outputs for each pickup to different amps or recording desk channels. Because it is so light, so versatile and sounds so great, it’s my most played of all my Emerald Guitars.
Find Out More?
If you are in my area, I would be happy to let you have a look and a play on one of my guitars, but if not close by, you can learn all you want to know and here professionally recorded demos of all their instruments at https://emeraldguitars.com/
Wrapping Up
I’m very enthusiastic about great carbon fibre guitars, but am also too well aware of some really horrible carbon fibre blobs in the market pretending to be guitars. Doing good work with carbon fibre is difficult when you need it to be very strong without getting very heavy. Putting a good finish on the material is challenging, and a well built guitar with questionable components is going to leave you cold. Emerald Guitars uses only top of the line products in their instruments, and as far as I am concerned there is no compromise in them anywhere.
This is the Virtuo, the best electric / acoustic that I have ever played. Makes the Fender junk and the Taylor products weep.
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