Point: The carbon-built Blackbird Rider is supposedly the lightest guitar in the world, yet packs a full-bodied sound by using vibrations or something. Counterpoint: It looks like a keytar. THOUGHTS?
Built out of carbon fiber, the manufacturer, SF-based Blackbird Guitars, claims that at 3 pounds, the Rider is one of the lightest guitars in the world. (Contrast that to your average Fender Stratocaster, which weighs more than twice that.)
Travel guitars, for those of you who don’t subscribe to Guitar World, are smaller than full-scale guitars, so they’re great for folks who move around a lot (all musicians, right?). That said, no serious musician worth his MySpace page would be caught dead jamming on one because the sound is, well, small.
The designers of the Blackbird Rider solved that problem by a.) extending the shoulder to the 10th fret, which increases the overall volume of the sound box, and b.) carving an asymmetrical hole in the body. The hole works like an amplifier, boosting the effective size of the sound board. c.) having a body made of continuous sheets of carbon fiber, rather than separate pieces of wood whose joints absorb sound vibrations (and sap volume).
