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- When we took on the Acoustasonic project,
we knew that this was so different that we couldn't just put
this on the factory floor with everything else
Everything is different with an acoustic electric guitar
you have the wood husbandry,
you have to worry about humidity levels,
things that we don't have to worry about in the same way
with electric guitars that are solid bodies.
We're talking about thin spruce tops, et cetera here.
So we built a factory inside of our factory
and scaled it up just like a startup company.
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Just in three short years here, here we are debuting
the third model the Acoustasonic Jazzmaster
and it was amazing to watch it comes to life.
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So although someone might look at this guitar
and see similarities to our electric guitars
with its bolt-on neck and the fact that
there are electronics inside of it, make no mistake,
this is a crafted, hand-built acoustic electric guitar.
It has binding embracing.
It is completely engineered sonically
for the top to vibrate and to play like an acoustic guitar.
These instruments have over a hundred hands processes.
So it's not simply make a neck,
make a body, slam them together.
The work that we have to do is very intense.
- When you start making a guitar materials matter,
what the top is made out of,
what the back and sides are made up of, the neck,
the tuners, the weight of the tuners,
the type of fretboard material, the type of frets,
the bridge, the saddle, the nut, everything matters.
Mahogany is a wonderful guitar wood.
Why? It's right where our vocal ranges.
If you think of my hands like an EQ right,
bass frequencies down here, middle frequencies,
high frequencies, where's mahogany boom right in the middle.
That's right where our vocal range is,
that's right, where we sing, where we talk.
- The body is actually Fijian Mahogany
which is plantation grown and sustainably harvested
which is good just from an eco-conscious level.
This is a spruce top that is insets
into this mahogany body.
The thing that's cool about the spruce top
is because it's not the normal width of an acoustic guitar.
We're able to use some wood
that would have potentially gone to waste.
- We're also using natural ebony on the fingerboard.
So as many people in the guitar world know we used
to use exclusively just the dark, dark solid black ebony.
But it turns out that only about 10%
of ebony is entirely black.
And you usually have to fell the tree
to figure out if it's usable or not basically.
It was really irresponsible
and we've been working with Bob Taylor and his team
and his mill in Cameroon to use this streaked ebony
which allows more of the ebony that is harvested to be used.
And really it's not imperfect, it's unique.
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- We used an Open-Pore Finish.
This Open-Pore Finish allows you to feel the mahogany.
You feel it while you play, the neck is open part.
And it's just got a thin, thin Satin finish.
You can feel this guitar against your body as you play.
The whole thing is moving, so the materials matter.
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- For me what inspires me a lot is the sonics of instrument.
Like playing guitar and with so many options
it's like one setting like the overdrive setting
might inspire you in a completely different way
artistically than something more along the lines
or something more smoother, something more body driven
- The inspiration that comes from the sounds coming from it
and it's like a physical thing
but like with this too, like you get that option
to like kind of mess around with that and try something out
just by like going like that or doing that,
you've got something different.
- Also I really enjoy the weight of this thing,
body shape is just also really sick.
Did you guys, were you guys thinking anything
when you're thinking about kind of the weight of the guitar?
- Yeah, that's something that comes up all the time
and I think that definitely was a huge consideration
but part of that comes from wanting it to be that guitar
that while it's got all this fancy electronics
that you can just like grab it off the shelf
and put it on your lap and you can start playing on it.
And so that was just kind of a nice part of it,
is that you get this resonant guitar, it's also lightweight.
So for like people are gigging or sitting around,
it's like you don't have to worry about that.
And part of it too is even just taking off certain things
to make it ergonomical, like you've got the cutout here
and the belly cut here is that, that all takes weight off
but it also just kind of adds to the overall comfort.
So it's definitely meant to be a played guitar.
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- I really hope that it becomes an important creative tool
in the arsenal of singer, songwriter or performance.
It's just a really useful instrument to have.
- What we wanna get for players on Acoustasonic
is exactly the same thing I want for myself.
I wanna be able to pick something up have it inspire me.
Sometimes I want it to solve a problem for me.
And I think because everybody who worked
on this instrument was a player.
When the guitar started to work for us as we developed it,
we knew what was gonna work for other people as well.
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- I have a rule, you may not call anything we make a skew
'cause you can't fall in love with the skew.
We fall in love with guitars, we make guitars.
That's a way just to remind ourselves that this guitar
may be a project for us, but for somebody else
it's a ticket out of their crumbing town.
It's their counselor, it's their ear
that when they need somebody to be close to them.
Others, it's their share, the joy.
You can be shy and timid and hind behind it
and go become a rockstar.
It's a guitar, it's all those things
that are now your dreams.
It was our dream, now it's yours.
And I can't wait to see where it goes next.
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